As climate change intensifies, the danger posed by heatwaves is increasing every year. In 2015, thousands were killed in India and Pakistan, and in 2022, the death toll reached tens of thousands in Europe. Despite this, heatwaves often receive limited attention from humanitarians, emergency response agencies, and policymakers at large.

Approximately 1 billion people around the world are served by healthcare facilities without reliable electricity access or with no electricity access at all. The electrification of such facilities is a crucial requirement for achieving universal health coverage.

This edition of the Macro Poverty Outlooks periodical contains country-by-country forecasts and overviews for GDP, fiscal, debt and poverty indicators for the developing countries of the South Asia region.

This report focuses on the role of key stakeholders (policy makers, waste management practitioners, civil society, informal workers’ organizations, and the private sector) in contributing to pollution reduction in South Asia while also enhancing livelihood prospects for informal waste workers—the most vulnerable of whom tend to be women.

At just under 6 percent, South Asia is expected to grow faster than any other developing country region this year—but slower than its pre-pandemic pace and not fast enough to meet its development goals. The region faces many risks to this outlook, including due to fragile fiscal positions created by high government debt.

Universal access to affordable clean energy continues to be a challenge across the globe. Women’s and marginalised groups’ access to clean energy services and green technologies remains constrained by intersectional social factors and gender-blind policies.

This report provides evidence-based guidance on cost-effective and energy-efficient cooling and ventilation interventions to improve building-level thermal comfort and indoor air quality for a changing climate in South Asia.

South Asia is home to 9 of the world's 10 cities with the worst air pollution. Concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in some of the region's most densely populated and poor areas are up to 20 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers healthy (5 micrograms per cubic meter).

As global plastic waste continues to grow, the global community is coalescing to reduce plastic waste. Some stakeholders are also exploring new options to use plastic waste as partial substitute for raw material.

This paper estimates the effects of gradually introducing a US$25/ton CO2-equivalent carbon tax in South Asian economies using the Climate Policy Assessment Tool (CPAT).

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