From transport to health, food to construction and textiles, plastics are among the most abundant materials in our economy. Globally, the plastic industry is valued at USD 600 billion and provides employment to millions of people worldwide. But plastic pollution has become a crisis of monumental proportions, with 8 million tons ending up in oceans annually. Around the world, different regions face unique challenges ranging from community awareness to waste and recycling capacity, to weak stakeholder engagement.

The objective of this programmatic South-South knowledge exchange, “Skilled Teachers, Skilled Nation”, was to support governments in Central Asia (CA) in improving the effectiveness of their investments in teachers. The program organized five knowledge exchange (KE) events from October 2021 to September 2023, where national researchers from the four CA countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) presented the current landscape of teacher policies and practices across the full career lifecycle – selection into initial teacher educatio

Climate Action Peer Exchange (CAPE) is a forum for peer learning, knowledge sharing, and mutual advisory support. It brings together ministers and senior technical specialists from finance ministries across the world, as well as World Bank staff and other international experts, to discuss the fiscal challenges involved in implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) established under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Over 80% of worldwide new coal-fired power plants due to begin operating between now and 2020 will be in middle-income countries in Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Pakistan. Together with the existing plants in operation in these countries, this will lock-in 260 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions over their remaining lifetimes, which would exceed the carbon budget available to the power sector to be consistent with limiting global warming within 2 degrees.

As project teams in Egypt and the West Bank and Gaza prepared to embark on piloting and subsequent scaling up of grievance redress mechanisms (GRMs) in their social safety net projects, this knowledge exchange with the Philippines was designed to enhance the skills of grievance officers and the complaint handling units of each participating ministry.

Challenge

As in many other East Asian countries, the number of people living in poverty in Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam has declined in the past decade. However, persisting poverty in less advantaged geographic areas and ethnic groups is still a challenge. The governments of the three countries were eager to gain practical lessons on innovative Community Driven Development (CDD) models that have been successful in several South Asian countries, such as Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.

As part of its effort to reach carbon neutrality and mitigate against climate change threats, the Government of the Maldives began to modernize its fragmented, inefficient, and carbon-based electricity generation capabilities. While the Maldives realized that better regulation and Renewable Energy and Energy Efficient technologies were needed in the island economy, it lacked the knowledge to establish an efficient regulatory framework and to promote investment in these technologies.

Every year, approximately 10 million migrant workers from the lower-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) head to Russia and other middle-income CIS countries to seek employment and provide a livelihood for their families.¹ Many migrant laborers remit funds to their home countries to support their extended families.

Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are investing heavily in their transport sectors, which will help stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty. But the planning, construction, and management challenges are substantial---especially in the construction of high-grade expressways and tunnels, and in road maintenance---so countries in the South Caucasus region looked to the World Bank for assistance.

Growth in the Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing sector (IT-BPO) can transform a country’s economy and improve the lives of its citizens. No country is a better example than India, which has achieved phenomenal growth in this sector. As of 2010, India could boast of a 64 percent share of globally off-shored IT services and a 37 percent share in IT-enabled services (ITES)¹.  Skills development has been a key driver of that growth.