PDF Pocket World in Figures Download
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- ISBN: 9781861974242
- Category : Economic history
- Languages : en
- Pages : 236
New edition of the annual best-seller of fascinating facts and figures about the world we live in.
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The Other World combines a thematic and area studies approach to explore contemporary global issues in the developing world. Accessible and interdisciplinary, this text offers political, economic, social, and historical analysis plus case studies on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia and the Southern Near Abroad, and Asia. Highlighting similarities and differences among these regions and focusing on enduring problems, The Other World is a practical look at the issues affecting the majority of the world's population.
An authoritative study that covers the social and economic history of Central and Eastern Europe since 1973.
George Monbiot’s Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning marks an important moment in our civilization’s thinking about global warming. The question is no longer whether climate change is actually happening. The question is what to do about it. Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping away from catastrophe. (But not before he devotes a chapter to unmasking the vested interests that have spent fortunes funding the specious science of the climate change deniers.) It now seems certain that we need a 90% cut in our emissions by 2030 to prevent runaway climate change from taking place. For the first time, this book explains how the cut could be achieved without bringing industrial civilisation to an end. Combining his unique knowledge of political campaigning and environmental science, Monbiot analyses the potential of energy efficiency, renewable resources, carbon burial, nuclear power and new transport and building systems to discover what works, what doesn't, what costs the least and what needs to be done to make change happen. He is not afraid to attack anyone—friend or foe—whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged. His original, sometimes shocking programme shows that we can reconcile our demands for comfort and security with the survival of the biosphere. Rigorous, passionate and totally surprising, this book could change the world. It is possible to slow the momentum of this global crisis—if we act decisively. In this riveting, fiery book, the No Logo of the environmental movement, George Monbiot shows us how.
Geographical differences in living standards are a pressing concern for policymakers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Economies of agglomeration mean that production is most efficient when concentrated in leading areas. So how can the region reduce spatial disparities in well-being without compromising growth? The solution to spatial disparities lies in matching the policy package to a lagging area s specific characteristics. Key questions include: is the lagging area problem really as serious as one thinks; is it a problem of low economic opportunity or of poor human development; are lagging area populations close enough to agglomerations to benefit from spillovers; and is there manifest private investor interest? Drawing on the World Bank s 2009 World Development Report, Reshaping Economic Geography, the book proposes 3 policy packages. First, all lagging areas can benefit from a level playing-field for development and investment in people. Geographic disparities in the policy environment are a legacy of MENA s history, and gaps in human development are a major component of spatial disparities. Smart policies for the investment environment, health, education, social transfers and urban development can therefore close spatial gaps in living standards. Second, lagging areas that are close to economic agglomeration can benefit from spillovers - provided that they are connected. MENA s expenditure priority is not necessarily long-distance primary connections, but infrastructure maintenance and short-distance connections such as rural roads and peri-urban networks. Public-private partnerships can also bring electronic connectivity to lagging areas. Third, shifting regional development policy away from spatial subsidies towards the facilitation of cluster-based growth will increase the chance of cost-effective impacts. The final chapter of the book examines the institutional prerequisites for effective spatial policy. It argues that MENA s centralized/sectoral structures are not always adapted to governments spatial development agendas, and describes alternative institutional options.