In recent years, scarcity and pollution of water have become the paramount environmental woe in China. Numerous reports and books have exposed China's water crisis, depicting a nation suffering in the face of black-running rivers and dried-up waterways. Nationwide, the per capita availability of fresh water is only one-quarter of the world average.
But a new regulation from the nation's water authority may hold the key to achieving water sustainability in this thirsty country. The Interim Meas more...

Transnational Corporations, Extractive Industries and Development is the focus of this year's report published by UNCTAD.

This report, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development in September 2005, focuses on foreign investment contracts between investors and governments. The terms of these deals have major implications for whether investment projects bring real benefits for the people and environments where they take place, or whether they undermine sustainable development. Based on investigations into a broad group of foreign investment projects, the authors highlight concerns about t more...

Japan will support developing countries in Asia and the Pacific in promoting investment and tackling climate change through a new cooperation initiative with Asian Development Bank (ADB) of up to US$2 billion over five years, and two funds totaling up to $100 million. The initiative was announced by the Chair of ADB’s Board of Governors, Japan’s Minister of Finance Koji Omi, at the opening ceremony of ADB’s 40th Annual Meeting in Kyoto, on May 6 2007.
This document is a transcription of M more...

The Carbon Fund for Europe (CFE), a new open-ended joint venture between the World Bank and the European Investment Bank (EIB), aims to make it easier for African countries to participate in the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM allows polluters in a developed country to buy "carbon credits" from projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a developing country.

This study by Feng Helen Liang, at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, in April 2006.
In this study, the author examines the relationship between the scale of foreign direct investment and local air pollution in China and suggests that Trade and Foreign Direct Investment could have beneficial effect on a developing country's environment.
The document is a 25 pages PDF file.

Selling off public assets to private operators can create a win-win situation for developing countries looking to unload expensive and unsustainable assets, while putting cash in government coffers. For investors seeking to capitalize on investment opportunities in frontier markets, privatization offers an important market entree. And with the growing trend toward business partnerships between the public and private sectors (so-called PPPs), the new face of privatization promises even greater be more...

There is widespread concern in many parts of Asia and Latin America that rising foreign investment to the People's Republic of China (PRC) is at the expense of investment and jobs in these economies.This paper examines this fear empirically using a regression model to explain foreign investment in these economies.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa by developing Asian economies is growing and has the potential to reach much higher levels, a joint report by UNCTAD and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says. Most such investment is now targeted at African natural resources, but the report contends that if appropriate policies are adopted more may be channelled into industry and manufacturing.

China's dramatic success in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has raised concerns that it has success diverted FDI from other countries in Asia. The paper develops a new methodology to estimate crowding out, and we use it to investigate the impact of China's emergence on FDI flows to Asia using data from 14 Asian economies from 1984 to 2002. The results suggest that China did not have much impact on FDI to other countries. In particular, low-income economies, which compete with China fo more...