Planning for the economic recovery from COVID-19: A sustainability checklist for policymaker

Factoring in sustainability in the broadest sense means also including longer-term criteria: decarbonization, long-lasting resilience and adaptive capacity, the impact on physical, natural and human capital, among others. To provide this more granular guidance for policymakers, the World Bank has developed a draft of a sustainability checklist that government ministries can use to assess or rank stimulus proposals. The checklist essentially raises questions that governments should consider to assess projects and zero in on the most promising. Many governments already have sophisticated decision protocols in place, so this should be seen as complementary guidance, part of our contribution to the ongoing discussions on sustainable recovery pathways. Available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Arabic.