This paper explores two propositions regarding international river basins: cooperative development of international rivers offers unique economic advantages over unilateral development; and benefit sharing is a necessary condition for facilitating this cooperation.
Geography coupled with high levels of poverty and population density has rendered South Asia especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The impacts of climate change in the form of higher temperatures, more variable precipitation, and more extreme weather events are already felt in South Asia.
Policy makers in India recognize the importance of well-functioning markets to agricultural growth, food security, and broad-based rural development. Markets facilitate the commercialization and diversification of farming, and they are essential for efficiently bringing food and agricultural products to domestic and international consumers.
Ensuring food security in the face of rapidly rising food prices requires a combination of effective safety nets and improving agricultural productivity. Adjusting to higher fuel prices will require again effective safety nets plus a combination of efficient energy use and diversification away from traditional fossil fuels.
The scale of investment needed to slow greenhouse gas emissions is larger than governments can manage through transfers. Therefore, climate change policies rely heavily on markets and private capital. This is especially true in the case of the Kyoto Protocol with its provisions for trade and investment in joint projects.
Doing Business 2009 is the sixth in a series of annual reports investigating regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 181 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time.
Climate change is a serious environmental challenge that could undermine the drive for sustainable development. Since the industrial revolution, the mean surface temperature of earth has increased an average of 1degree celsius per century due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
