Economy & Trade

Muslim Women in India’s Workforce: Where Are They?

Muslims are the largest minority community in India, and yet, they are highly underrepresented both in public and private institutions. According to a study conducted by the Economic Times Intelligence Group in 2015, Muslims constituted approximately 2.7 percent of mid to senior executives in the private sector. As of April 2018, only 1.33 percent of officers in the central government, holding the rank of joint secretary and above, were found to be Muslims. 

Kenya’s Huge Railway Project Is Causing Environmental Damage. Here’s How

Kenya is constructing a railway line that connects the coastal port of Mombasa and the interior of the country. It is expected to terminate at Malaba, a town on the border with Uganda, and link up with other railways that are being built in East Africa. It’s locally known as the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).

To Prevent Teenage Pregnancies in Sub Saharan Africa, It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child

By Guy Dinmore
Honorine Meda is 23. Cycling through her hometown of Dissin, in Burkina Faso’s verdant southwest, she smiles, waves and stops to chat with one of the girls she counsels.

Golden Rice: Triumph for Science

By Paul Teng
After almost two decades, Golden Rice was approved last week by the Philippines authorities for use as food. This together with the approval of the bioengineered Bt eggplant represents a landmark victory of science over misinformation; it will provide consumers with improved nutrition (Golden Rice) and safer food (Bt eggplant).

Stepping Up to Meet Low-Income Countries’ Pandemic Recovery Needs

By Christian Mumssen and Seán Nolan
Low-income countries have been hard hit by the pandemic. Their large financing needs are only likely to grow as they deal with the crisis and its economic aftermath.

Protecting Plants Will Protect People and the Planet

By Barbara Wells
Back-to-back droughts followed by plagues of locusts have pushed over a million people in southern Madagascar to the brink of starvation in recent months. In the worst famine in half a century, villagers have sold their possessions and are eating the locusts, raw cactus fruits, and wild leaves to survive.

Beware UN Food Systems Summit Trojan Horse

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Undoubtedly, the world needs to reform existing food systems to better serve humanity and sustainable development. But the United Nations World Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) must be consistent with UN-led multilateralism. For the first time ever, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a partnership of some of the world’s most powerful corporations, is partnering the UN in launching the Summit, now scheduled for September, with its ‘Pre-Summit’ beginning today.

Rwandan Farmers Pin Hopes on New Tech to Tackle Food Losses

By Aimable Twahirwa
Rwanda is trying to reduce post-harvest loss by relying on new technologies to increase the amount of food available for consumption and help smallholder farmers confront some challenges caused by the overproduction of staple crops.

European Duplicity Undermines Anti-Pandemic Efforts

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Despite facing the world’s worst pandemic of the last century, rich countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) have blocked efforts to enable more affordable access to the means to fight the pandemic.

Why is the UK Government Turning off the Tap During a Global Pandemic?

By Tanvi Bhatkal and Lyla Mehta
The UK government’s decision to reduce its Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5% -- a cut of around £4 billion this year -- was confirmed last week by a majority of 35 votes in a House of Commons vote.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Mining Proposal Faces Many Hurdles

By Edgardo Ayala
That a country like El Salvador, poor and with many social needs, would embark on an effort to attract so-called bitcoin mining, which demands a huge amount of energy and does not generate large numbers of jobs, is an extravagance that many find hard to digest.

Cleantech Entrepreneurs Driving a Green Recovery in Barbados

By Borbala Csete and Andrea Eras Almeida
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Eastern Caribbean island nation, famed for its beautiful landscapes, pristine white-sand beaches and temperate climate, attracted around a million tourists each year.

Caribbean aims to Turn Foul-smelling, Enviro Problem Sargassum Seaweed into High-Value Products

By Jewel Fraser
A regular visitor to the islands of the Caribbean has become a dreaded nuisance over the past ten years. The sargassum seaweed that typically washes ashore now arrives each year in overwhelming, extraordinary amounts for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Rich Country Hypocrisy Exposed by Vaccine Inequities

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
‘No one is protected from the global pandemic until everyone is’ has become a popular mantra. But vaccine apartheid worldwide, due to rich countries’ policies, has made COVID-19 a developing country pandemic, delaying its end and global economic recovery.

Pacific Islands Making the Move to Electronic Data Collection

Between 2010 and 2020, many Pacific Islands and Territories have updated their traditional data collection processes, embracing new technologies. The island nations Kiribati and Vanuatu, among others, successfully switched to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), a new data management system and a survey monitoring dashboard. The innovations implemented with support from the Pacific Community helped to weather the impact of the pandemic on census activities and to become fit for the purpose of tracking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Combating COVID-19 and Ensuring No One is Left Behind

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Kanni Wignaraja, and Bambang Susantono
If the world wants to beat back the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure no one is left behind in the recovery, two issues thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic need attention: digitalization and regional cooperation.

Nothing About Us, Without Us, Asian Youth Tell Parliamentarians

By IPS Correspondent
Youth advocates from Asian countries called for an overhaul of a system that excluded young people from participation in policymaking. During an interaction with parliamentarians from 23 countries, youth representatives considered an enabling political framework to be the most crucial reform required to remove inequities.

“The Critical Importance of Ecosystem Restoration”

By Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
June 2021 marked the launch of UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration. This effort aims at reversing the damage that us humans have caused and are still causing to Nature. It is clear that we have to reverse course and spare no effort into making this ‘Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’ a success. Preserving Nature and maintaining its services are critical for our survival on this planet and for our livelihoods.

Calls to Halt Construction of Massive Oilfield in One of Africa’s last Wildernesses

By Ed Holt
Wildlife and environmental campaigners have called for international action as concerns grow over a project to create a massive oilfield in one of Africa’s last wildernesses.

Bangladesh’s Indigenous Forest Dwellers Fear Losing Ancestral Land as Officials Grapple with Land Grabs

By Rafiqul Islam
When the Bangladesh Forest Department felled Basanti Rema’s banana orchard, Rema, a Garo indigenous forest-dweller of Madhupur Forest, felt she was living a nightmare. Rema, from Pegmari village in Madhupur, Tangail district, had cultivated the banana plants on half an acre in the Madhupur Forest. But the Forest Department claimed that the land on which the bananas were cultivated belonged to the department. 

Prioritising Menstrual Health and Hygiene During Emergencies

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed accelerated action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This has also led to significant interest in menstrual health and hygiene management (MHHM) as a critical factor in girls’ education and women’s participation in many spheres of life. 
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