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 …
WESTERN NGOs and media built up certain myths about the South in the run-up to Rio. These perceptions then clouded the visions of numerous Northern negotiators. Myth: Rio is suffering from a North-South conflict and this will contribute to its failure. Reality: In reality, the North-South conflict was secondary to …
• THIS IS how the paragraph in Agenda 21 text came to Rio: "To facilitate and support the effective implementation of the non-legally binding authoritative statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests, adopted by the UNCED, and on …
WITH THE biodiversity and climate treaties fully negotiated and ready for signature, it was obvious that the Rio conference would have had to confront the contentious issue of the forest convention proposed by the North. A last-minute insertion of fresh sentences into the text of the Agenda 21 -- the …
THOUGH no commitments have as yet been made by industrialised countries to reduce &rbon; emissions, car manufacturers in the West are already gearing themselves up for renewable and cleaner technologies in the near future. The European Community is pushing for stabilisation of carbon emissions by the year 2000. In Germany, …
MONEY for sustainable development in the developing countries was the only nut which UNCED could not crack. Two years of intense negotiations concluded in Rio with the South getting very little in hand. The UNCED secretariat had estimated that developing countries would need US $125 billion worth of international assistance …
• Pesticides manufacturer Monsanto is testing genetically-engineered cotton resistant to the deadly bellworm. The cotton contains genes from a natural ly-occurri ng bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the bollworm. • Hundreds of wind turbines produced by the Japanese corporation, Mitsubishi, are now being used on one of the largest …
THE SOUTH had a two-point agenda in Rio: funds and technology. It failed to get both. The North continued to insist that technology is a private resource which states cannot give away, whereas the South continued to ask for technology on preferential and concessional terms. If there was any movement …
During the protracted negotiations on the Agenda 21 chapter dealing with changing consumption patterns, a strong bid was made by certain northern delegations to underscore the significance of the link between unsustainable consumption and environment. In the last prepcom in New York, the US had even wanted to delete the …
RIO ESTABLISHED that the fight over biodiversity is intensely commercial. Worried about its billion-dollar biotechnology industry, the US refused to sign the biodiversity convention which, by the end of the conference, had been signed by over 150 countries. And it rejected the southern demand for a legally-binding code of conduct …
THE CONFERENCE has just ratified the Earth Charter, the name of which has been changed to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development at the behest of developing countries. This puts environment before industrialisation, lays down the responsibilities of developed and developing nations and stresses that development has to be …
June 1 Confusion reigns on the eve of the 12-day summit -- the biggest gathering of world leaders ever. Delegates start arriving to a spruced up city. A 35,000 strong security force has swept the city clean of the beggars, urchins and vendors who swarm the streets. Rio, possibly the …
THE RECENTLY-concluded Rio conference commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm. The Stockholm Conference was a watershed in the international environmenial movement - it put environmental issues on the international agenda for the first time. It was Sweden which had first …
THOUGH the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was finally accepted unanimously, Tommy Koh of Singapore, chairperson of UNCED's main committee, had to resort to a lot of jugglery to effect the compromise in the face of repeated threats from the US and other delegations. The Rio declaration is a …
THIS YEAR, US President George Bush announced that US $1.4 billion is to be made available in 1993 to the US Global Change Research Programme (USGCRP), which will lead to a massive increase in humankind's understanding of the earth's atomosphere. As a part of the programme, a network of remote …
Our position is that USA is the biggest culprit in the world. ---Environment minister Kamal Nath on the eve of his departure to Rio We cannot permit the extreme in the environmental movement to shut down the United States. We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going …
• Human beings are at the centre of sustainable development. •States have the sovereign right to exploit their own resources. • The right to development must be so fulfilled as to meet the needs of present and future generations. • Poverty eradication is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. • …
WHAT DIRECTIONS are science and technology going to take now that UNCED has put environment on the political agenda? Though they were not very much in the spotlight, many scientists were present in Rio to stress that while the development of science and technology has been held responsible for the …
ENVIRONMENT has emerged as a major concern for the world community. And rightly so, since the global environment is affected by the actions of different countries. The theme has several dimensions: from saving the ozone layer to protecting biodiversity; from trade in hazardous wastes to managing tropical forests. Discussions on …
WEN LIAN TING, Malayasia's permanent representative to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), won the epithet of "dragon lady" during the Rio summit for her unwavering opposition to the forest convention. The tough UNCED prepcom meetings, spread over a period of two years, required enormous mental and physical stamina, which …
THE RECENT environmental carnival at Rio was an extremely enlightening and educative experience for me being, perhaps, the largest gathering of NGOs, on the one hand, and that of heads of governments, on the other. There were essentially two parallel events which took place in the first half of June …
