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Borrowers get business advice and a buffer against disaster from growing microcredit sector in cyclone-prone Madagascar
Justine Sija, 60, begins her day at 4am, when she buys catch from local fishermen to hawk on the streets of St Augustin village, in Madagascar's southern Atsimo-Andrefana region. The work is hard, but in the past year, access to microcredit has boosted both her business and her hopes for the future.
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We need a new narrative in which we frame migration as a way for people to adapt to climate change
This week the Guardian has been running a major series on "climate refugees" about the village of Newtok in Alaska, which faces an imminent threat to its existence from erosion.
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Han Rosling demonstrates the dynamics of population growth, child mortality and carbon dioxide emissions
Claire Provost
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Celebrity statistician says data can help challenge common myths about the world, particularly on population and fertility
He's been called the Jedi master of data visualisation, dubbed a statistics guru and introduced as the man in whose hands data sings. When it comes to celebrity statisticians, Hans Rosling is firmly on the A-list.
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An international minimum wage, whether based on a percentage of the median country wage or on a rate set by international committees, could be destructive to emerging economies (A way to start healing the huge wound that Savar left, 13 May). Not only would such an initiative be costly to administer, but increased costs resulting from a higher minimum wage, and the corresponding incentive among producers to lower costs through automation, would reduce overall demand for labour in emerging economies. Not surprisingly, in the context of prevailing macroeconomic conditions and pent-up demand for low-cost production, the prospect of black market sweatshops becomes all too real.
The problem could be addressed at the other end of the supply chain. Western retailers should be required to display ...
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UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon picks former Kenyan trade and industry minister to head Unctad
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has nominated Mukhisa Kituyi, a former Kenyan minister of trade and industry, to lead Unctad, the UN trade and development body, which is seen as an intellectual counterweight to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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UK PM says final meeting of UN panel on development after 2015 agreed to focus on ending extreme poverty by 2030
World leaders are to face a "very powerful" challenge to agree to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, David Cameron said as he hailed a tentative agreement by a UN high-level panel to a new set of development targets after 2015.
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It may be splitting hairs over what is and is not slavery, but mislabelling paid workers as slaves could harm their cause
It has taken a tragedy on the scale of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh to finally strip away any remaining illusions that cheap clothes don't come with a serious human rights price-tag somewhere down the line.
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Woefully insufficient amounts going on social protection, gender equality and climate change, according to Oxfam report
Countries are barely funding social protection, gender equality and climate change programmes, crucial for meeting sustainable development goals after 2015, a report by Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) said on Thursday.
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Though the development sector has been a late adopter of technology, social media is proving to the disruptive force that is changing everything from fundraising to impact measurement
For years I have been following the fast innovations in technology and, in my mind, I linked them to what positive impact they could have on programming, communication, governance and monitoring or evaluation.
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