Though it may not seem obvious, access to clean energy and women’s empowerment especially in the developing world are intrinsically linked. Collecting firewood, for example, can make a woman or girl vulnerable to attack while she’s outside her village searching. …
In Nepal, it’s not unusual for there to be 16-hour electricity blackouts in the dry season. The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) simply cannot meet rising demand. Sadly, no power has been added to the national grid for the past 2 …
Blogging by candlelight seems like a contradiction in terms. But in the city of Kananga – the most Bond villain-sounding of a strong field of Congolese place names – it’s candlelight or nothing. Kananga is a “ville noire” – which …
Economists have a reputation for being sceptical. So much so that there is a book called the Skeptical Economist, and a new book referring to economics as the dismal science. This has a lot to do with our teaching. For …
First of all, let me apologise for the inordinate delay since my last blog on this site. One of my excuses is that during this period DFID India, along with other DFID offices across the world, has been busily engaged …
There might have been 15,000 people in the conference centre for last month's climate change negotiations at Copenhagen, and thousands more stuck in the cold outside trying to get in, but I wasn't one of them. My job was done after …
In my first blog I wrote about climate change and development in rather general terms, and about some of the thinkers who have influenced my understanding of the issue. The comments posted by readers have been impressively detailed and wide-ranging …
Last week I participated in a panel discussion which was part of a premiere launch of the movie ‘The Burning Agenda’. This is a film, produced by Dr Owen Day from the Buccoo Reef Trust and supported by the UK …
Have you heard that water flows one way down the drain in the southern hemisphere and the other way in the northern hemisphere? Is it true? I live 1 degree south of the equator, and when I experimented pouring water in my …
So today it was my turn in the climate change hot seat here at the World Bank in Washington. The highlight of my day was being able to approve an exciting new programme called Scaling-up Renewable Energy (SREP). SREP will focus on …
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