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 …
Banning use of virgin habitats or ensuring that bio diverse ecosystems are not lost in the pursuit of bio fuels is well intentioned. However such noble objectives are hard to deliver on the ground. Even if all of the American land under cultivation, today, is used to produce bio fuels, …
Today, with the world already reeling from the initial ravages of climate change, the big question before us is whether we can trust the developed countries that are responsible, in the first instance for bringing the world to the brink of a climate holocaust, to change their unsustainable life styles …
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/home.html THE MIDDLE PATH There are many countries with malnourished and starving people; there are also some with overweight and obese people. This paradox has always dogged humankind. But the situation has assumed alarming proportions of late. With the Third World drawn willy-nilly into a globalization, the poor have become …
The price of food is soaring. The threat of hunger and malnutrition is growing. Millions of the world's most vulnerable people are at risk. An effective and urgent response is needed. The prices of basic staples
When police bring the traffic to an abrupt halt in Raipur, capital of the remote Indian state of Chhattisgarh, drivers know what to expect next. Soon, flashing red lights atop speeding government vehicles come into view. Raman Singh, Chhattisgarh's chief minister, is passing through. Government motorcades are a common sight …
Tata Chemicals, India's leading manufacturer of inorganic chemicals, has firmed up an investment of Rs 750 crore in next three to four years to pursue its foray into ethanol. In the beginning, the company would invest Rs 50 crore for the development of a prototype 30 kilolitres/day sorghum-based ethanol project …
Despite their green intentions, buyers of blended biofuel may not be getting quite what they are paying for. Chris Reddy, an environmental chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, has developed a test which reveals the proportions of biodiesel and conventional diesel in the fuel mix. It works …
A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said on Thursday that he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially worldchanging "fourth-generation fuel' project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference …
Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland …
Increasing energy use, climate change and carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands to produce food crop-based biofuels …
Billed as a green fuel breakthrough in the aviation sector, the world's first flight by a commercial airline partly powered by biofuel touched down in Amsterdam today after a three-hour journey from the Heathrow airport here. Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent …
Billed as a green fuel breakthrough in the aviation sector, the world's first flight by a commercial airline partly powered by biofuel touched down in Amsterdam today after a three-hour journey from Heathrow airport here. Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel …
Some state governments, without waiting for a decision by the group of ministers (GoM) on bio-fuels, headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, have gone ahead with their own programme of large-scale plantation of Jatropha. "We have launched our Jatropha plantation programme taking a cue from the Planning Commission's document, National …
The Hyderabad-based Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) has said that plantation of different tree borne oilseeds in wastelands under different agro-climatic conditions can be taken up for production of bio-fuels. But pests control needs adequate attention. CRIDA has conducted on-farm experimentation in three districts in Andhra Pradesh, namely …
With the government planning to start 20 per cent blending of bio-diesel with diesel, Indian oil companies are fast firming up their bio-diesel ventures. The state-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), for instance, is slated to announce a joint venture with the Government of Chattisgarh shortly to take up large scale …
Western citizens want to use the limited land to produce ethanol rather than food for the poor. Food riots in Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines and Vietnam. Price controls and food rationing in Pakistan and China. Are we back to the Malthusian trap as prices of agricultural and food commodities …
The World Bank, admitting the competition between food and fuel crops for land and water, has asked the national governments to carefully assess economic, environmental, and social benefits and the potential to enhance energy security. In its World Development Report-2008, it said: "The challenge for developing country governments is to …
Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels will do little to cut carbon emissions, and could even increase them because of the extra land the crops will require.
