Sustainability and Infrastructure


Lasting poverty reduction requires sustainable natural resource management as well as infrastructure development. This research program encompasses energy, environment, land, agriculture, water, climate change, biodiversity, and urbanization.

Featured Research

LATEST WORKING PAPERS

Deterring Industrial Vessels from African Coastal Fisheries
Aishwarya Agarwal and Gabriel Englander
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11222, September 2025

Using Remotely Sensed Data to Assess War-Induced Damage to Agricultural Cultivation: Evidence from Ukraine
Klaus DeiningerDaniel Ayalew, Nataliia Kussul, Guido Lemoine, Andrii Shelestov, and Leonid Shumilo
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11221, September 2025

Economics of Household Cooking Using Electricity in Nepal
Sunil Malla, Govinda R. Timilsina, and Martin P. Heger
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11157, June 2025

Yield Gains from Balancing Fertilizer Use: Evidence from Eastern India
Julian Arteaga, and Klaus Deininger
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11134, May 2025

Certified to Stay? Long-Run Experimental Evidence on Land Formalization and Widows’ Tenure Security in Benin
Ioana Botea, Markus Goldstein, Kenneth Houngbedji, Florence Kondylis, Michael O’Sullivan, and Harris Selod
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11102, April 2025

Capitalizing on Digital Transformation to Enhance the Effectiveness of Property Institutions: Conceptual Background and Evidence from 85 Countries
Klaus Deininger, Thea Hilhorst, Jaap Zevenbergen, and Emmanuel Nkurunziza
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11100, April 2025

This section highlights a few recent working papers. For a full list of working papers, please see: More Working Papers


LATEST JOURNAL ARTICLES

Conserving Wildlife through Demand Reduction and Supply Alternatives: Two Experiments in Restaurants in Kinshasa
Abdoulaye Cisse, Gabriel Englander, and Daniel Ingram
People and Nature, Forthcoming

Matching Frictions and Distorted Beliefs: Evidence from a Job Fair Experiment
Girum Abebe, Stefano Caria, Marcel Fafchamps, Paolo Falco, Simon Franklin, Simon Quinn, and Forhad Shilpi
The Economic Journal, vol. 135, October 2025

Making the Most of Coresident Data: Credible Evidence on Intergenerational Mobility with Sibling Correlation
Ahsan, Md Nazmul, M. Shahe Emran, Hanchen Jiang, and Forhad Shilpi
Journal of Development Economics, vol. 176, September 2025

Decentralized markets for electricity in low-income countries
Megan Lang
Journal of Public Economics, vol. 247, July 2025

Assessment of War-Induced Agricultural Land Use Changes in Ukraine using Machine Learning applied to Sentinel Satellite Data
Nataliia Kussul, Klaus Deininger, Guido Lemoine, Andrii Shelestov, Hanna Yailimova
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, vol. 140, June 2025

Infrastructure Inequality Across Indian States: Role of Economic, Social, Institutional, and Political Factor
Govinda R. Timilsina, Ranjan Kumar Dash, and Pravakar Sahoo
Asian Development Review, vol. 135, June 2025

Pathways to 30 × 30: Evidence-Based Lessons from Global Case Studies in Biodiversity Conservation
Susmita Dasgupta
, David Wheeler, and Brian Blankespoor
Diversity - Special Issue: Restoring and Conserving Biodiversity: A Global Perspective, vol. 17, June 2025

The role of market frictions in demand for prepaid electricity
Megan Lang
Journal of Development Economics, vol. 175, June 2025

Outward and Upward Construction: A 3D Analysis of the Global Building Stock
Thomas Esch, Klaus Deininger, Remi Jedwab, and Daniela Palacios-Lopez
World Development, vol. 188, April 2025

How can a carbon tax be designed to benefit the poor? An investigation for Ethiopia
Govinda R. Timilsina
, and Samuel Sebsibie
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 213, March 2025

Firm-Level Adaptation to Climate Change in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Ana Goicoechea, Megan Lang
World Bank Research Observer, February 2025

Land Policies and Institutions for Equitable and Resilient Growth in Africa
Klaus Deininger
and Aparajita Goyal
World Bank Research Observer, vol. 40, February 2025


Books and Reports
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    Carbon Pricing Around the World

    Joseph Pryor, Paolo Agnolucci, Carolyn Fischer, Dirk Heine, Mariza Montes de Oca Leon, April 2023
    This book chapter provides an overview of approaches for measuring carbon pricing. It summarizes World Bank indicators for tracking direct carbon pricing, including recent trends, as well as outlining the methodologies and limitations (https://carbonpricingdashboard.worldbank.org/). This chapter appears in the book Data for a Greener World: A Guide for Practitioners and Policymakers.
  • Sumidero Canyon, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico

    Minimizing Ecological Damage from Road Improvement in Tropical Forests: Evidence from Bolivia, Cameroon and Myanmar

    Susmita Dasgupta, David R. Wheeler, 2022
    The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of socio-economic systems globally and exposed the risks that natural capital degradation imposes on human health, economy, and society. This book studies the environmental challenges faced by developing economies in a post-COVID-19 world. This chapter appears in the book Environmental Economics in Developing Countries: Issues and Challenges.
  • A wind turbine in Moldova

    Economics of Renewable Energy: A Comparison of Electricity Production Costs Across Technologies

    Govinda R. Timilsina, Kalim Shah, May 2022
    This chapter appears in the book Oxford Encyclopedia of Environmental Economics. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Environmental Economics focuses on the most important research topics in environmental and natural resource economics, with a treatment of close to 100 different research areas.
  • Vietnam Inter-generational Deaf Education

    Economic Approach to Intergenerational Mobility: Measures, Methods, And Challenges in Developing Countries

    M. Shahe Emran, Forhad Shilpi, March 2022
    Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. This book chapter provides a critical survey and synthesis of the recent economic literature on intergenerational mobility in developing countries, with a focus on data and methodological challenges.
  • Regional Integration

    Energy Subsidies in Russia: Size Impact and Potential for Reform

    Apurva Sanghi, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, December 1, 2021
    This report seeks to understand the size, impacts, and potential for energy subsidy reform in the Russian Federation to inform policymakers as they explore approaches to reducing such subsidies.
  • Image

    Coping with Climate Change in the Sundarbans: Lessons from Multidisciplinary Studies

    Susmita Dasgupta, David Wheeler, Md. Istiak Sobhan, Sunando Bandyopadhyay, Ainun Nishat, and Tapas Paul, November 2020
    Climate change is a major threat to the Sundarbans — the world’s largest remaining contiguous mangrove forest — wetland of international importance, and the surrounding poor communities whose livelihoods depend on its natural resources. This book synthesizes multiyear, multidisciplinary studies that assess the vulnerability of this ecosystem and its neighboring coastal communities and recommend “resilient-smart” adaptation measures. The methods and findings will be of interest to development practitioners, policy makers, and researchers focused on island nations and countries worldwide that feature high density populations and economic activity in low-lying coastal regions vulnerable to sea-level rise.





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