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 …
SCIENCE may have conquered smallpox, but as far as AIDS is concerned, education may be a better weapon. According to WHO estimates, there are 10 million people infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) worldwide. Two-thirds of the infected persons live in developing countries, of which three million are …
DISAPPOINTMENT among green NGOs and irritation among developing countries over the foot-dragging attitude of some developed countries characterised the week-long meeting in Copenhagen of the parties to the so-called Montreal Protocol. But alarming data presented on the state of the ozone layer, which protects life on earth from the sun's …
THE FOURTH Conference of Parties (CoP) to the Montreal Protocol, scheduled for later this month in Copenhagen, promises to be a hot affair. The government of India has prepared a detailed report on its strategy to phase out ozone-depleting substances, in which it has criticised the inequitable nature of the …
NORTHERN donors are being forced to rethink their basics after the Rio conference. Prominent among these are the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with developing countries (SAREC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), both of whom fund research projects in the developing world. Before they can get on with …
TUBERCULOSIS, the number one killer in India -- two million cases of active TB are diagnosed each year -- and the AIDS epidemic are showing a disturbing tendency of coalescing and infecting the same individual (WorldAIDS, No 23). The risk groups of both diseases overlap in many countries in the …
THE PROPOSED establishment of the Commission for Sustainable Development (SDC), hailed as "one of the quiet victories" of the Rio conference, is becoming a source of North-South contention that is expected to peak at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Among the issues to be …
POPULATION growth in developing countries is a horse that is flogged at every international forum. It is a threat to sustainability, because if consumption levels of developed countries are coupled with it, global resource requirements would become exceedingly large. Unhappily, the point that is underplayed is that consumption levels of …
THE NEW US administration of Bill Clinton and Al Gore promises to be environment-friendly. Gore, derided as the "ozone man" by outgoing president George Bush has sound environmental credentials. His book, Earth in the Balance, has been called visionary by some. Others liken it to Hitler's Mein Kampf and they …
US manufacturers are marketing plastic containers that are labelled recyclable but have to be exported on the sly to developing countries for disposal. The environmental group Greenpeace pointed out the American plastics industry thus satisfies its environmentally conscious consumers by presenting a "green" image, while dumping potentially hazardous material in …
IT IS A daring and formidable task to synthesise the insights of social and physical anthropology, physiology, epidemiology, micro-economics and macro-economics. This has been attempted with considerable success in this book by focussing primarily on survival strategies of rural households in "developing" countries in the face of both chronic and …
A MAJOR leap in Indian jurisprudence occurred when Chief Justice P N Bhagwati interpreted the Indian Constitution to mean that Indian citizens have a Right to a clean and healthy environment because without this, the expressly stated Right to Life is meaningless. However, little effort has been made to define …
WHAT DO the Gulf War, Greenhouse effect and the Narmada project have in common? They are all related to energy, an issue that took centre stage in the 1970s. The oil crisis of 19 made the West realise it could no longer take for granted the supply of cheap oil, …
Drink Cafedirect. Give Third World producers a fair deal! Christian Aid, along with other UK charity groups, has launched a two-year campaign to encourage "fair trade" with an assault on the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The plan is to encourage shops to stock "fairly traded" goods, having a …
Basing methodology on global justice N S Jodha THE ESSENCE of the conclusions of the World Resource Institute is aptly reflected in the Gujarati proverb, "What is mine is mine and what is yours is ours." Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain question this conclusion. In the first place, they find …
THE MANAGEMENT of water quality is closely related to almost all human activity and, therefore, is of great concern for all. Wastewater, or water polluted to a degree that is harmful to the environment and useless for human beings, is the result of several natural processes as well as all …
THE SWEDISH city of Malmo has carefully landscaped an area of about 10,000 ha, which functions as a natural stormwater treatment plant. In Malmo, on the southern Swedish coast, several projects involving the natural treatment of stormwater are being implemented. One of them is the Toftanas Project in which stormwater …
The figure shows the elements of a small-scale wastewater treatment system in use at Stensund high school in Sweden. First, a sedimentation tank stores the wastewater produced over two days (1). The water then is led to a soil filtration tank (2) with sulphuric bacteria under anaerobic (non-oxygen) conditions, which …
TRADITIONAL communities developed ingenious ways of making use of wastewater. And, experts involved in the modern science of ecological engineering can learn a great deal from them. There is a growing realisation that the term "wastewater" is a sign of human inability to recognise a valuable resource. Traditional societies throughout …
UN SECRETARY general Boutros Boutros-Ghali's suggestion that the North and South should share equally the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) leadership has failed to enthuse Europeans and Americans. Mustafa Tolba (?), enjoying the support of UNCSD secretary general Maurice Strong, is virtually …
