Strengthening Rural Livelihoods provides a useful and balanced review of the infl uence that mobile phones and the Internet can have on supporting the livelihoods of rural people, and particularly farmers in Asia.

Slums, informal settlements, and dilapidated inner-city tenements are problems that many cities in Asia and the Pacific struggle with while their economies try to modernize and develop.

When governments develop policies, a major limiting factor is availability of sufficient information. Information often does not reach policy makers at the right time or in the form in which it is needed.

Using the experience of five countries in Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam), this report considers whether funding for climate change is being managed in the most effective manner, based on the long history of lessons learnt from
development assistance over the last 60 years. The report suggests