Georgia is located in the South Caucasus region, sharing land borders with Russia to the north, Turkey to the southwest, Armenia to the south, and Azerbaijan to the east. Over the past two decades, Georgia has experienced significant economic change, urbanization, and displaced populations (due...

Mongolia's vast steppe plains and deserts experience about 250 sunny days every year, leading to the country commonly being termed the land of the blue sky. Historical climate warming is believed to have taken place at some of the fastest rates in the world in Mongolia and other shifts in...

Turkmenistan is in the southwestern part of Central Asia and the country is bordered to the north by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to the southeast by Afghanistan and to the south by Iran, with the Caspian Sea coastline forming a natural boundary to its west. Turkmenistan's economy has seen a very...

Climate change is a major risk to good development outcomes, and the World Bank Group is committed to playing an important role in helping countries integrate climate action into their core development agendas. The World Bank Group (WBG) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are committed to...

A large number of studies in recent years have attempted to analyze and quantify the myriad of restrictions holding back economic development in the West Bank and Gaza, but the full picture remains blurred. The main value proposition of this study is to assess and quantify the overall prospects...

Air pollution has become a serious issue in many Asian cities. A major cause is the expanding motor vehicle population--with growth rates as high as 23 percent in rapidly growing economies such as China. Experience worldwide has shown that the use of clean fuels (low-lead or unleaded gasoline...

This discussion paper: a) proposes a new approach of targeted collaboration among different sectors; b) devises new tools or enhances existing ones to facilitate the contributions of different sectors to help relieve health problems; and c) puts theory into practice through a pilot in Ghana. The...

The Country Opinion Survey in Tajikistan assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Tajikistan perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia,...

This handbook has been developed to provide instruction on the design and implementation of incentives for resource-efficiency purposes. The target audience is World Bank staff and stakeholders who are supporting the implementation of a resource-efficiency program in a country on behalf of the...

Reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is fundamental to the mitigation of climate change. It has become increasingly important to estimate and report on GHG emissions to enable the implementation of mitigation measures to limit or reduce total emissions. In most cases, such estimation is...