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.

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.

The knowledge exchange supported under the South-South Facility, was undertaken between Bangladesh:  Social Development Foundation, the implementing agency of the World Bank Nuton Jibon Livelihood Project (NJLP) and India:  Kerala State’s National Rural Livelihood Mission (Kudumbashree).

The development goal of this knowledge exchange was to improve the bridge construction and maintenance practices in Nepal across the following themes:

• Construction quality
• Technology applied
• Climate resilience

Many Sahel countries in Africa are expected to nearly double their population by 2030 due to high fertility rates. Meanwhile, since 1970 in Bangladesh, which has a similar religious context and other shared development challenges as the Sahel, the fertility rate declined from 6.3 to 2.3 births per woman and the rate of contraceptive users increased from 7% to 62.4% in 2011.

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.

Yemen successfully provides electricity to urban areas, but many rural areas remain underserved. Although the Government of Yemen (GOY) had outlined a rural electrification plan, it lacked clarity on how to create, operate, and supervise the new nationwide Rural Electric Service Provider (RESP) . The GOY also lacked experience starting and managing rural electric cooperatives and implementing a rural-grid tariff system.

The Internet has become an integral part of the delivery of quality education nearly worldwide, except in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal that lack easy, cost-effective Internet access. Wanting to address this academic isolation and improve higher education, these four countries approached the World Bank for help. In response, the World Bank organized a South-South Knowledge Exchange with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam to share information on how to establish and manage National Research and Education Networks (NRENs).