With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), world leaders made a bold pledge in 2015 to leave no one behind on the path of development by 2030. Half-way to the target date, some 22 countries…

Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah, Christoph Lakner, Umar Serajuddin |

Pakistan’s economy is now facing one of its worst crises. Poor policy choices combined with a series of shocks—COVID-19, the 2022 catastrophic floods, and adverse global conditions—have caused …

Najy Benhassine, Martin Raiser |

The scale of the climate challenge facing South Asia is immense. Average temperatures have risen by 1 °C since pre-industrial times, leading to more scorching heatwaves across India and Pakistan.…

Abhas Jha |

As we marked World Poverty Day on October 17th, a blog published recently by World Bank staff highlights that poverty has finally receded to pre-COVID pandemic levels, which in essence means we…

Nadir Mohammed, Laura Moreno Herrera, Salman Zaidi |

A Year after Pakistan’s Deluge - How community-centric public works are supporting the most vulnerable

Yoko Okura, Jamal Mustafa Shoro |

Economic policies over past years and decades have had negative impacts on living standards, the private sector and the environment, driving a deep crisis that is hitting ordinary Pakistanis…

Tobias Haque |

In 2022, catastrophic floods hit Pakistan, impacting access to education for more than 3.5 million children. A year on, the disruption to education and the lack of focus on learning recovery will…

Freya Perry, Juan D. Barón, Lauren Dahlin |

South Asia, battered by three years of upheaval from the COVID-19 pandemic and spillovers from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, faces a combination of good and bad news for its economies. On the…

Jiemin Ren, Zoe Leiyu Xie |

The availability of satellite data overlaid with household survey data allows for rapid estimates of the extent and severity of the flooding.

Erwin Knippenberg, Mattia Amadio, Nadeem Javaid, Moritz Meyer |

Investments in the early years have been proven to be among the most cost-effective ways of improving life outcomes and reducing inequality of opportunity. The recently-published Pakistan Human…

Amna Ansari, Amer Hasan |