During the recent food crisis, developing countries responded with a wide variety of policy responses to protect their population. Understanding the policy-making process in developing countries is important to know why such policy responses are made and how various actors and players shape up...

Grassland development serves as an important part of the national sustainable development strategy in China. This paper defines the strategic objectives of grassland development in China based on the national strategy, the current status of grassland development in China and the status of...

Healthy land ecosystems are essential to sustainable development, including food security and improved livelihoods. Yet, their key services have usually been taken for granted and their true value underrated, leading to land degradation becoming a critical global problem. This pattern of...

The high profile of infrastructure and access to related services in the communiqués of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at their annual meetings of 2014 underscores the importance of infrastructure development worldwide. And nowhere is the lack of adequate...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe economic consequences in Southern Africa, resulting in an unprecedented decline in production and employment. Similar policy responses have emerged across the region, centred on temporary and inadequate relief for workers and businesses; very limited fiscal...

Rising standards for accurately inferring the impact of development projects has not been matched by equivalently rigorous procedures for guiding decisions about whether and how similar results might be expected elsewhere. These 'external validity' concerns are especially pressing for 'complex'...

Advanced materials hold significant potential to create better products and production processes. Yet realising their promise remains challenging: historically it has taken 15 to 20 years from discovery to deployment of new materials in products. Consequently, governments have been creating...

Dynamic performance stubs provide a framework to simulate the performance behavior of software modules and functions. Hence, they can be used as an extension to software performance engineering methodologies. The methodology of dynamic performance stubs targets to gain oriented performance...