While bringing positive impacts and benefits, cross-border infrastructure projects face additional challenges relative to national projects. Moreover, such projects involve a variety of technical, regulatory, institutional, and legal factors, and their obstacles constrain the development of...

This paper provides estimates of the costs of organic agriculture (OA) programs, and sets them in the context of the costs of attaining the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It analyzes the costs of OA programs in four case studies: Wanzai, PRC; Wuyuan, PRC; Kandy, Sri Lanka; and...

This paper examines financing mechanisms to support infrastructure development and connectivity in Northeast Asia - comprising the Northeastern People's Republic of China, Japan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, and the Russian Far East. Although...

ESG investments have attracted wider attention from both investors and customers worldwide. These investments largely follow a triple-bottom-line approach that combines financial returns with environmental and social norms. The study in this context carries out a detailed assessment of the ESG...

Lack of cooling and cold-chain access is a critical development challenge that has significant implications for people's livelihoods, productivity, health, food, and nutritional security. While business-as-usual demand projections suggest 19 new cooling appliances will be sold every second by...

This paper explores options for mobilizing domestic savings through fintech solutions to scale up sustainable investment. Most developing and emerging economies face an urgent need to scale up sustainable finance for low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure investment, yet underdeveloped...

The current study examines the impact of GVCs on the performance of SMEs in Uva and central provinces of Sri Lanka while recognizing potential local business sectors that can be linked with GVCs. Apart from that, key challenges and main success factors in relation to linking SMEs with GVCs are...

The current study investigated whether tourism-related small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) perform better than non-tourism-related SMEs in the four main coastal tourist destinations - Hikkaduwa, Galle, Mirissa, and Tangalle - in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. The authors used the...

The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and implementation of the Paris Agreement will require significant new investment. New financial technologies ("fintech") offer the potential to unlock green finance technologies, such as blockchain, the Internet of Things and big data,...

The expansion of green renewable energy has been very limited in all the Asian countries, despite their various differences. The contributing factors are numerous, but, the financial factor has been the single major factor determining whether or not a country opts for such energy. This is...