As the COVID-19 pandemic spread to communities across the globe, the containment measures taken to curb the impacts by governments have directly and indirectly been socially and economically devastating.  Initially branded as an equalizer for immediate heath impacts, the pandemic has soon proved to bring in stark social and economic inequalities to the most vulnerable. People particularly in developing countries, …

Migrant workers and slumdwellers have received little official help during the pandemic, but are finding their own ways to cope As the months pass from the start of the COVID19 pandemic, the world is on a rapid learning curve about what, and who, really matters. In developed countries, there has been a recognition that often low-paid staff in hospitals, nursing …

#Recover_Better_Together Capacity-building stories from members of the PCCB Network community As asserted by UN Secretary General António Guterres, the recovery from the coronavirus crisis must lead to a better world. Solutions for economic recovery should be responsive to the climate emergency and enable a transition to a global new normal: a greener, fairer, and more sustainable state of the world. …

The Nature vs Development Debate Humanity today is faced with a wide array of challenges. Across the globe, rapid urbanization, overuse of technology, along with mass consumption and production have all led to steady degradation and loss of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides. With climate change becoming increasingly prevalent, we are looking at an alarming rise in …

In the last few weeks, the world has been having to deal with the double emergency of the pandemic as well as climate change, while Bangladesh and West Bengal had to deal with a triple emergency, with super cyclone Amphan hitting us quite badly. Unfortunately, such multiple emergencies are no longer going to be rare going forward. So we need …

Period of Classical Economics Physiocracy is regarded as one of the first schools of modern economic thought, which arose during the late 18th-the late 19th century. It came from the Greek word “physis,” meaning nature, and  “kratia,” i.e. authority.  So it was called the  `government of nature,’ by the French economist/physiocrat Francois Quesnay and his followers. They viewed in nature, …

What is Biodiversity “Biological diversity” is often shortened to “bio-diversity” that has won the central point of development policy debates since decades. The rights and responsibilities for conserving biodiversity have been shaped up with the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is considered as a milestone of natural resources management and environment. The conservation and utilization of …

COVID-19 has changed our world. To mark Earth Day 2020, and the global call to act on climate change, we ask: what lessons can we apply from the pandemic response to help tackle other global crises, including the climate emergency? Both Sheela and I have collaborated with others for many years on how to support the most vulnerable communities in …

More new initiatives, such as the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Locally Led Adaptation Action Track, are beginning to recognise the critical role of poor and marginalised people in tackling the climate emergency. From the Gobeshona conference, Andrew Norton and Saleemul Huq explain why a reimagined climate finance system that gets money into the hands of those people must be high …