The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
NARMADAs and, Tehris have been hogging the limelight in India, while a more dramatic and potentially devastating dam on the drawing boards of a neighbouring country - Nepal -has hardly been heard of here. The name of the dam is Arun in, a project designed to be constructed on the …
A RLCENT World Bank report says that 25 dams in India out of the 947 surveyed in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu were found unsafe. They were constructed using data vastly underestimating peak flood flows. Postreview estimates of peak flood values are much higher than the earlier data. …
Pakistani environmentalists in Islamabad are seeing red as the Capital Development Authority (CDA) recklessly strips away tree and vegetation cover. The reason for the ruthless deforestation: the prevalence of respiratory diseases triggered off by an exotic plant in Islamabad. Experts, however, don't buy this explanation. They point out the CDA …
In a serious bid to tackle AIDS, the Union government has launched a Rs 222.6 crore World Bank-assisted plan for the prevention and control of the disease. Part of the funding for the multisectoral programme has come from a $84 million (about Rs 252 crore) soft loan from the WB, …
HUMANS, their thoughts and activities are the source of all Earthly evil and good. The Cold War has had a destabilising effect on many societies, in the short term. Unemployment and poverty are gnawing away at less developed societies, corroding the existing value system. The substantial material progress achieved during …
Following recent disclosures of its newly established projects inspection panel (Down To Earth, November 15, 1994), the World Bank is on the mat again. The panel, established in November 1994 on the insistence of 4 Nepalese NGOs, maintains that Nepal's proposed Arun III dam involves "apparent violations of policy that …
Health care might become a major plank of the World Bank's list of projects. This year, the Bank will lend at least US $60 million for "micro-nutrient projects" in various countries to combat vitamin a, iodine and iron deficiencies. The biggest project, to be funded along with un agencies, is …
The high cost of government-imposed environmental safeguards for the Subarnarekha barrage project in West Bengal's Midnapore district threatens to make the project "unviable". The conditions, laid down by the Union ministry of environment and forests, will hike the project cost from the sanctioned estimate of Rs 226 crore to over …
The World Bank plans to sow "Seeds of Hope" in war-ravaged Rwanda. The Bank wants to launch this initiative to restore agriculture in this impoverished African nation. Rwanda was virtually self-sufficient in food before the civil unrest in 1994, with 91 per cent of the population involved in farming. "But …
A World Bank environmental strategy plan warns that the Middle East and North Africa are heading for an environmental disaster. The report says that a quarter of the Arab World has no access to safe water supplies, while 1/5th of its population lives in cities with "unacceptable levels" of air …
Russia's poor environmental record has come under severe global scrutiny after the Komi oil spill in October, branded third largest in history, and roughly 8 times the volume of the Exxon Valdez spill. Though experts contest the size of the spillage -- ranging from the us Department of Energy's estimate …
THE 12 million-plus population in the one-time Mughal capital of Agra is rather bemused by the brouhaha over the decay of the Taj Mahal. Naturally, while the city in which they live is choked with smog and its streets littered with filth, the preservation of natural heritage is the last …
THE 50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) has certainly not been an auspicious one. Since early this year, these agencies have been ' facing a lot of flak. Environmentalists have constantly accused them of flouting basic environmental norms, and going ahead …
EUROPE's largest remaining wetlands may yet be saved from devastation. The Global Environment Facility has given a $4.5 million grant to Romania to help it preserve the rare flora and fauna of the Danube delta. The greatest threat to the delta comes from the pollutants and waste accumulated by the …
EVEN AS the agitation in the United States, called Fifty Years is Enough, against World Bank (WB) activities continues, it has crossed into India. Here, the movement, started in May 1992, has emerged from the Narmada agitation, and is called the Campaign Against the World Bank and Destructive International Aid …
AFTER dithering for 2 years, the West Bengal government has agreed to restructure its forest administration to increase people's participation in managing forests. The government decision has come under pressure from the World Bank, which in June withheld further disbursement of grants to the Bank-funded, $34-million West Bengal Forestry Project …
FOR some time now, international funding agencies have been at pains to show that they are concerned about the environmental and social aspects of the policies they promote. Very often, such concern is expressed through velvet buzzwords used to cloak the sharp interventions they thrust upon the beneficiaries of their …
THE expansion plans of Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Ltd (TNPL), funded by the World Bank (WB) to the tune of $75 million, has rung alarm bells in environmental quarters. J Paul Bhaskar, chairperson of the Dindigul-based Bhagwati Environment Development Institute (BEDI), has appealed to WB to consider the ecological …
"CARRYING capacity" is likely to be the Catchphrase of the Year. The term is liberally sprinkled throughout State of the World Report 1994, like some sort of mantra. To illustrate "a breach of carrying capacity", the report cites the reintroduction in 1944 of 29 reindeer to St Matthew Island in …
THE World Bank has commended the Chinese government's resettlement record - at "well over 30 million", the world's largest - as a "model" for most types of resettlements. A leaked report, in which the bank reviewed its own resettlement policy, said, "Over the past 40 years, tens of millions of …
