Accumulated knowledge about nature is an important part of people's capacityto manage and conserve the environment. But this ecological knowledge is now being increasingly lost. There have been few cross-cultural and quantitative studies to describe the phenomenon of its loss. Here we show a strong inverse correlation between ecological knowledge and income levels in and among India, Indonesia,...

In terms of economic development, China is widely acclaimed as a miracle economy. Over a period of rapid economic growth, however, China's reputation for health has been slipping. In the 1970s China was a shining example of health development, but no longer. Government and public concerns about health equity have grown. China's health-equity challenges are truly daunting because of a vicious cy...

In earlier debates on economic development, the agricultural sector’s role was somewhat controversial. While dualistic models highlighted the importance of agriculture, the mainstream literature placed a greater emphasis on the creation of a modern industrial sector. Soon agriculture disappeared from the mainstream development literature to re-emerge recently with a variety of multiple-sector g...

This study evaluates the regional and sectoral CO2 emissions estimated by different CO2 emissions accounting methodologies around 2050 under different CO2 reduction scenarios. The production-based measurement of CO2 emissions is based on polluter pays principle, while the consumption-based measurement is based on beneficiary pays principle. In the field of global warming, the widely used method...

This Report is a product of the staff of IFAD and the judgements made herein do not necessarily reflect the views of its Member Countries or the representatives of those Member Countries appointed to its Executive Board. IFAD does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any consequence of their use. Designations employed i...

Some of the global norms, facts and findings on poverty have l ed to two incorrect conclusions: that good progress is being made towards the target of halving global poverty by 2015, and that aggregate economic growth is the best way for reducing it further. The paper questions whether $1 per day is a valid poverty norm, whether poverty trends for China are an enigma; and whether statistical va...