West Africa has unprecedented opportunities for agricultural growth, but making the most of them will require more effective regional integration, says a new report by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The role of the transport sector in achieving climate change and sustainable development action is indispensable. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) can be an alternative financing source for sustainable transport.

When the international negotiations take center stage in Paris this December in the hopes of reaching an agreement to rein in climate change beginning in 2020, negotiators will be able to draw on the lessons learned in the voluntary carbon markets, according to a new report from Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace.

The vision of the Policy is to transform Kerala into a vibrant entrepreneurial society through inclusive, eco-friendly and sustainable economic growth.

Agriculture and agro-industry are important sectors in the economies of most developing countries, where they provide the main source of livelihoods for the majority of the poor. The lack of a sustainable supply of affordable energy is a major constraint to the development of these sectors in developing countries.

The first full-year budget of the National Democratic Alliance government announced a sharp focus on investment, growth and social security. In addition, Budget 2015-16 claims to have given a boost to cooperative federalism. The budget indeed makes numerous impressive-sounding announcements, but stumbles in the details. This article focuses on the attention-grabbing push for investments and finds that the target of Rs 70,000 crore investment may be over-ambitious.

The deaths in Chhattisgarh during a state-sponsored family planning camp held in November 2014 show, yet again, that the lack of checklists and an ad hoc style of functioning can and does result in disaster. This article explains the need for standardisation and protocols in key government processes and talks about the pathetic conditions in which medicines and surgical supplies are procured in public hospitals as well as the failure of state agencies to detect and prohibit sale of substandard drugs.

Lok Sabha on 4 March 2015 passed the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill, 2015. This bill will replace the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) second ordinance, 2014. The bill has provisions for allocation of coal mines through a transparent bidding process i.e e-auction.

In spite of significant progress made in tuberculosis (TB) control, nine million people developed TB disease in 2013, and 1.5 million died of TB. While implementation of the Stop TB (DOTS) Strategy has cured millions of patients with TB, and undoubtedly saved lives, the impact of this strategy on reducing TB incidence has been disappointing. The TB epidemic is declining at the rate of 1.5 per cent per year, much slower than what mathematical models had predicted. At the current rate of decline, TB elimination by 2050 is considered impossible. (Editorial)

The middle-income trap is a situation in which middle-income countries face a slowdown of growth.

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