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...

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,...

This paper is designed to provide comprehensive details on the carbon markets across the major Asian economies and with specific attention to the Chinese carbon market. We particularly discuss the carbon markets across the major northeast (the People's Republic of China [PRC], Japan, and the...

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...

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...

The study explores the dimensions of energy insecurity on small islands in terms of heavy dependence on fossil fuels and the challenges involved in improving efficiency and renewable energy capacity to enhance energy security in the electricity system. Although all inhabited islands in the...

This study investigates the long-run cross-economy dynamics in energy productivity across the world. We construct a data set comprising value-added and energy use data on 18 productive sectors in 47 economies over the period 2000-2015. First, we analyze the cross-economy distribution of energy...

This paper examines several aspects of the rehabilitation and reconstruction program that followed the 2004 tsunami in Asia. Almost 230,000 people died in the disaster. We focus on two main issues: aid delivery and reconstruction policy following the disaster. Although issues such as immediate...

A review of the academic literature on the topic has proved that most studies have been focused on how to finance the risk and indemnify the damages caused by an earthquake, rather than on mitigation measures. This study assessed the impact of quality infrastructure, development indicators and...