External debt has proved an albatross around the neck of African nations. At least two thirds of their total debt will have to be written off if they are to revive their economies

LIGHTING offers much scope for improving energy efficiency in Pakistan, according to the country's National Energy Conservation Centre (ENERCON), which says the energy savings potential in lighting

ENVIRONMENTAL NGOs in the US are rushing ahead of their government in both their desire and actions to act as the world's green helmets. A statement issued by the Environment Defence Fund and other

CHINA'S plan to build the Three Gorges dam across the Yangtze river with a 185-m-high reservoir level "would not be an economically viable proposition", according to the World Bank. Probe

Even as annual monsoon floods devastate Bangladesh, a plan formulated by the World Bank to prevent flooding is bogged down in controversy

AS PART of a plan to improve the effectiveness of its lending, the World Bank has raised by 12 per cent the budget for its supervision activities for the current year. To manage projects better,

THERE is more to health policy than just policy for the health sector. But the World Development Report 1993 clearly shows the mandarins -- read health experts -- of the World Bank have trivialised

Medha Patkar, doyenne of the Narmada Bachao Andolan NBA , which opposes the Sardar Sarovar Project SSP on the Narmada river, has won a major battle by getting the Union government to discuss the Rs 13,500 crore dam for the first time ever with her grou

THE GLOBAL Environment Facility (GEF) meeting in Beijing recently marked the beginning of the first year after Rio. And it set the tone for the green world order of tomorrow -- a world in which

THERE are few words in the English language as evocative as population. Most tongues would wag it as something uncontrollable. It also evokes the notion of pressure, of human flotsam spilling over

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