THE TRILLION DOLLAR SHIFT - ACHIEVING THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: BUSINESS FOR GOOD IS GOOD BUSINESS

Author(s)
Marga Hoek

About This Book
Edition: 1st Edition

First Published: 12 January 2018

eBook Published: 12 January 2018

Pub. location: London

Imprint: Routledge

Pages: 432 pages

eBook: ISBN 9781351107280

Subjects: Economics, Finance, Business & Industry, Environment and Sustainability

 

Full Text:

PDF (English) 

WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2018 : LEARNING TO REALIZE EDUCATION'S PROMISE

Every year, the World Bank's World Development Report takes on a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 Report, Learning to Realize Education's Promise, is the first ever devoted entirely to education. Now is an excellent time for it: education has long been critical for human welfare, but is even more so in a time of rapid economic change. The Report explores four main themes. First, education's promise: Education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies - both within and outside the education system. Second, the learning crisis: Despite gains in education access, recent learning assessments show that many young people around the world, especially from poor families, are leaving school unequipped with even the most foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. Third, promising interventions to improve learning: Research from areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, or school management have identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, that teachers are skilled as well as motivated, and that other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, learning at scale: Achieving learning throughout an education system will require more than just scaling up effective interventions. Change requires overcoming technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and being adaptive when implementing programs.

Full Text:

PDF (English)

Citation

“World Bank. 2018. World Development Report 2018 : Learning to Realize Education's Promise. Washington, DC: World Bank. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/28340 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”

WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2017 : GOVERNANCE AND THE LAW

Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.

Full Text:

PDF (English)

Citation

“World Bank Group. 2017. World Development Report 2017 : Governance and the Law. Washington, DC: World Bank. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25880 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”