The recurrent global food price spikes in 2008 and 2010 rekindled interest in the use of national food grain stockpiles ('stocks') to enhance food security. They were a commonly used instrument in government responses to these food prices spikes. They were also widely considered as a useful tool...

Central Asia has made much progress in public health and animal health in the last 20 years but was as unprepared as other regions in the world to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The region also faces challenges from other emerging diseases, re-emerging diseases, and climate change. Since...

Major risk factors for NCDs in Samoa include poor nutrition, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity. Addressing all of these risk behaviors requires multisectoral, multilevel action, including efforts to change the currently unhealthy food environment. The food...

An efficient and affordable access to jobs, education and services is considered a fundamental element for development. However, the mobility conditions in the cities have deteriorated because of the increasing motorization and urbanization. The number of new cars that enter the cities every...

The Water and Sanitation Program's (WSP's) Global Scaling up Sanitation Project combines the approaches of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), behavior change communications, and social marketing to generate sanitation demand and strengthen the supply of sanitation products and services at...

After a period of stagnation, the story of hydropower infrastructure is changing. Emerging global dynamics are recasting the role and value of hydropower in development, recognizing its potential contribution to a complex web of energy security, water security and regional development and...

Open defecation is a traditional behavior in rural India. Conventional rural sanitation programs have been based on the assumption that people defecate in the open because they are too poor to afford the cost of constructing a toilet. Therefore, subsidies for upfront capital costs were provided...

Sierra Leone is a post conflict country with a population of 6 million in an area of 71,740 square kilometers. Since the end of hostilities in 2002, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Department for International Development UK (DFID), the...