The goal of providing universal access to electricity and clean cooking facilities has a high price tag. If the usual sources have dried up, could climate finance be the salvation?
Cargill boss loses plot over food speculators
The profits of Cargill, the US agribusiness giant, nosedived in the last quarter. The company blames speculators for distorting food commodities markets. Sound familiar?
Lies, damned lies, and African economic statistics
Shanta Devarajan, World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, has exposed the primitive statistical methodology on which African GDP and poverty figures rely. Interpret statements about growth and poverty reduction with a grain of salt, he advises.
Quantitative monkey business
Development economists increasingly advise donors to give aid directly to the poor. Why does the Bank of England hand out its favours directly to the banks?
Population growth will not wait for US recovery
The eventual resolution of the US 2012 budget for foreign aid is unlikely to show mercy to international NGOs involved with population issues. Meanwhile, the stories of urgent family planning needs in developing countries keep coming.
Indecent Development
Exceptional levels of remittances from migrant workers may explain an apparently sharp improvement in poverty figures in Nepal. But there is a human price to pay for this model of development.
Uganda tears up UN deforestation script
The decision by President Yoweri Museveni to convert one quarter of Uganda’s Mabira Forest into a sugarcane plantation will bolster those environmentalists who argue that UN plans for protecting the world’s forests are fundamentally flawed.
Firewood and the forests
Is the collection of firewood in poor countries is a major driver of deforestation? Differences of opinion need urgent resolution.
Beware the boomerang effect in climate media
Imagine you return from holiday to be confronted with an academic study which concludes that your field of work is having the opposite effect to that intended. Then you notice that the co-author is an assistant professor at the university school whose Dean happens to be the senior member of your board of directors.
Precautionary principle: dead or alive?
Faced with decisions on Hurricane Irene and the Keystone XL pipeline, the US government applies opposite application of the precautionary principle.