The world is experiencing a historic convergence of increasing demand for natural resources from emerging economies, prices at record levels across various commodity groups, a downward trend in resource supply, serious trends of ecological instability, and the rise of inequality between those...

The recently released Rural Poverty Report 2011 (IFAD, 2010) notes that some 1.4 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on less than US$1.25 a day and that more than two-thirds reside in rural areas of developing countries. That climate variability and change...

The focus of the development policy discourse now seems firmly fixed on ?inclusiveness?; as both process and outcome. This is clear from the focus of the UN Secretary General?s Agenda for 2011, the discussions at Davos in January 2011 and the focus of the 2011 UNDP Human Development Report on...

Two critical megatrends are of central importance in implementing the green economy agenda launched at the recent Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development: the rise of emerging economies across the South, and the global challenges of resource security and ecological change. At the converging...

Human development in small island development states (SIDS) has been steady and measured as high. The Caribbean, on average, ranks higher than the Pacific on the Human Development Index (HDI): Barbados is ranked at 37, and St. Kitts and Nevis at 50, compared to Samoa at 94 and Fiji at 108 (UNDP,...

At the London G20 Summit, participants reaffirmed their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to increasing official development assistance (ODA). This aid will be important in helping the poorest countries meet the MDGs that were agreed before the crisis, but it will...

In the remarkable expansion of anti-poverty transfer programmes in developing countries in the last decade, human development income transfer programmes, popularly known as conditional cash transfers, have played a very significant role. Their corefeature combines income transfers to households...

One Pager No. 218 ? The Old-age Allowance Programme in Bangladesh: Challenges and Lessons By Sharifa Begum, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) and Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, HelpAge International, East Asia Pacific Regional Development Centre The Old-age Allowance Programme of...

One Pager No. 217 ? The Challenges of the Old-age Allowance System in Thailand By Worawet Suwanrada, College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University and Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, HelpAge International, East Asia Pacific Regional Development Centre The old-age allowance system in Thailand...

During the last decade the role of social protection has been strengthened in the international debate on development. Inspired by various concrete examples of social policies in the Americas and elsewhere, the model of ?inclusive growth? has developed. Social protection is no longer seen onlyas...