Recommendation 1: Strengthen World Bank’s efforts, including through technical assistance and capacity and institutional building, to develop client country pollution measurement and monitoring systems, especially in countries where such capacity is low. These systems should provide quality data in a transparent and systematic manner and effectively contribute to informing policy makers and the public about pollution priorities, recognizing that efforts to build such monitoring systems are likely to require initial trust fund support, as some client countries may be unable or unwilling to borrow for such purposes.
Recommendation 2: Strengthen the World Bank’s country analytical work on pollution, in particular such analytical work that allows countries to prioritize their pollution concerns based on a country-wide and comprehensive assessment, and deploy such analytical work to cover more countries and target countries more strategically. Ensure more consistent quality of this work. This broader coverage will likely require a dedicated funding for such analytical work and involve a more strategic use of country-level analytical work that prioritizes countries with the greatest health benefits from pollution control. It will also require a more comprehensive integration of the identified pollution priorities in the SCDs and subsequent country strategies.
Recommendation 3: Intensify efforts to scale up and recalibrate the World Bank’s efforts in pollution management to address the most important pollution priorities. In doing so, the specific circumstances of the poor and their exposure to pollution should be considered, including outdoor and indoor air pollution as well as specific pollution threats (for example, lead, mercury, pesticides, chromium or e-waste) when warranted by their potential harm. Integrating pollution aspects more systematically into other sectors, for example, urban transport and energy, would be part of such an approach.
Recommendation 4: Leverage the World Bank Group’s climate change portfolio to better combat local and regional air pollution and other applicable forms of pollution. This will require designing future climate change mitigation interventions (including, for example, investments, lending, policy and ASA work and advisory services) so that they address local and regional air pollution issues.
Recommendation 5: For clients that lack the required knowledge, IFC should strengthen their support to help these clients to better comply with Performance Standards on pollution by offering advisory services. Building on the successful experience of advisory services in energy and resources efficiency, this will require offering such services to those IFC investment clients that lack the technical capacity to meet these standards.
See Chapter 7: Conclusions and Recommendations