Drawing upon the World Bank's experience in China, as well as the Bank's global knowledge, this report paints an attainable vision for the urban water sector in the year 2020. This vision entails the provision of safe and reliable drinking water for all, comprehensive stormwater drainage, and...

The sustainable development of ger areas in Ulaanbaatar (UB), the capital city of Mongolia, is one of the critical development issues facing the country. The transitions to a market economy and a series of severe winters (called zud) have resulted in the large-scale migration of low-income...

From its creation in the 1990s, the Chilean monitoring and evaluation (M and E) system has represented a substantial part of the effort to improve the use of Chile's public resources within a broader context of multiple initiatives designed to modernize and improve public management in many...

Events of the past decade have underscored the vital need for social safety net (SSN) programs in all countries, especially in times of crisis. Many countries have some form of targeted SSN program, especially in high- and middle-income countries, but SSNs are increasingly spreading to the...

A series of global initiatives have been launched over the last decade by the international community to accelerate progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals. These initiatives entailed commitments to provide more aid and efforts to strengthen aid effectiveness. They culminated in...

The way countries finance health care influences how well a health system performs and achieves its expected outcomes, including how equitable and efficient it is. Countries decide how to mobilize revenues from different sources for financing health care, how to pool revenues in public and...