Small, landlocked, and resource-rich Lao PDR has been quietly maintaining its place as one of East Asia and Pacific’s fastest growing economies for nearly 20 years. Since 2000, the average economic growth rate of the country has been nearly 8 percent. This growth has propelled Lao PDR through many positive milestones, including meeting the criteria of Least Developed Country graduation for the first time this year. Meanwhile, poverty declined from 34 percent in 2003, to 23 percent according to most recent data, and incomes for many have risen.
Malaysia’s journey towards becoming a high-income nation will become more meaningful if all Malaysians are given the opportunity to share the benefits of prosperity. Photo: World Bank/Samuel Goh
Since 1992, October 17 has been recognized as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, or more simply, End Poverty Day by the World Bank. It is a day for the world to engage on the progress made and actions needed to end poverty.
To mark this year’s End Poverty Day, the World Bank has released its biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report “Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle”, which documents the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty achieved from 1990 to 2015. In the span of 25 years, the share of people around the world living in extreme poverty line fell from 36% to 10% (from 1.9 billion to 736 million), despite the global population growing from 5 to 7 billion.
Accessto transportation is essential for improving the upward social mobility of low-income communities in Kuala Lumpur, especially residents of low-cost public housing units. (Photo: Samuel Goh/World Bank)
Over the years, Malaysia has demonstrated great improvements in enhancing upward social mobility as the country continues to advance toward becoming a developed nation. However, this success has not been evenly distributed among the population. A 2016 Khazanah Research Institute study found that 24% of children born to low-skilled parents in Malaysia remained low-skilled as adults. Likewise, 46% of children born to parents in the bottom 40% of the national income distribution remained in the bottom 40%.
New settlements in Sleman district post-eruption of Mt. Merapi.
Imagine that you live near one of 127 active volcanoes in Indonesia, threatened by the next eruption that could endanger your family. Imagine that your house stands in one of the most seismically-active zones in the world, or that your family lives in one of the 317 districts with high risks of flooding. This is a reality that at least 110 million Indonesians already face, and more could be affected due to the impacts of urbanization, climate change and land subsidence.
The country is known as having a ‘supermarket’ of disaster hazards. Over the past twenty years alone, the Indonesian government recorded over 24,000 disaster events that caused 190,500 fatalities, displaced almost 37 million people, and damaged over 4.3 million houses. The combined losses of these disasters totaled almost $28 billion, or around 0.3% of national GDP annually.
It is an unfortunate but fact of life that Indonesia often deals with the impacts of natural disasters. It was sadly evident again this week when I arrived in Jakarta to the unfolding disaster caused by the earthquake in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. My condolences go out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives.
While scientists are reluctant to say a specific natural disaster is caused by climate change, they say a changing climate is resulting in more extreme events around the world. That’s why at International Finance Corporation (IFC), the largest global organization working with the private sector in emerging markets, finding new avenues for climate financing is a key priority.
Green bonds offer a pathway. The world is witnessing a rapid growth in green bonds, dramatically increasing the flow of capital to green projects and bringing new financiers into the climate smart investment space.
As an urban dweller in Beijing, a rapidly modernizing city, my daily life would look like a science-fiction movie for people from just a few decades ago. I use my mobile phone to buy groceries, pay for meals, take photos, access the subway, and find my way to unknown places.
