Economics & Development

The 2025 IEG evaluation of the FY20–25 FCV Strategy suggests that we need to change to more consistently translate ambitions into operational outcomes and impact in FCV affected countries. The evaluation found that the Strategy provided a comprehensive framework spanning prevention, engagement during conflict, transition support, and mitigation of spillovers, and enabled us to strengthen diagnostics, scale financing, and remain engaged in highly volatile contexts. It noted that our financing significantly increased in support of FCV-affected economies through IDA/IBRD, IFC, and MIGA. The report notes many things that we have done well, which we will continue to do. At the same time, the evaluation highlighted gaps in achieving lasting results, translating improved diagnostics into portfolio adaptation, tracking fragility-related outcomes, and scaling up private sector impact. It also highlighted persistent internal challenges, including with regard to staffing in FCV settings. These lessons inform four strategic shifts under the Strategy, which focus on what we need to do differently: A. Anticipate better; B. Adopt a differentiated approach; C. Deliver as One WBG on the jobs agenda; and D. Enhance the WBG knowledge, operational toolkit, partnerships, and staffing.

Cambodia is facing near-term macroeconomic shocks that unmask deeper structural vulnerabilities. A combination of higher fuel prices, falling remittances following the return of nearly one million migrant workers, and weak domestic credit - stifled by a construction downturn and a lack of bankable projects - is constraining growth to a projected 3.9 percent in 2026, eroding real incomes, and threatening to push over one million people into poverty. Resilient foreign direct investment inflows and adequate international reserves provide near-term buffers, though they cannot substitute for reforms required to unlock long-term growth potential. Adding to this urgency, Cambodia’s working-age population share is projected to peak around 2043, leaving barely 17 years to convert its remaining demographic dividend into higher productivity and better jobs. The policy challenge is therefore twofold: cushion vulnerable households and preserve macro-financial stability now, while accelerating the human-capital, care-economy, trade, and labor-mobility reforms needed to secure Cambodia’s path to high-income status before its demographic window closes. Part 2 of this report, Forever Young? Cambodia’s Demographic Transition and the Road to Vision 2050 - lays out the policy options for Cambodia to turn its youth premium into lasting prosperity.

The development objective of the Emergency Resilient Agriculture for Food Security Project for Haiti is to support project beneficiaries’ access to nutritious food and increase climate- and nutrition-smart agricultural production, including in earthquake-affected areas. The additional financing responds to a worsening and more protracted food security crisis driven by Hurricane Melissa in 2025, persistent insecurity and market disruptions, inflationary pressures, and large-scale internal displacement that are straining vulnerable households and host communities. It is intended to scale up proven, implementation-ready interventions to protect recent gains, expand reach to displacement-affected areas, and strengthen absorptive capacity and resilience. The Bank will work through the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR) and experienced partners, including the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), to: (i) expand school feeding using a Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) approach that sources food from local producer organizations, reinforces food hygiene and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene practices, and strengthens national and departmental governance for school feeding; (ii) scale up labor-intensive public works to clean and repair irrigation canals, rehabilitate rural tracks under MARNDR purview, and construct and repair family cisterns to improve water access and climate resilience; (iii) broaden rapid delivery of agricultural inputs and services aligned with the cropping calendar, including seeds, planting materials, fertilizers, small livestock packages, and support for climate-resilient backyard production for vulnerable and displaced households; and (iv) bolster project management, monitoring and evaluation, and sectoral studies to improve oversight and delivery in an expanded geographic footprint across Nippes, Sud, Grand’Anse, Centre, Ouest, and Nord-Ouest. The project intends to safeguard consumption through school meals, create temporary employment and restore productive rural infrastructure, reduce post-harvest losses, and increase the adoption of climate-smart technologies and the volume of nutritious agri-food production among targeted beneficiaries, with continued tracking of Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) outcomes and coordinated delivery with complementary education and social protection operations and the Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan.

Environmental change in the Amazon is driven by the complex interplay between human activity and climate dynamics. This relationship not only intensifies climate-related processes, such as erratic rainfall patterns and heightened wildfire risks from prolonged droughts, but also directly impacts the livelihoods of Amazonian communities. The resulting threats to the Amazon biome are profound and demand an urgent, coordinated response. Digital technologies have been, and continue to be, critical tools for understanding, predicting, and mitigating these threats. However, realizing their full value requires the presence of critical enabling factors and institutional support. Reliable access to electricity, digital, and data infrastructure is fundamental, enabling the transmission and storage of data captured by devices, its analysis through software, and its delivery in a secure, accessible, and user-friendly format. Additionally, appropriately governing the collection, generation, processing, and use of climate-related data is critical to ensuring that data can be used to their full potential in furtherance of adaptation and mitigation goals. This requires putting in place norms, rules, standards, and institutions to support better access to quality data from different sources and to ensure they are used and shared in a trustworthy and rights-respecting manner. Governing data responsibly may also require regulating how technologies and applications are deployed, especially when they collect or generate sensitive data, for example, through remote monitoring tools. The purpose of this report is to both explore how digital technologies can play a transformative role in monitoring climate change and examine what is required to ensure these solutions are sustainable over time. The report identifies three essential building blocks to unlock the full value of digital innovation solutions for climate monitoring: digital technologies for conservation and sustainable development, infrastructure and connectivity, and data governance. Given the unique enabling environments that need to be considered, these building blocks are not introduced in a specific sequence to follow, as their ability to successfully support conservation efforts relies on their interdependency.