The city of Kampala has undergone a
period of rapid urbanization that has contributed to the
degradation of the city’s natural environment. The urban
environmental profile for Kampala has been prepared as the
first component of the assignment promoting green urban
development in Africa: enhancing the relationship between
urbanization, environmental assets, and ecosystem services,
a project being conducted under the leadership of the World

This Systematic County Diagnostics is
organized into six parts. The first part presents a brief
overview of the country’s recent socio-political and
economic context. The second part examines the links between
poverty, income distribution and economic growth, through
the labor market, against the background of large changes in
international capital flows and the unfinished structural
reform agenda. The third part, examines the sustainability

This paper develops a novel methodology
to measure the quantity of jobs and value of wages embodied
in exports for a large number of countries and sectors for
intermittent years between 1995 and 2011. The resulting
Labor Content of Exports database allows the examination of
the direct contribution of labor to exports as well as the
indirect contribution via other sectors of the economy for
skilled and unskilled labor. The analysis of the new data

In most countries, the private sector
owns the vast majority of the buildings and a considerable
portion of the infrastructure at risk. However, most
investment in disaster risk management is made by the public
sector, with the private sector lagging far behind. The
situation represents missed opportunities for businesses to
capture not only higher levels of the direct benefits of
disaster risk management, but also a broader set of

Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR)
will be center stage in the global development debate as
leaders from around the world convene in Lima, Peru for the
annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International
Monetary Fund. Critical progress in poverty reduction has
been made in the region over the last decade. The region’s
bottom 40 percent of the population saw growth eclipsing
that seen by the group in every other region in the world.

This technical note discusses the
current status of banking supervision and regulation in
Montenegro in the context of select Basel Core Principles
(BCP). This note has been prepared as part of a Financial
Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) update conducted jointly by
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) in
September 2015. As agreed with the authorities, the FSAP tea

Bhutan’s hydropower generation potential
raises the prospect of tremendous development opportunities
for the country: fast increasing export revenue, sustained
economic growth, and rapid poverty reduction. Driven by
developments in the hydropower sector, the country has grown
at an average rate of 7 percent per year over the last
decade, while poverty has declined remarkably fast. But
hydropower development also creates significant challenges

The urban land policy reforms implemented in Peru since 1996 aimed at the creation of a system able to assure formal rights to real property in large urban settlements. This case study looks at the factors that motivated reform, how the reform process itself was managed, the results, and lessons learned.

Application of Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) to land related projects is
now a widespread phenomenon, through both donor-supported
interventions and autonomous development. Since the
mid-1990s the World Bank has been increasingly involved in
ICT land project implementations. The advantages have proven
substantial in reducing the time required to complete
transactions, improving access to information by the public,

The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015
comes out at a promising time for the continent: for 15
years growth rates have averaged over 5 percent, and rapid
population growth holds the promise of a large emerging
consumer market as well as an unprecedented labor force that
- if leveraged - can provide significant growth
opportunities. Moreover, the expansion of innovative
business models, such as mobile technology services, is

This 2015 index of sustainability
indicators has been prepared in accordance with the
internationally recognized standard for sustainability
reporting Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and
complies with the ‘core option.’ The GRI Index provides an
overview of sustainability considerations within the World
Bank’s lending and analytical services as well as its
day-to-day operations and management of staff. The World

Jordan is an upper middle income country which has proven remarkably resilient despite decades of turmoil in its neighborhood. Even with economic stability in the face of massive shocks, the Jordanian government - reflecting the views of the population - has made clear the need for improvement in the current growth trajectory. Public dissatisfaction coalesced around a perception, which the government acknowledges, that previous reform efforts had struggled with implementation, while discretionary decisions and unequal opportunities remain entrenched.