Washington, DC April 11, 2008 Shaida Badiee, Director, World Bank Development Data Group; Eric Swanson, Program Manager, World Bank Development Data Group, and Alan Gelb, Acting Chief Economist MS. TUCK: Hello. Welcome to the press conference to launch the World Development Indicators. Copies of the World Development Indicators are outside and up at the Press Desk, with a lot of good related materials. I am Merrell Tuck, the Senior Communications Officer in the Development Economics Vice Presidency. I want to remind everybody that this report will be embargoed until 12:30, or 1630 GMT. Also, probably most of you are already aware that if you need the headsets, we have Spanish and French available. Spanish is Channel 2, French is Channel 3, and English is Channel 4. This report is an invaluable resource for news stories and for information on development economics and statistics, and it contains numbers on a remarkable range of topics, but I'll leave it to the experts to give you more details on this. Today we are going to hear first from Ms. Shaida Badiee, Director for Development Data, who can give an overview of what is in the World Development Indicators and also speak about related data resources that her team makes available. After that, Mr. Alan Gelb, sitting next to me, the Acting Chief Economist and Senior Vice President in the Development Economics Vice Presidency, will talk about some of the salient topics covered in the WDI, including indicators on things like climate change, governance and poverty. Then, Eric Swanson, who manages the World Bank Program for Global Data Monitoring, will present more detailed WDI findings. Also, this event will be webcast. I think the webcasting is being archived, but it will go live after the embargo lifts. So, without further ado, let me turn it now to Shaida. MS. BADIEE: Thank you, Merrell. I see a lot of familiar faces and assume that you know what the World Development Indicators is, but for those of you who are really not familiar, as Merrell said, what we try to do is bring you a rich source of data and information about the world and development, people, economies and the environment. This year for the package that we have brought to you, of course, we have the WDI book in that lovely green color, spring color; we have a series of Little Data Books which will be made available to you, and today the External Debt version of the Little Data Book is available. We have also prepared some regional background stories for you. And I want to remind you that access to the WDI Online Database is also available to you; this is a rich source of data with 900 more indicators for 40 years of time series data available and is very population. We have about 16 million subscribers to the Online Database which is available to you. And finally, the Helpdesk is a source that you can always call on, not only now but during the year, to respond to any data queries that you have. This year, we have a wide range of data products available to you. As you know, we try to reach out to a lot of researchers, policy decisionmakers, journalists like yourselves, students, and the public at-large. So we try to package the information in a very useful and friendly way, and these are some of the range of data products that are available to you. But they all come from the WDI, so today this WDI is really the source of the information that goes to many of these data products. This year's WDI has a very special feature. We are releasing new data on purchasing power of currencies known as PPPs. The PPP-- basically, a simple definition--is used to convert economic values in one currency to another currency, but unlike exchange rates, it actually takes into account the relative purchasing power of the currencies. They are used in a variety of applications. Researchers, of course, are using them extensively for new applications. But some of the most common applications I have outlined here for you to just get an idea. The World Bank uses it for establishing the poverty lines and comparing standards of living. IMF, as you know, just during this past month has used it in the new quota formula, using PPPs to measure the size of economies. The European Union uses it for allocating structural funds to member states. And you probably know about the UNDP's Human Development Index, which is another application of the PPPs. These PPPs have been produced in this round of 2005 through a very extensive international program called the International Comparison Program. A large number of economies have participated--more countries, in fact, than any of the previous rounds. We have developed new methodologies and new data collections. For the first time,China has participated in the ICP, and India has come back to the program for the first time since 1985. And there have been extensive national and international governments looking over the timeliness and the quality of this information, the PPP data that we have brought to you in this WDI. Just to show you the extent of this program, ICP is labeled as one of the largest international statistical programs. Although we have had it for a number of rounds, in 2005, we had the largest number of economies participating, and each of these economies has actually priced over 1,000 items, which has been used for calculating the regional and global PPPs which you see in the WDI. The other special feature of the WDI, the Overview section, which is Section 1, has a special emphasis on this new data of PPPs that we have just released. Section 2, the People section, has a rich array of human development indicators, and it has a special focus on reproductive health. Section 3 on Environment has a special focus on climate change. Section 4, the Economy, covers a wide range of global economic indicators. Section 5, States and Markets, has a special focus on measuring governance. And, last but not least, Section 6 on Global Links covers a wide range of indicators on economic indicators. I would like now to turn to Alan, who will give us a broad view of the world economy using this new data. Thank you. MR. GELB: Thanks very much, Shaida. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning. Let me just talk briefly about some particular areas coming out of the WDI that I think are valuable in looking at the world and the state of development. First of all, on the use of the purchasing power parities that Shaida mentioned, one is that when we use PPPs to look at the true size of the world economy and the relative shares of developing and developed countries, we see that developing countries are growing more rapidly, and clearly, if we weight them by PPP, the aggregate world economy will be growing more rapidly than at market exchange rate. So this tells us something about the actual level of economic activity in the world. I think it is interesting that between 2000 and 2006, the share of developing countries in PPP increased from 35 percent to 41 percent of the global economy, so the developing economies are rapidly becoming a very significant part of the overall global economy, particularly in real PPP terms. Once we have a measure of the real output of an economy, then it helps us to monitor its use of real resources--for example, energy and its use of the global commons, for example, emissions of carbon dioxide. For example, one question we might ask is how fuel-efficient are developing countries relative to industrial countries. If we use exchange rates to measure PPPs, developing countries are only 30 percent as efficient as high-income countries in their use of energy. But if we take PPPs, it turns out they are at least twice as efficient in terms of the use of energy, at least 60 or perhaps 70 percent. The same is true if we measure emissions. So this gives you again a picture of the relative energy intensity of different economies. Secondly, a couple of comments on poverty estimates. We are still fine-tuning the global estimates of poverty trends using the new PPP data. This will take some time, because it requires going back and recalibrating at the international poverty line level country by county, but we do have some sense of how trends will play out. One point is that the recalibration of PPP levels is still going to keep the overall measured trend very similar to what it was before, we believe. The countries on track to halve poverty are going to stay on this track, and the 2005 numbers will show at the end of the day when we have them in that there are around one billion people living in absolute poverty in the developing world. The PPP recalibration again does not directly change the estimated rate of poverty reduction; it is simply a recalibration in terms of country-by-country levels at the international purchasing power level. We are also slightly adjusting the global line for extreme poverty. Currently, it is $1.08 a day in 1993 prices, and the new poverty line will be a little bit higher at about $1.20 a day in 2005 prices, but we still call it "a dollar a day" for colloquial purposes. There are a number of other topics in the WDI that I think are very interesting which you might want to look at. Section 2, for example, opens with a special report on reproductive health. At the 2005 meetings of heads-of-state, the United Nations added a target to the Millennium Development goals of universal access to reproductive health. This is very important for meeting the goal of improving maternal mortality. Women in low-income countries have a one in 40 chance of dying of pregnancy-related causes. Women in high-income countries have only a one in 6,700 chance. This gives you an idea--one in 40 versus one in 6,700--of just how different these probabilities are between developing and high-income countries. Section 3 of the report complements this year's Global Monitoring Report with a survey of climate change indicators. And even with greater energy efficiency, economic growth and population growth are driving up energy use. So there is a picture of this in the current report. Developing countries with poor adaptive capacity, inadequate social protection, and lack of reliable climate information are of course particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. The amount of assistance available for climate adaptation is still modest. To compare, for example, in June of 2007, donors to the Global Environment Facility pledged $220 million for climate change, and the Netherlands alone has spent at least $2.2 billion for flood protection. There are expensive programs there if countries wish to protect against climate change. In this year's WDI, another topic that is addressed is the topic of governance. This year's WDI includes an essay on the problems of measuring governance and on the ways in which this is done. As you know, governance, which we can define as the way that public officials and institutions acquire and exercise authority, is a very contentious issue. Is there one standard for governance measurement, or are there many standards? How do we measure the quality of governance, and whom should we ask? As we have looked across various studies, we have identified at least 140 sets of publicly-available governance indicators with thousands of individual indicators, and they measure many different things, and even when they attempt to measure the same things, they don't always agree exactly. So the introduction to Section 5 discusses recent efforts to improve on measures of governance and suggests ways to move forward. In the WDI, you'll find more than 40 indicators which are commonly used to monitor governance and many others that help to measure the performance of governments and their effects on people on the ground. So, those are some of the areas I think you may find interesting in the WDI. Let me turn over to Eric Swanson to provide a few more examples from the WDI. Thank you very much. MR. SWANSON: Thank you, Alan. So now, we get the kind of traditional WDI picture show. I'm going to try to expand on a few of the points that Alan has made about the role of developing economies in the world and their impact on the world around them. In this first slide, we are looking at the gross domestic product of the developing regions of the world. As a reminder, the World Bank views the world in six regions, but the countries in each of these regions are those that are classified as either low- or middle-income economies. That means that at the very highest level, they have an annual income per person of less than $11,000 per year, and at the lowest end, it may be closer to $300 per year. As Alan mentioned, they become a much more important force in the world, and we can see in this slide the rapid growth particularly in East Asia, but substantial growth also in South Asia has increased their share of the world economy dramatically over the last decade. Developing economies now exceed $24 trillion in output. And just on the East Asia side, the combined economies produce $8 trillion worth of goods and services. In the next few slides, I want to draw out some of the implications of this and then, at the end, there will be a quiz. One of the consequences of growth is that more energy is needed to support this. In this chart, we are looking at electricity production in the developing regions, and you see the enormous increase particularly in East Asia, where electricity production has risen to 3 trillion kilowatt hours, and that is a 280 percent increase since 1990. China was the main contributor. It now produces 2.5 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity. Now, electricity may be a clean fuel by itself, but no matter how it is produced, whether from fossil fuels, from nuclear fuels or through hydropower, it has an impact on the environment. In China, for example, coal generates almost 80 percent of the electricity, and coal is the cheapest and dirtiest source of energy in the world; it contributes enormously to global warming. It is also interesting to note that Europe and Central Asia has actually had a little decrease in electricity production. This reflects the general downturn during the transition period in Europe and Central Asia. But energy use is now on the rise there as well. Energy efficiency, as Alan said, is an important measure of the impact that our activities have on the world, and it is important to measure it accurately, in this case using PPP gross domestic product. So what we are looking at is the amount of GDP, the output of the economy, for each kilogram of oil used. We can see the increase in energy efficiency that has taken place over the last decade. That is the dark green bar on the top. That represents the increase in output for every kilogram of oil equivalent used. There are big increases in Europe and Central Asia where they have shut down many old, inefficient factories and are also fortunately shifting over from coal to gas and other cleaner sources of energy. Notice also that measured at purchasing power parties, Latin America produces more GDP per each unit of energy than any other region, including the high-income economies, which are shown on that graph. But increased efficiency by itself is not going to solve the climate change problem. Population growth and economic growth are going to continue to increase demand for energy and for all the fuels needed to produce energy from them. On top of that, we should not forget that 1.6 billion people in the world still lack access to an electrical connection in their house, and along with electricity, many of them also lack clean fuels for heating and cooking, they lack access to safe water or to sanitation. Reaching this population will require enormous investments in infrastructure in the coming decades and will also place increased demand on energy and other resources. This chart shows the average GDP per person. Before, we looked at total GDP; now we are looking at the average GDP produced per person, again measured at purchasing power parity in each region. And that bar hanging up there in the sky above is the average for high-income economies--$33,700 for every person living in a high-income economy. The message from the WDI data is that development is happening, economies are growing, and people are healthier, but we are also beginning to face enormous challenges for sustainable and inclusive growth. Here, we see the large gap that remains in average income. The average income of the wealthiest developing region, Europe and Central Asia, which includes a number of economies that have joined or are in the process of joining the European Union and some that are very close to graduating, as we say around here, to high-income status, even that region still produces only 30 percent of the income per person that the rich countries of Western Europe, North America, and Asia and the Middle East produce. And the average incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa are far less--5 percent of the incomes of the rich countries. It is not just disparities between regions that are important to us, though. It is also disparities that exist between people living in those regions. This graph shows us the proportion of income or consumption that goes to the richest 20 percent of the population--that is the tall, light green bars--and the proportion going to the poorest 20 percent of the population, the very short, dark green bars. By this measure, Sub-Saharan Africa is the most unequal region, followed closely by Latin America and the Caribbean. That might seem like a surprising result. How can such a poor region as Sub-Saharan Africa also be the most unequal? To understand that better, we need to look a little deeper into the data. This chart appears in the World View section of the WDI. The dark green shows the contribution to inequality between countries--that is, differences between the average income of countries. Notice in Africa that almost half of the measured inequality is because of differences between countries. Sub-Saharan Africa contains some very, very poor countries, but it also includes some, like Botswana and South Africa, and now some emerging new oil producers like Equatorial Guinea, that are relatively well-off. So there is a lot of difference in income between countries, less difference within each country. When we go to Latin America, though, or even South Asia and the high-income economies, we find the opposite--that the inequality arises within the countries. We are not just concerned about inequality in income. We are concerned about inequality in all aspects of development, and inequality has its impacts there. This is a chart showing the proportion of women receiving prenatal care during pregnancy. That is one of the new indicators that has been added to the Millennium Development Goals as part of the target for providing access to reproductive health for all. And we need to be concerned about this, because first of all, we know that the average levels of care that are received in developing countries are low, but also because it is the poorest who suffer the most. They are the ones who are less likely to receive care during pregnancy or after pregnancy. They are also less likely to have access to other important services such as education and the basic necessities of human life. Now, the WDI, as everybody has said so far, contains lots of facts and figures. We have actually summarized some of them in the handout outside that you may find interesting. But here are a few more that I thought I would leave you with. You might not have realized that 91 percent of the males in the world--I should say this is actually male youth between 15 and 24--are literate, and 84 percent of the females. That is very good news, because if you are going to have literacy as adults, you have to have literacy as young adults. Eighty percent of all children are now immunized against measles. Surprisingly, the highest labor force participation rate I could find anywhere in the world, including all the high-income countries, is in Burundi, where 93 percent of the women are measured as participating in the labor force; the lowest, West Bank and Gaza. And I might have thought that the United States had more passenger vehicles per person than anyplace else in the world, but it turns out that it is New Zealand. Here are a few more. Maybe you can guess the answer, maybe you can't. The country with the highest proportion of agricultural land--well, once again, it turns out it is Burundi. This one is easier if you think about it--the smallest proportion of agricultural land. Singapore--a small island that spends most of its time doing things other than agriculture. In fact, it will be the answer to the next question right here. The most export-oriented economy in the world is again Singapore, which puts through its ports the equivalent of 250 percent of its GDP every year. The least export-oriented is Eritrea, a small, landlocked East African country; only 8 percent of GDP. This is one of our basic measures of integration into the world economy, and I think you can understand why. Singapore, highly integrated; Eritrea, barely touching the world. The greatest proportion of internet users--guesses? Netherlands has overtaken the rest of the world. And the smallest proportion--we don't have data on North Korea, so you might have been right--but of the places we can measure--and that is always a little hedge here--Iraq, with barely one-tenth of one percent. Closer to home for the World Bank, the country with the lowest debt service ratio--and let me remind you that low debt service ratios generally are a very good thing--is Cambodia, where just less than one percent of its exports are tangled up in debt. And the country with the highest debt service ratio, the one that has the biggest payments in proportion to its capacity to export, is Uruguay. So I'm going to leave you there. I have one final slide. I think you'll find this interesting. When we measure the world at gross national income, what are the 12 largest economies in 2006? These are values shown in trillions of dollars. The United States is the largest economy, producing $13.2 trillion worth of goods and services; but China is number 2, and India is number 4, so we have two developing countries in the top 5, and we have 3 more in the top 12. So we see again the growth of the developing world and its movement into the global economy, and I think that will be a theme that we will find repeated in WDIs to come. Thank you very much. MS. TUCK: Thank you very much, Eric. This was fascinating. I want to promise everyone that we'll make some copies of these PowerPoint slides and make them available afterward, because it is just an extraordinary amount of interesting information. Now let's open it to questions. Just introduce yourself and your media organization before you start your question. And I believe there are roving mikes. I'm not 100 percent sure about that, but there should be--yes. Yes? QUESTION: I am Tanya Snyder with Pacifica Radio. I have a question about World Bank funding for energy projects. There has been tremendous pressure on the World Bank to stop fossil fuel funding. I know that at this point, 80 to 90 percent of energy funding by the World Bank is in oil and gas, about 6 percent is renewables. With the potential for the World Bank to really be an advocate and a promoter of sustainable energy technologies and renewable energy, why is the World Bank still investing in fossil fuels? Certainly the justification is that it is to increase energy access in the developing world. The criticism is that it is actually to increase profits for energy companies. MS. TUCK: Alan, do you want to take a stab at that, and then, if Eric or Shaida want to any anything. MR. GELB: I think that particularly some of the developing countries face a very difficult tradeoff between development and energy needs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, to take one example, in all the surveys that we do of firms where we try to ask what are the factors that prevent economies from moving forward, you will find that energy is coming out as the top constraint, I would say, right across East Africa, in countries in West Africa as well, and even very recently in South Africa. So, some of these countries have some very difficult tradeoffs. We have been increasing our funding of renewables. We work with countries to try to get the most, if you like, environmentally-friendly energy. We do look at this, and for example, in the Central African region, we have done studies looking at how countries can work together to increase energy supply and energy security at reasonable cost and also reduce the environment footprint of energy. And one conclusion you get from that is that countries can do much more if they work together than if they work singly. So these are things that are very high on our agenda, but the fact is that for some of these countries, the power just doesn't go on, and I suspect that in some cases, there is no alternative but some use of fossil fuels even if they do emit carbon in terms of enabling them to grow to provide employment and to raise living standards. I think this is the hard truth of the matter. MS. TUCK: Eric, I don't know if you have anything to add. MR. SWANSON: I don't have anything to add certainly to what Alan said, but I would point out that in terms of per capita use of fuels and production of carbon dioxide, the developing countries, the poor countries, are very, very low. It is still a concern, and of course, increasing energy efficiency is important, but I think we need to look at their potential for development first and then ask about the quantity of carbon that they are emitting. MR. GELB: Do you have figures on that? MR. SWANSON: We do have figures on that in the book; you'll find a lot of data on carbon dioxide emissions and fuel use across the board for all countries. MS. TUCK: I would also suggest that you may want to speak to colleagues at the International Finance Corporation, since that side of the World Bank Group does support investments in energy, and I know that there have been some recent investments that have garnered some attention because they were, say, coal-fired. But you should check with them. Hopefully, these are the cleanest possible coal-fired plant, but I know that that may not be enough or meet the standards that many environmentalists would like us to adhere to. But you may want to follow up with IFC. Okay. Leslely, the next question. QUESTION: Lesley Wroughton from Reuters. I just want to come back to China's new ranking and how that compares to--I know that you had an adjustment in December on the PPP ratio. What has pushed it into the number 2 spot, and if you stand back, what is the significance of this? MS. TUCK: Do you want to try that one for starters, Alan, and then maybe Eric can come in. MR. GELB: Let me just comment on China. This was the first time that China actually participated fully in an international comparison project exercise. There were previous estimates of the size of China's real GDP, but these were very approximate, and they were not done in a comparable way to the countries where there was a full focus. So when the current estimates were made, they revealed that China's economy--you may have seen reports in the press--was 40 percent smaller than previously estimated, but we knew that those previous estimates were very uncertain. The important issue, though, is that they do provide an indication of how much bigger China's economy is in real terms than you would think of it simply at market exchange rates. And this is not something particular to China. It is true for all lower-income countries where typically, they will be much larger when you measure them in terms of the purchasing power of money in their own markets than on international markets. So the ranking of China in PPP terms at number 2 comes from that calculation of putting China at PPP. I don't know if Shaida and Eric want to comment more. MR. SWANSON: No. That's exactly right. It would look smaller if we were using exchange rates to convert its whole production into U.S. dollars, but we feel that the PPPs provide a more accurate picture of the real value of goods and services that are produced in China, and that's why it winds up as number 2 in the world. QUESTION: And then, if you can just comment on what this really means for its influence in the global economy, not only for that, but its standing everywhere else, just generally. MR. SWANSON: There are a lot of implications. One of them is that it helps us to see that the domestic market in China is really much larger than people might have thought when they were looking at the exchange rate data. And of course, China will continue to have a vast domestic market that it produces for, but it also, I think, suggests to other participants in the world economy that China is not just a producer of goods but also a vast potential market. MS. TUCK: Next question--yes, right here. QUESTION: Thank you. Frederick Addison, African Insight Newspaper. My question is how aggressively do you market or distribute these books. My past experience is that the Bank invests a lot of resources to come up with such good material, but it barely leaves the premises of the Bank. MS. TUCK: Okay. MR. GELB: This is one for you, Merrell. MR. SWANSON: That one's for Shaida. MS. TUCK: Well, I can attempt to answer part of that question. First of all, there is online access to the World Development Indicators and the database, which I'm going to let Shaida mention a bit more, and we have quite an extraordinary number of users of that. So there are ways of accessing the information online, but that's certainly not going to help some of the poorest countries where they cannot access it. The World Bank has in recent years expanded its Public Information Centers--it has these Public Information Centers in over 140 countries--and there, we do make the World Development Indicators available. However, the challenge really is ensuring that this information gets out probably to a wider and more popular audience so that people have a real sense of statistics globally and how developing countries measure up to richer nations. But let me turn to Shaida and Eric, who may have more to add about how we get the word out on this. MS. BADIEE: Well, the short answer is we try to do our best. But I think you put your finger on a very right question of do we reach out to as many audiences are we should. I think our goals--we have been improving it quite a bit. We have 16 million subscribers from all developing and developed countries, but of course, still mostly developed countries access our information. What we are trying to do is reach out to more of the developing country users. One of the products that has been very successful is the Atlas that we have developed, and the goal is that every school will have a copy of the Atlas, particularly in Africa. So we are doing our best, but I also want to ask you to help us and try to reach out to more people, to the public at-large, and also to decisionmakers, to use this evidence better. MR. SWANSON: I think one more thing to add is that the Bank has been developing an extensive program in support for increasing the statistical capacity in developing countries, and we should never fail to mention that many of the data in this book arise in the countries themselves, come out of their national statistical systems. So what we are trying to do is to improve those systems not only to produce more data and better-quality data but also to make it available to their own citizens right at home. MS. TUCK: Next question. Yes, sir, here in the white shirt. QUESTION: Peter Thompson, World Press Center. Just as curiosity--why is Latin America energy-efficient? MR. SWANSON: Well, I'm not an engineer. And this is one of the good things about data. It raises questions that you now need to pursue. The simple answer is that when we measure the size of total output in GDP as in PPPs, it is large relative to what we measure as their total energy usage. Why that is true, to be honest, I don't know. MS. TUCK: I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Alan. MR. GELB: I don't know, either, but it could be something to do with the nature of the structure of the economies. Certain sectors tend to be very energy-intensive, and it could be something relating to the sectoral balance of Latin American economies versus, say, economies in other parts of the world, perhaps economies where very energy-intensive construction or mining sectors are more. I don't know the answer, but it could be something like that. MS. TUCK: Okay. Next question. Alicia, please. QUESTION: Alicia Salgado, El Financiero Newspaper in Mexico. Could you please explain to me the difference between the statistics of 1(a) and the statistics of 1.1, between size of the economy, because there is a difference in PPP gross national income on page 1.1 and 1(a). For example, in the case of Mexico, if you use 1(a), it is ranking on 11 positions in the world, and Brazil is at 10, but if you look at the next one, it is on 14 positions, and Brazil is 11. So it changes, and it is the same measure. MR. SWANSON: Yes. Thank you. And I realize it is also difficult in the back of this room to even read numbers in this book; there is not much light out there. But you are quite right. There are differences between Table 1(a), which is the special table near the front of the book that she is referring to, and Table 1.1, which is the first of the main tables in the WDI. Table 1(a) is a summary of the results that came directly out of the International Comparison Program, and they are also for the year 2005, because that was the year the program was conducted. The data in Table 1.1 are for 2006. We have updated them, because in the rest of the book so far as possible, we have tried to present 2006 data which are generally the most recent data that we can obtain anywhere. There are a few numbers for 2007 in the book, but not many. So that's the principal reason you are going to find some differences there, and in fact when I was preparing my slides for this presentation, and that last slide that I showed you with the 12 largest economies, I actually had to start rearranging them, because the previous version of it had been based on 2005, and Mexico and Spain, for example, had switched places by then. So the data is dynamic; it keeps changing. MS. TUCK: Okay. Next question. Yes, sir? QUESTION [Interpreted from French]: Jerome Secana. I would like to speak in French if I may. I have just followed with great interest this presentation on the World Development Indicators, and I noted that Sub-Saharan Africa is really the last rung on the ladder. I would like to know more as regards climate change. You spoke of $220 million, I think, which was the envelope you had identified for these studies to be carried out. But when the World Bank looks at these World Development Indicators, I would like to know what the World Bank has in mind in terms of action to take within the poorest populations. Let's take a case-in-point, the poorest population in the mouth of the Congo, in the water basin of the Congo, where the poorest live and who are, we know, very, very negative in terms of impact on the environment; and yet we know that that part of the world and indeed the Amazon region are the two "lungs," if I may say, that really allow the world to breathe. So, what is the Bank doing, I am wondering. And in terms of the impact of the Kyoto Protocol, we know that the U.S., that China, that India, who are the big, big polluters in the game are having that negative impact. What are those economies doing to help us right poverty? Are you doing anything? MS. TUCK: This is an issue of how to help the poorest countries who most need to rely on the environment and who are not contributing as much to global warming, yet it seems that there is a real inequity. You have big polluters like the United States and China, and what will happen post-Kyoto? I know there is a lot of active effort now to look into these issues. But Alan, maybe you want to attempt to answer this. MR. GELB: Thank you. This is a very broad question, and it is difficult in a short answer to give you a sense of how we come out, so let me just make a few points. As Merrell and Eric mentioned, the issue for the poorest countries i | 
