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 …
for readers who came in late into the climate change debate (and have not been reading their previous issues of Down To Earth carefully enough), here is a recap on the equity principle that developing countries such as India and China have asked for in the climate convention (regular readers …
A significant source of urban air pollution is the combustion of fuels by power plants, industrial boilers, residential stoves and vehicles. A World Bank study in 1998 assessed the magnitude of various damages from this. This method of analysis was applied to six large cities in different countries: Bangkok, Thailand; …
in a crowded corner of the busy corridors at the venue for round four of the climate negotiations in Buenos Aires, a ballot box was being crammed with votes. This was an
Forest issues often concern large amounts of money, long time frames, huge areas of land and diverse livelihoods. This report draws the main findings from a series of six country studies from Costa Rica, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe and from a review of international policy initiatives. …
THE bonhomous speeches of welcome were hardly over when sparks began to fly at the fourth conference of parties (cop-4) to the climate change convention, which met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the first half of November. Delegates from developing countries bristled when the president of the conference, the Argentine …
What do you think of the US insistence on voluntary com- mitments from developing countries? It is not for us (industrialised countries) to question non-annex I (developing countries) commitments. We have to make sure that our commitments are respected, and translated into domestic policies and action. we must not forget …
THIS is the time when paeans are being sung about the "poverty economist" Amartya Sen because of the Nobel Prize for economics. It is, therefore, probably churlish for an Indian to point out his grave shortcomings. But I have chosen to do so because there could not be a better …
If a team of US researchers at Cornell University, New York are to be believed. 40 per cent of all deaths world-wide is due to environmental pollution. Global warming could worsen this scenario, they say. David Pimentel and 11 graduate students investigated the relationship. Between increasing pollution levels and' population …
The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 1998 Nobel prize for economics to Amartya Sen. Sen's pioneering work in measuring poverty and inequality and probing the reasons for the economic famines in the Third World countries won him the esteemed pri2e. He became the sixth Indian to win a …
IMMUNOLOGISTS believe that because of the low levels of hormone called leptin, millions of malnourished people in the developing world become victims of infectious disease. Their study, if proved correct, may save lives of the starving millions. "There are 180 million malnourished children in the world. That's three times the …
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Earth was home to some 1.6 billion people. Towards the end of the century, more than six billion people crowd our planet. This year, international organisations such as the World Health Organisation, Population Reference Bureau and the United Nations Population Division calculated …
Fuel made from plants may soon provide cheap energy to the rural areas in developing countries. The alternative is a result of the research which has found a method to generate concentrated gas from farm waste. Robert Brown of the Center for Coal and Environment at the Iowa State University …
MAKE WATER EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS JUST suppose for a moment, howsoever impossible it may sound: the state just disappears one day. There is nobody to supply you with piped water. What will you do? Even the idea sounds preposterous at the end of the 20th century. But less than 150 years …
Rainwater harvesting started in the country in 1989 as a part of an income-generating programme assisted by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Under the programme, some 500 storage tanks with capacities between two cubic metre (m3) and 10 m3 were built in the Capiz Province. The project involved building …
Rooftop catchments and cisterns have met the water needs of many small Caribbean islands for over three centuries. More than 500,000 people depend on such systems of water storage. In Saint Lucia, storage systems include 200-litre steel drums, large polyethylene plastic tanks with a capacity of 1,300*2,300 litres, and underground …
Thailand is one of the world's leading rainwater harvesting nations. The National Jar Programme was launched to supply clean drinking water to rural areas under the United Nations Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990). It was aimed at catching rainwater in jars. Since the programme was started, there has been …
Captured rainwater has regenerated degraded lands in Kenya. Eroded grazing areas have been rejuvenated by building mini-catchments using a 'pitting and ridging technique' known as katumani. This is accompanied by re-seeding of native grasses and legumes. Pits are dug at the top of an eroded slope below a cut-off drain, …
Builder R Jeyakumar's technique is simple and cost-effective. The areas surrounding building complexes in Chennai are cemented. The rain water is allowed to flow on to the road. The first step, says Jeyakumar, is to prevent this run-off by two to three-inch-high kerbs near the gates. To collect the run-off, …
At Besant Nagar, Chennai, each Sunday morning sees a middle-aged man on a door-to-door campaign distributing pamphlets and talking spiritedly. Meet Sekhar Raghavan, a lone warrior fighting for a cause. Even at 50 and a PhD in physics, he painstakingly explains the merits of rainwater harvesting (RWH) to anyone witling …
