Bhutan continues to face the risk of glacial lake flooding

19 Sep 2014 by Yusuke Taishi

he peace of mind that the project brought to the people living in the valleys below the glacier is immeasurable, but for how much longer? There are more than 20 glacial lakes in Bhutan alone that are considered at risk of outburst, and many more in other nations of the Himalayas. … Read more

Tackling illegal money flows in Asia could bring schools, hospitals and bridges to the poorest

11 Sep 2014 by Elodie Beth

Illicit financial flows (cross-border flows of money that are illegally earned, transferred or utilised) are depriving the poorest economies in the region from vital funds for development. And the consequences of these flows on the sustainability of some of the region’s strongest economies are still largely underestimated. … Read more

How Malaysians could literally be 'driving' the Malayan tiger back from near-extinction

05 Sep 2014 by Hari Ramalu Ragavan

It’s called ‘the spine.’   It’s the ‘The Central Forest Spine’ in all the official paperwork of course. An appropriate mouthful for a formidable five million hectares of wildlife sanctuary that is essentially the green lung and water tower of Peninsular Malaysia. It harbours an incredible array of plant and animal species including the endangered Malayan tiger, (perhaps less than 500 left alive today) largely limited to this sanctuary. The ‘Spine’ is also the source of essential water for over 28 million people including the inhabitants of Singapore. Recognising that the country’s breakneck economic growth was coming at the terrible cost of the long-term viability of the country’s wild spaces and eco-systems, the Malaysian government decided to set up a National Conservation Trust Fund to look for ways to straddle growth with conservation. A powerful idea emerged. A new conservation masterplan would connect patches of fragmented forest across the country into one sustainable whole. Here at UNDP, we’ve been supporting the government to operationalise the masterplan that looks as far into the future as two decades.    The challenge, of course, has been to find ways to finance these efforts. The more we thought about it, the more conviction we found … Read more

Should megacities be shifting their focus to moving people instead of traffic?

01 Sep 2014 by Matthew Viccars

Before we can even dream of reorienting the transport policy to one that focusses on moving people instead of moving vehicles we need to reach a tipping point where enough people have access to public transport that is acceptable to them. Because if anything more than a small percentage of people consider public transport unacceptable such change will not be achievable. … Read more