The success of the energy transition hinges on strong power utilities that light up homes and powers businesses, playing a crucial role in building modern economies and reversing climate impacts. This session examines current utility performance challenges in Bank client countries and the threats and opportunities to utility performance, and highlights solutions to support utilities in navigating the energy transition. 

In a world challenged by climate change, food insecurity, and conflict, economic inclusion programs are crucial for supporting the poorest and most vulnerable. Our sessions highlight the evidence for economic inclusion programs to create jobs, raise incomes, and build resilience for the most vulnerable

The World Bank is scaling up action under an ‘all of methane’ strategy to accelerate the triple wins of reducing methane emissions - limit global warming in the near term, enhance resilience, and empower livelihoods of the most vulnerable. This session will present recent experiences and best practices from county-led programs focusing on methane abatement in rice production, livestock, waste management, and other sectors. 

This session provides detailed insights into how data is being used to inform decision-making at country level by providing best available data on current and projected climate risks and greater transparency around food and nutrition security challenges.  

Digital solutions are strengthening climate resilience and supporting low-carbon development, from early warning systems to precision agriculture and emergency cash transfers. This Knowledge Café presents opportunities to leverage digital technologies for climate action while also greening the sector.

Efficient cross border payments are essential for commerce and remittances, yet they remain costly, slow, and have limited reach. Recent data highlights the sizeable disparities between advanced and developing economies in terms of costs. Our panel shares effective domestic strategies and discuss the future agenda for improving cross-border payments.

Users across the public and private sectors are actively experimenting with how to best leverage AI to enhance their operations. We highlight examples of impactful work on several problem-driven applications, underscoring the growing significance of AI in operational enhancement.

One-tenth of the world’s population already lives in a country with high or critical water stress. We explore how the Bank Group plans to accelerate transformation of the sector and increase the levels of financing required to meet Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.

Developing countries’ limited capacity to raise revenues through taxes is restricting their ability to invest in priority areas such as health, education, and infrastructure and contributing to mounting public debt. We review recent efforts to reform consumption-based taxes, learn from successful reform experiences, and discuss obstacles to reforms.

Lifting the world’s poor from cooking poverty is an urgent development issue and pivotal to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. We showcase the role clean cooking can play in the energy transition while also providing income-generating opportunities and how developing and integrating planning instruments must be at the center of this process. 

The World Bank Group has over 20 years of experience in assisting clients to monetize their emissions reductions, to help finance broader climate and development goals. Our panel discusses key lessons and experiences from the Bank in creating the right incentives through results-based climate finance to generate marketable high-quality emissions reductions.

Experts from the World Bank, MIGA, and IFC will share recent transformational projects using WBG guarantees that have effectively contributed to private capital mobilization (PCM) in a fiscally sustainable manner. Learn how examples of WBG guarantees and loans leveraging private capital can be replicated across various sectors, such as energy, transport, digital, water, and social infrastructure. 

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains widespread with wide repercussions, including deteriorating physical and mental health, reduced access to education and jobs, and worse human development and economic outcomes for survivors and their children. We share evidence of effective public and private sector approaches in GBV response and prevention, drawing on a 10-year retrospective.  

Experts predict there is an over 50% chance that another pandemic of the magnitude of COVID-19 will hit us within the next 25 years.  We engage the Café audience on topics including what types of investments are needed to get countries to the right level of preparedness, how to measure progress and impact, and how the Pandemic Fund is helping.