The World Bank - Working for a world free of poverty

Views menu

Syndicate content
Making development work for all

About us

About us

East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Around-the-web finds

World Bank opens largest set of development data --for free and in several languages

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Tue, 2010-04-20 11:55

Big news: the World Bank has launched an open data site with more than 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics. Until now, most of this had been available only to paying subscribers. Not only that, but the site and indicators are also available in French, Spanish, and Arabic --with 330 indicators initially, but set to grow.

For those who need a little background and more info to understand just how big this move is, check out this story (also in Chinese) that explains the potential and impact of making this data free. For data geeks and developers, just dive right in and enjoy.

 

Largest ever World Bank loan to Vietnam signals country's swift path to middle-income status

Submitted by James I Davison on Thu, 2010-01-14 14:45

Last month, Vietnam and the World Bank signed the credit agreement for a loan that is historic for the rapidly developing country. Not only is it the largest ever World Bank loan to Vietnam, but it is also the first from its International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) – meaning the country is a step closer to reaching middle-income status by this year.

A few days earlier, I caught up with Martin Rama, the Bank’s lead economist in Hanoi, and asked him a few questions. In a short video interview (embedded below), Rama explains why this $500 million loan, meant in part to strengthen public investment in Vietnam, is so significant to the country.

"This is a country that has had 20 years of spectacular growth without a substantial increase in inequality – with one of the fastest reductions in poverty that we have ever documented. There is much for Vietnam to be proud of."


  
Read more about the development policy loan to Vietnam here.

Yet-to-be-released online mapping tool could make monitoring deforestation easy as Google

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2010-01-05 20:58

We’ve written before about a climate-related effort in developing countries known as REDD – or Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation. So one of the outcomes during last month’s U.N. climate conference that I found particularly interesting was an announcement from Google.org. During the conference in Copenhagen, the search giant's philanthropic arm introduced the prototype for an online application that will allow monitoring of forests around the planet.

Apparently, some believed that the overall topic of REDD may have been one of the few bright spots during the two-week conference. To me, it seems like this forthcoming online monitoring tool is no exception – particularly because Google products are often innovative, easy to use and reliable.

The announcement generated quite bit of media buzz, and Google.org’s press release has a nice explanation of why the online application, likely available to the public some time this year, might be so significant:

Traditional forest monitoring is complex and expensive, requiring access to large amounts of satellite data, lots of hard drives to hold the data, lots of computers to process the data, and lots of time while you wait for various computations to finish. … Google supplies data, storage, and computing muscle. As a result, you can visualize forest change in fractions of a second over the web, instead of the minutes or hours that traditional offline systems require for such analysis.

 

What does a video about a desert region of China have to do with Niger?

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Wed, 2009-12-16 15:24

A YouTube map that shows where people are when they view the videos. That the video might be of interest to a dry country like Niger – where herding of goats and other livestock is so important – is not so surprising.

A colleague of mine recently sent a link to a group of us showing some photos taken in Inner Mongolia, China, showing the land degradation being suffered there and its impacts.  One of the photos (#16) shows a twisted and broken tree trunk surrounded by sand on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The caption says that the trees were “killed by the moving sands.” I have a different take on it.

The picture shows what is probably a Euphrates Poplar, and I would suggest that the trees were probably killed by its surface roots becoming roasted after herds of goats and other livestock ate the trees' fallen leaves. These leaves would normally act as a natural insulation layer and mulch, and over time quite a number of plants grow in the shade and protection.  With the trees steadily roasted, so the whole area degrades and the sand blows in.  You can see one of the World Bank’s senior agriculturalists, Rick Chisholm, explaining this in the first of my two YouTube videos on Lake Aibi in northwest, Xinjiang, China.  (Go straight to 8m 30s on the time line to see the specific segment).

Poll: Average citizens in China, Vietnam, Indonesia favor action on climate change, even if there are costs

Submitted by James I Davison on Wed, 2009-12-09 17:15

A few days before the start of the U.N. climate conference this week in Copenhagen, the results of an interesting – and very relevant – poll were released by the World Bank. While world leaders and other high-level representatives from more than 190 countries negotiate during the two-week conference (Dec. 7-18), this multi-country survey attempts to give a voice to average people in the developing world.

More than 13,000 people in 15 nations (most of which are developing countries) were asked a variety of questions, including whether climate change should be a concern, its urgency and what their governments should do about it. The poll also gives us a glimpse of what people in some East Asian countries – including Vietnam, China and Indonesia – think about climate change.

Overall, the majority of people polled said they want their government to take steps to fight climate change – even if that means an economic cost to their country. Some of the largest majorities of people who answered this way were in low-income countries, including Vietnam.

Here are a few other interesting findings from East Asian countries included in the survey:

Vote for climate change story to be presented during Copenhagen conference

Submitted by James I Davison on Sun, 2009-12-06 22:48

In a few hours, world leaders and representatives from up to 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the highly anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference, which starts on Monday and lasts for two weeks. While the deluge news reports, blog posts and online conversations on the meetings continue to crop up, one of the most interesting media initiatives of Copenhagen that I’ve seen is are awards for the best in-depth feature and investigative climate change journalism.

The Earth Journalism Awards, which are sponsored in part by the World Bank, started with more than 450 submissions from 100 countries that have been narrowed down to 15 finalists. Anyone with an Internet connection can vote for their favorites. The winning story will be presented to, as the site puts it, “a mixed audience of negotiators, climate change experts, activists and media representatives in Copenhagen on December 14 on the eve of the endgame negotiations.” That seems like a pretty significant prize to a journalist. (Read more about the competition here.)

You have until Dec. 9 to vote through Facebook, Twitter or the awards site. If nothing else, it’s worth checking out the list of finalists, which is made up of a nice collection of stories that cover a range of climate change topics from around the world – including two entries from the East Asia and Pacific region.

China leads rapid growth of online audiences in Asia

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-12-01 14:19

The online population in Asian and Pacific countries grew by 22 percent last year. China led the growth with an incredible 31 percent increase – to 220 million – in total unique Web visitors. These latest numbers of the region’s explosive Internet growth are according to a report, released last month by Internet researcher comScore, measuring online audiences in the region and individual countries between September 2008 and 2009.

The report indicates that Internet audiences in Japan, India and South Korea also saw double-digit growth and that the Asia-Pacific region now has 41 percent – or 441 million people – of the global Internet audience. It’s interesting to see how quickly things have changed since the last time we wrote about an earlier report from comScore.

If you want to examine more of the report’s findings you can see the related press release, or download a presentation on the subject here. (Note: To download the slides, you have to provide them with your name and some contact info.)

I’ve pointed before to World Bank evidence that shows the Internet may lead to improved economic growth, job creation and good governance. What else do you think such increased connectivity could mean for development in the region?

Random Hacks of Kindness: software developers create and share code to tackle disaster relief

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Mon, 2009-11-30 01:06

A bunch of software programmers get together, listen to a list of desired projects formulated by aid, emergency, and development experts that would help tackle issues related to disaster relief, work for two days and the result is eleven applications that will allow users to easily report their status in the event of a disaster, locate family, provide data needed by emergency responders, or that will automatically process aerial images taken by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), among others.

Presentation of the microUAV image registration system (photo courtesy of Todd Huffman under a Creative Commons license).

This is what happened at the first "Random Hacks of Kindness" event in San Francisco, a hackathon that served as the basis of a global community of developers and subject matter experts that will work on development and reconstruction issues. The idea originated at a Crisis Camp barcamp held at the World Bank in Washington DC last May, when representatives from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed that some matters supersede competitive concerns and decided to cooperate and mobilize developer communities to create software that is openly shared with the international community to have a real impact on the field. The Bank led the partnership and it now includes NASA and SecondMuse as well.

Information about NT2 hydropower project in Laos: A Library of Babel? It depends on your point of view

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Mon, 2009-11-23 00:42

In “The Library of Babel,” Borges talks about the infinite nature of information and knowledge, because of its endless combinations. The information the Nam Theun 2 (NT2), the hydropower project in Laos which aims to generate revenues for poverty reduction following principles of social and environmental sustainability, offers a lot of angles—but thankfully, not infinite—from which to see the same piece of information over time.

So in this post I’d like to remind you of some key sources of information, like these websites:

New Google feature lets users quickly search World Bank development data

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-11-17 11:24

If you haven’t already taken the time to do some development-related Googling after last week’s announcement that World Bank statistics are now available through the ubiquitous search engine’s public data tool, I’d suggest exploring the exciting new feature. Now, anyone can easily access 17 World Development Indicators by searching for them in Google. Give it a try by searching for the GDP of China or CO2 emissions of Indonesia or exports of Thailand – or another country and any of these indicators.

When you click on the search result, an interactive chart page shows you how the data have changed over time and allows you to compare to other countries (or the world). (You can also embed the chart, like the one below.) For example, take a look at how the GDP growth rate of China compares to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines in the last 50 years.

To further explore the data, check out another nifty tool, also launched last week by the World Bank. DataFinder lets you research more about these development indicators and see how they look on an interactive map. Read more about DataFinder here.