Environment and Social

Due to the increase in urbanization and industrial development in India, there has been substantial traffic on the existing roads. This impact had increased public demand for good quality roads with better maintenance and high serviceability. Further, catastrophic events like flooding can cause damage to pavements, especially in those with granular base layers and thin asphalt mix surface layers. The degree of damage relies upon the vulnerability of the pavement to the entrance of surface water, the measure of water immersion, and the drainage quality of the pavement. The extensive literature review found limited studies on the post-flood maintenance strategy for low-volume roads by considering flood resilience. In the present scenario of changing climatic conditions, it is necessary to conduct a study on the post-flood maintenance strategy of low-volume rural roads in India. This study focuses on an approach to developing post-flood maintenance and rehabilitation strategies for flood-affected low-volume roads. Ten road stretches adversely affected by the flood were selected to fulfil the aim of the study. The post-flood maintenance strategy was determined based on the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) and deflection-based pavement performance with flood resiliency of pavement materials and budget constraints. The extensive data analysis revealed that the pavement with a cement-treated base or subbase has a longer service life and less Net Present Value (NPV) than all other alternatives. NPV is 30 to 45 for rehabilitation and 52 to 55 for reconstruction, lower than other alternatives considered in the study.

Reducing gender inequality makes economic sense apart from being the right thing to do. Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls
is the fifth sustainable development goal and is a top priority for governments. Countries can achieve this goal if they take appropriate steps. This note is part
of a series that aims to measure the economic cost of gender inequality globally and regionally by examining the impacts of gender inequality in a wide range of areas
and the costs associated with those impacts. Given that gender inequality affects individuals throughout their life, economic costs are measured in terms of losses in
human capital wealth, as opposed to annual losses in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or GDP growth. The note aims to provide a synthesis of the available evidence on successful programs and policies that contribute to gender equality in multiple areas and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The Rural Access Index (RAI) is a measure of access, developed by the World Bank in 2006. It is now the key rural access indicator for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has been incorporated as SDG 9.1.1. This measures the proportion of the rural population living within 2 km of an all-season road, using GIS layers and relying on three data sources: population, road network location and condition.There is potential to use open source GIS data for population and road location, but the most challenging aspect of the RAI is to define the all-season status of the road network.

The World Bank defines the term all-season as ‘a road that is motorable all year round by the prevailing means of rural transport, allowing for occasional interruptions of short duration’. Every country measures its road condition in a different way and against different parameters, for example some countries use visual assessment, some use speed and some use road roughness. Similarly countries use different levels of condition, typically between three and five levels, for example Good, Fair and Poor. This makes finding consistency for the assessment of an all-season road between countries very challenging.

The UKAid funded programme Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) has commissioned research to refine the methodology for assessing SDG 9.1.1 to make it more sustainable, repeatable and consistent by using geospatial data and tools. This is an important aspect of refining the RAI and has been trialled in four countries, Ghana, Malawi, Myanmar and Nepal; selected for their diversity of environment and data. Where existing condition data exists, paved roads have been considered as ‘all-season’ if they are in Good or Fair condition, whereas unpaved roads would need to be in Good condition to be considered as all-season. Whilst this provides an initial coarse estimate of all-season access, it ignores a number of important issues with rural road networks, where for example poor condition paved roads and fair condition unpaved roads could provide all-season access, which could significantly affect the measurement of RAI.

TRL have developed a method of using ‘Accessibility Factors’ to determine the allseason status of road networks, using GIS tools. These factors are applied to the population and network location layers and substitute the need to measure the road condition, which can be an onerous and expensive process for low income countries.

Building on these materials, this report describes a suite of techniques and methods to use to incorporate resilience into transport investment appraisals. The costs to improve resilience relate to the additional infrastructure (capital and maintenance) costs and may be estimated as with any infrastructure investment. Accordingly, the focus of this work is on techniques and methods related to the benefits of resilience.

This Note provides guidance on identifying, assessing and managing the risks of adverse social and environmental impacts that are associated with the temporary influx of labor resulting from Banksupported projects. The Note contains guiding principles and recommendations to be considered as part of the design and implementation of projects with civil works that require labor from outside the project’s area of influence. This Note does not introduce new requirements, but rather seeks to provide concrete guidance on how to approach temporary labor influx within the environmental and social assessment process.

A spatial econometric model is used to link road upgrading to forest clearing and biodiversity loss in the moist tropical forests of Bolivia, Cameroon, and Myanmar. Using 250meter cells, the model estimates the relationship between the rate of forest clearing in a cell and its distance to the urban market, with explicit attention given to road quality and simultaneity, terrain elevation and slope, the agricultural opportunity value of the land, and its legal protection status. Forest clearing is found to be most responsive to the distance to the nearest urban market, especially with
secondary roads with lower typical speeds. Using the estimated forest-clearing response elasticities and a composite biodiversity indicator, an index of expected biodiversity loss from upgrading secondary roads to primary status is computed in each cell. The results identify areas in the three countries where high expected biodiversity losses may warrant additional protection as road upgrading continues. In addition, the results provide ecological risk ratings for individual road corridors that can inform environmentally sensitive infrastructure investment programs.

Excellent guide on how to minimize the negative environmental impacts from road development projects.

Once a road is constructed, it enters into use or operation phase as part of a road network. The road use phase involves management of road maintenance and rehabilitation activities to keep the road functional based on certain approved intervention triggers, maintenance work standards and budget. Road agencies usually have a Pavement Management System (PMS) in place that prioritizes road sections for maintenance and rehabilitation works. This is primarily based on economic indicators.

With the emergence of sustainable development concept to address the climate change phenomena as a principal concern for human sustenance on the earth, consideration to environmental issue like carbon emissions is becoming an internationally agreed requirement. This needs a holistic indicator that can address key road environmental components during the use phase for comparing different maintenance strategies based on Global Warming Potential (GWP).

This paper presents an environmental indicator concept termed as ‘Road Use GHG Factor (RUGF)’, which could be used to calculate life cycle carbon footprint of alternative road maintenance strategies. RUGF provides combined GWP of key use phase environmental components like rolling resistance, albedo and construction materials. The application of RUGF leads to the development of a comprehensive sustainability parameter ‘Road Sustainability Factor (RSF)’ that can accommodate different indicators of sustainability in road project development and management. Incorporation of RSF may help upgrade the PMSs to Sustainable Pavement Management Systems (SPMS).

Report from the World Bank on how to construct and maintain roads in the most environmentally sustainable manner.

This survey reviews the current state of the economic literature, assessing the impact of transport policies on growth, inclusion, and sustainability in a developing country context. The findings are summarized and methodologies are critically
assessed, especially those dealing with endogeneity issues in empirical studies. The specific implementation challenges of transport policies in developing countries are discussed.

The purpose of the Guidance Note is to provide advice to various stakeholders about what is expected in good practice social impact assessment (SIA) and social impact management processes, especially in relation to project development. Project development refers to dams, mines, oil and gas drilling, factories, ports, airports, pipelines, electricity transmission corridors, roads, railway lines and other infrastructure including large-scale agriculture, forestry and aquaculture projects. This Guidance Note builds on IAIA’s (2003) International Principles for Social Impact Assessment. While the International Principles outline the overarching understandings of the SIA field, including the expected values of the profession, this document seeks to provide advice on good practice in the undertaking and appraisal of SIAs and the adaptive management of projects to address the social issues.

Catalog of bio-engineering treatments for use in slope stabilisation.

In an effort to reduce air pollution and congestion, Latin American cities have experimented with different policies to persuade drivers to give up their cars in favour of public transport. This paper looks at two of such policies: the driving restriction program introduced in Mexico-City in November of 1989 –Hoy-No-Circula (HNC)– and the public transport reform carried out in Santiago in February of 2007–Transantiago (TS). Based on hourly concentration records of carbon monoxide, which comes primarily from vehicles exhaust, we find that household responses to both HNC and TS have been ultimately unfortunate –more cars on the road and higher pollution levels– but also remarkably similar in how fast households have adjusted their stock of vehicles, within a year. Another empirical finding is how different short- and long-run effects of the policies can be. In fact, we find that a (permanent) driving restriction like HNC can still be effective in the short-run, say, for a month or two. We also document significant heterogeneity of the effects of the policy across the city. For the case of TS we complement these results with additional evidence coming from gasoline sales, sales of used and new cars, traffic flows, and the price of taxi medallions. A theoretical (bundling) model is also developed to explain the empirical results and to compute policy costs.

Report describing options for applying experiences from Pakistan to Timor Lest for slope stabilisation using bio-engineering.

This guide introduces an approach for infrastructure development and public works in the context of climate change adaptation. It links adaptation with poverty reduction and employment creation. It introduces a local resource-based approach and demonstrates how green jobs can be created through green works.

The Road to Good Health (RTGH) is an educational tool developed by the World Bank’s transport sector to address the increased risk of HIV transmission associated with road development projects. It is designed to help prepare, plan, implement, and monitor behavior change communication initiatives supporting HIV/AIDS reduction efforts on road construction projects financed by the World Bank and our donor partners. The World Bank and many other donors require HIV education to be implemented in association with Bank-funded infrastructure projects in excess of $10 million. 

 A new transportation investment mobilizes many groups, including construction teams, migratory labor forces, managers and supervisors. This increases exposure to HIV to others, such as remote or rural populations that may soon become located along road networks and throughways. Project-affected workers and residents, as well as commercial sex workers that locate themselves in the vicinity of construction camps or are associated with local communities, are the focus of the RTGH Toolkit. This toolkit seeks to complement existing local efforts, collaborating with relevant agencies and partners wherever possible, and is designed to make use of established information, education, communication (IEC) materials. Implementation of the RTGH campaign should proceed in close cooperation with existing activities to become part of the local HIV/AIDS communication strategy

 The RTGH Toolkit employs behavior chance communication (BCC), which is a training approach that utilizes dialogue, consultation, and collaboration between health and transport professionals, local change agents, and the populations targeted by the training. It uses BCC to create a results-based approach to program development, geared towards participation and mobilization of project-affected persons to limit their risk of exposure to HIV.

 The RTGH consists of:

• Volume 1 - The RTGH Toolkit
  • Monitoring and evaluation forms
  • Proposed particular conditions of contract
• Volume 2 - Facilitator's Guide
• Volume 3 - A Guide for World Bank Task Team Leaders

Transport and climate change.

All construction activities interact with the environment and generate potential environmental impacts if unmitigated. Thus, it is necessary to proper manage these construction activities as to minimize the potential environmental impacts. An Environmental Management Plan (EMP) has been prepared specifically to the Project. It is a site specific plan that outlines all the envivonmental requirements for the Project, with focus on the construction phase.

To ensure the EMP is a robust one, it is necessary that all parties, including the contractors, supervision staff and implementation agencies, are fully trained such that the EMP is properly implemented. This report, prepared for the World Bank, provides a general outline of the EMP training.

The source file which can be edited can be downloaded here.

All construction activities interact with the environment and generate potential environmental impacts if unmitigated. Thus, it is necessary to proper manage these construction activities as to minimize the potential environmental impacts. An Environmental Management Plan (EMP) has been prepared specifically to the Project. It is a site specific plan that outlines all the envivonmental requirements for the Project, with focus on the construction phase.

The is a generic EMP which was developed for the World Bank in China. It covers the key issues to be addressed on projects. There is an accompanying generic training guide.

Research paper on how much impact motorization in fast growing economies like China and India have on global warming, and the need to address this issue in a global setting.

The objective of this handbook is to provide a description of practical methods for designing and executing effective environmental assessments (EAs) to those who are involved in various aspects of road projects, from planning to construction to maintenance. This handbook consists of two parts. Part I provides an overview of the EA process in the context of road planning and construction and also describes the detailed methodological steps of the EA process. Part II provides a more detailed, in-depth discussion of each of the major factors involved in environmental assessment of road projects, including impact mitigation. Each chapter covers one component of the environment and provides a description of possible impacts, the nature and scale of the impacts, and some practical information on common mitigation options. This is followed in each chapter by a checklist which suggests common ways of minimizing the impacts on the component. Each chapter ends with a list of information sources.