The Mekong River’s natural resources offer large benefits to its populations, but it also attracts the interest of foreign investors. Recently, Chinese firms, banks and government bodies have increasingly invested in large hydropower projects in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region. Due to China’s...

The emergence of China as a global player challenges the pre-existing dominance of the OECD countries and will continue to be a crucial force for global change in coming decades. The implications of China’s rise will be most significant for low- and middle-income countries, but the outcomes...

China and India are heavily dependent on high-carbon fossil fuels. This article elaborates the implications of low-carbon energy transitions in the two countries, which can mitigate their serious contribution to climate change while allowing economic growth. Three modelling case studies are...

Summary Most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries, focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries. Evaluation of the results for Asia of the IPCC/SRES models shows that broad concepts of energy and development, the energy ladder...

About 72 million households in rural India do not have access to electricity and rely primarily on traditional biofuels. This research investigates how rural electrification could be achieved in India using different energy sources and what the effects for climate change mitigation could be. We...

Low carbon development (LCD) is a much used word in development circles today. As such, governments are actively exploring how to achieve their growth targets through a low carbon trajectory or even through a 'carbon neutral' pathway. This is a new area that challenges how development has been...

Climate change adaptation and mitigation need to cut across all poverty reduction efforts, including any post-2015 architecture. However, low carbon development (LCD) debates to date have been mainly about high and middle-income countries. There are good reasons why even the poorest countries...

China’s economic rise has transformed the global economy in a number of manufacturing industries. This paper investigates whether China’s transformative influence extends to the new green economy. Drawing on the debate about how China is driving major economic changes in the world – the...

Over the last three decades, outsourcing has had a big influence on the international division of labour. It is clear that it has been a major reason for the enormous build-up of production capabilities in the developing world, in particular in the export platforms of Asia. However, the...

The global innovation map is changing. Until a few years ago innovation activities were concentrated in the US, Europe and Japan. Not anymore. The rising powers of China, India and Brazil are encroaching on the innovation stronghold of the old powers. This report explores how deep the change...