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Public health emergencies expose social injustice and health disparities, resulting in calls to address their structural causes once the acute crisis has passed. The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting and exacerbating global, national, and regional disparities in relation to the benefits and burdens of undertaking critical basic public health mitigation measures such as physical distancing. In the United States, attempts to address the COVID-19 pandemic are complicated by striking racial, economic, and geographic inequities. These synergistic inequities exist in both urban and rural areas but take on a particular character and impact in areas of rural poverty. Rural areas face a diverse set of structural challenges, including inadequate public health, clinical, and other infrastructure and economic precarity, hampering the ability of communities and individuals to implement mitigation measures. Public health ethics demands that personnel address both the tactical, real-time adjustment of typical mitigation tools to improve their effectiveness among the rural poor as well as the strategic, longer-term structural causes of health and social injustice that continue to disadvantage this population.

The COVID-19 pandemic requires emergency policies to be put in place in order to avoid a global health catastrophe. At the same time, there has been an increasing preoccupation that argues urgent policies for public health neglect social justice. By looking at Portugal's successful confinement case during the early stages of the pandemic, I argue that ethically driven social justice policies are not just compatible but also an instrumentally important element in addressing this pandemic in an effective way. The Portuguese case study suggests that enhancing social justice towards socio-economically vulnerable groups correlates with the prevention of the spread of COVID-19; these benefits to public health can be explained by the fact that those policies create social distancing and less exposure to the COVID-19 virus and other contagious diseases and also remove disincentives to the use of healthcare services.

Our initial response to COVID-19 has been plagued by a series of failures-many of which have extended inequity within and across populations, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The global health governance of pandemic preparedness and response needs to move further away from the advocacy of a one-size-fits-all approach that tends to prioritize the interests of high-income countries towards a context-sensitive approach that gives equity a central role in guiding our pandemic preparedness and response strategies.

Climate change and disaster risks are mainstreamed in the three major pillars of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and complement the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. All ASEAN Member States (AMS) have ratified the Paris Agreement. The projected climate change impacts for Southeast Asia are less severe for global warming of 1.5 °C compared with 2 °C or more. Overall, there is only a medium level of readiness in handling the projected impacts for global warming of 1.5 °C in the region, except for prioritized adaptation measures to address reduction in rice yields in several AMS. Transitioning to a 1.5 °C world requires astute adaptation, linking climate change and disaster risk reduction, amplified engagement with targeted stakeholders, and smart partnerships to hasten the process of developing truly effective climate change adaptation plans in AMS. Greater ambition is also required to create a healthy environment in AMS. Potential strategic initiatives that could benefit AMS will require mobilization of resources and technical support. All nations of the world have a critical role to play in limiting global warming to 1.5 °C.

Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as the prominent feature of the technological revolution across the world. It has been particularly linked with development, growth and other socioeconomic standards of major national economies, including India and China. Both India and China evolved from having a huge starving population to food surplus countries having socioeconomic implications. This is centred around economic and technological reforms in both countries. IoT is the lynchpin for the future of food security worldwide and has a huge role in India and China. The chapter’s objective entails the emergence of IoT, and its widespread use has but provided for the evolution of state policies and strategies in India and China. The study undertakes comparative analysis, further utilising mixed-method research, which utilises both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Additionally, the chapter also deals with the huge impact of IoT on the development, growth and other socioeconomic parameters of farming communities within India and China.

COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization, but the world is already going after it. From China, cases spread rapidly across the world, driving world policymakers’ stringent steps to separate cases and restrict the virus transmission. The main supportive foundations of the modern world economies have been torn up by these strategies as multinational trading and collaboration resulted in nationalizing and fighting for limited stocks. The epidemic in COVID-19 greatly influenced the growth of infrastructure and the global economy. Global reactions are underway to rapid disruptions in main markets and industries in infrastructure. One remedy is to return to the physical and building environment (BE) to reduce the effect before medications for an outbreak are created. Due to the fear of illness, epidemics have changed our world. In several past studies of infectious pandemics, advances in the BE have been seen to help more to deter infection transmission. Architecture and urbanism would also never be the same following the COVID-19 outbreak. In encouraging environmental health interventions and reducing chances of diseases, BE has an important role to play. Although the ongoing worldwide outbreak is a threat at all levels of the developed environment, implementing an antivirus paradigm can take time to minimize future threats or deter the virus from spreading. This paper presents how the world produced by virus looks on the basis of the lessons learned and the value of a stable and safe environment. Many questions unanswered need further multidisciplinary research. This paper looks at the future COVID-19 steps to gradual and systemic improvements in varying time frames and sizes, which enhance air quality and less energy use, or the use of materials that eventually fulfil the sustainability objectives. This challenges us to reconsider buildings and urban areas and eventually use sustainable solutions for win–win results.

The year 2020 was dominated by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and many countries worldwide are experiencing second or third waves of COVID-19 cases as the weather becomes colder during the winter of 2021. In such a circumstance, this book chronicles the pandemic evolvement in 2020 at the beginning.

This chapter examines Indonesia’s influence as a middle power in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), focusing particularly on its regional initiatives since the early 2000s. In light of the shortcomings in the extant position, identity and behaviour approaches in the middle power literature in assessing Indonesia’s status, the chapter draws on the idea that middle powers could be norm entrepreneurs and applies this framework to explore Indonesia’s influence in its promotion of democracy and the Indo-Pacific concept in ASEAN. In both these instances, Indonesia’s norm entrepreneurship efforts have achieved limited success, demonstrating its “awkwardness” as a middle power.

Good governance is critical in creating a conducive business environment and sustained economic growth. However, the weak governance characterized by social inequality has led to instability, fragility, and conflict in many African countries. Part of instability and fragility is deeply rooted in colonialism and dates back to the emergence of modern African states. The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon is such a typical challenge. This chapter presents two key concerns that have not yet been adequately addressed: First, how do the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets address the challenge of Africa’s historical instability and fragility? Second, on the flip side, how does long-standing instability and fragility affect the achievability of the goals? A key lesson from the Anglophone crisis is that, contrary to the universal understanding, SDGs are not just a development framework to pick up from where the United Nations Millennium Development Goals stopped. They are, as well, instruments to reflect on historical and structural foundations that form the root causes of conflict and fragility. SDGs call for international cooperation toward establishing a fundamental change to build back better: replacing the root causes of vulnerability and fragility with pillars of social equity to attain economic growth and sustainable development.

COVID-19 pandemic has been seen to be uncontrollable with some countries suffering several surging waves. This pandemic will continue to threaten many nations in the foreseeable future, particularly the health government, public health systems, socio-economy, and national economy. Different countries use dissimilar containing measures in combating the pandemic. In Malaysia, lockdown has been implemented in different phases, namely, Movement Control Order (MCO), Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO), and Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO). Nevertheless, the border control has been loosely adhered with the spiking of cases that leads to several clusters, namely, Sivagangga and Benteng LD clusters. Therefore, the consequences of imported cases in local transmission cannot be neglected. The aim of this study is to apprehend the correlation and relationship between the imported and local occurrences in every MCO phase. Through the correlation analysis, the imported cases have greatly affected the local transmission at the onset of the MCO. From the regression analysis, results showed a positive relationship of the local and imported cases in the MCO phases. Thence, the returnees to Malaysia should be strictly observed and quarantined in avoiding the surging of the COVID-19 cases. The proposed analysis in this work will help us to comprehend the dynamics of COVID-19 in Malaysia, which helps to verify the effectiveness of MCO.

Despite SARS-CoV-2 being a closest genetic relation of SARS-CoV that caused SARS 2002–2004 pandemic, it caused quite different epidemic situation than SARS-CoV. In this Chapter, we study the reasons for it. We propose several possible explanations of its epidemic disparity with SARS-CoV. 1. SARS-CoV incubation period is at least two times less than that of SARS-CoV-2, so potentially the latter virus may infect twice as more people before any symptoms of a carrier are clear. 2. In case of SARS pandemic of 2002–2004, public healthcare measures such as rapid locating and isolating the disease sources, were a lot more successful than now. 3. During eighteen years that passed since the SARS pandemic, the humanity dramatically changed: (1) almost two additional billion people appeared on Earth since 2002 (7.8 bln vs 6.1 bln); (2) the mobility of humanity prodigiously increased; and (3) the electronic network connections reached an unseen level, and that led to the appearance of permanent global tourism phenomenon based on the huge mobility and psychological necessity in the network recognisability and fame (network rankings, “views,” “likes,” dangerous videos uploads, the numbers of “followers” and “friends”, etc.). Artificial boundaries against the world uncontrolled globalisation must be established and kept, be they physical, mental, digital, national, religious or any other. The 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic is very similar to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in its geographical spread, contagiousness and demographical impact. We suggest a number of public policy measures of SARS-CoV-2 more effectual containment based on the 1918 Influenza medical and social history.

Poverty is often thought of principally in terms of a deprivation of material possessions and means. However, a growing body of research recognizes the profound bidirectional relationships between relative poverty and health (physical and mental). A comprehensive poverty alleviation strategy must encompass a strong understanding of both the influence of poor health on poverty, and the socioeconomic determinants of health.

Several unexpected impediments have affected the growth and ST momentum of the Bangladesh economy in 2020. The cyclone Amphan struck Bangladesh’s coastal areas in May 2020 and the country is under the Covid-19 pandemic since March 2020. For Covid-19, the challenge is to develop programmes that can work as automatic stabilisers and can be expanded to provide income support to the worst affected households. Many of the workers in the informal sector and self-employed (including those in the gig economy) find their sources of livelihoods destroyed by the crisis. Some innovations are required to expand the gig economy to provide income support to these workers. What is important is to work out a comprehensive package that can simultaneously provide stimulus to economic activities and protect the labour force in need of jobs. The self-employed workers and most informal labour do not have the benefits of traditional work arrangements; and hence, universal social protection is needed to sustain their livelihoods.

For over 150 years, it is industrialization that has been at the core of structural change that underpinned development. However, the narrative of economic growth as it has unfolded in the labour-abundant nations of the developing world over the preceding three decades makes it evident that much more than one engine of economic growth is required for sufficient employment provision. Fundamentally, the reason for this is premature deindustrialization, a phenomenon that has occurred across a number of developing nations. This chapter will discuss the reasons for the onset of this feature and the implications of this for dynamics of growth and industrialization. It will then proceed to demonstrate the relevance of Arthur Lewis’s theory of economic development with unlimited supplies of labour. In order to enable a better understanding of these insights, the modified Lewis framework will be used because its assumptions continue to apply to contemporary developing nations This will be followed by a discussion of the role that intersectoral linkages play in employment generation, and for a better illustration of this point, India’s economic experience will be cited.

Environmental crises are inextricably linked with the development of a region. At the regional level, sustainable human development entirely depends on advantageous physiographic environmental settings, socio-economic conditions, resource availability, resource utilization, livelihood opportunities, and the existence of social ties. But the relentless confrontation of environmental challenges makes a region socio-economically as well as environmentally vulnerable and exacerbates the regional crisis and makes the society highly disorganized. Such regional crises have highly been perceived in the Indian Sundarban deltaic region for its strategic physiographic location and enormous environmental threats. Acute poverty, hunger, malnutrition, starvation become an integral part of this region. Frequent cyclones, monsoon, sea-level rise, and resultant flood and other natural hazardous situations intensify insecurities among the local inhabitants and force people to migrate as ‘climate refugees’ and create room for expanding organize criminal rackets in this region. The present study meticulously analyses how the physical environmental settings of the Indian Sundarban deltaic region continually forces the region to face enormous environmental challenges which result in large-scale resource depletion, limiting livelihood opportunities, weakening existing economy, exacerbate the regional crisis, and eventually make the society disorganized and make people specifically young women and minor girls vulnerable to human trafficking. This study also envisages the already adopted anti-trafficking measures and asking for taking further diversified approaches and policy measures to ensure meaningful climate actions and consequent socio-economic vulnerabilities and break the trafficking rackets from this region.

This chapter seeks to find the relationship between poverty and energy transition in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region using the data from 1992 to 2018. The study is based a panel data of 12 member states of the CIS: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The main findings revealed a positive relationship between poverty, income inequality, and energy transition at in-country and panel group levels. Besides, it is found that the relationship of poverty with energy transition is weaker for oil producers such as Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. At the same time, the magnitude of this relationship is more extensive for smaller economies in the CIS region, such as Belarus and Georgia. The causality analysis proved the bi-directional relationship between energy transition, poverty, and income inequality in the CIS region. These results confirm that using expensive energy, especially in smaller economies, will slow economic growth and elevate the poverty ratio. Hence, accessing cheap and clean energy is crucial for alleviating poverty and reaching sustainable and inclusive growth.

This paper investigates the response of poverty to shocks in trade liberalization and the impacts of the latter and its complement on the former in Nigeria over a period of 1981–2015. Adopting both time-varying parameter (TVP) approach of state-space model and FMOLS, the result revealed that growth in macroeconomic policies indicators and institutions was on the average a declining function of poverty while policies inconsistencies have resulted into a sharp upward and downward movement in poverty rate. The interacting terms provide evidence in support of the need for trade complementarities in reducing poverty.

This chapter involves exploring the background of internationalization of higher education in China. Internationalization of higher education is an inevitable process of higher education in the era of globalization. It is also an important strategy to improve the quality of higher education. It is one of the basic trends of higher education development in the contemporary world.

COVID-19 pandemic brings abrupt change to Cambodia’s socio-economic landscape. Large scale domestic outbreak has been so far contained through stringent travel restrictions. However, the country experiences an inevitable economic sluggish as a result of supply chain disruption and global demand shrinkage which affect the country’s main economic sectors: tourism, garment, and construction. This prompts the government to issue various fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the impacts and sustain the livelihood of the people. Amid this pandemic, Cambodia strengthens relation with China both politically and economically. Cambodian Prime Minister, as the first foreign leader, made an official visit to China during the pandemic to express support for the country and opposed the banning of flights to and from China. China, in return, dispatched a team of medical experts and provided medical equipment to Cambodia for dealing with the pandemic. On the economic front, the two countries embark on an ambitious free trade agreement. The Cambodia-China Free Trade Agreement, which aims to increase annual bilateral trade between the two countries to US$ 10 billion, covers goods, investment, technical cooperation, e-commerce, and BRI cooperation. All of these showcases the intimate relation between Cambodia and China. Cambodia, nonetheless, needs to maneuver carefully amid the looming US-China rivalry and the COVID-19 blame game to avoid being caught in the crossfire. Hence, Cambodia must continue to uphold an active neutral foreign policy in relations with China and the US. Yet it is undeniable that Cambodia relation with China will continue to prosper after the COVID-19 pandemic is eradicated.

Local disasters—usually smaller in scale in terms of fatalities and loss comparison to the major tragedies—are commonly ignored in the mainstream media. But, as a case study in Varanasi has illustrated, disasters occurring close to home have impacted local societies gravely by causing lasting destruction. Their occurrence tends to be regular and linked to seasonal changes, and local reporters reporting the disasters say that their coverage is widely disseminated in the public and respected for providing crucial information. The case study also indicates news reports that capture the reality on the field, have played a role in facilitating aid and assistance for the affected from outside. Journalists participating in the study further noted that when losses from local disasters have reached large proportions creating difficult political and economic consequences spreading beyond the area, local disaster reporting has gained the attention of the national media and central authorities.

Human health and climate have a deep rooted co-existence since the inception of mankind on mother earth. An understanding between the two has been established since times immemorial with the great work of scientists and scholars. Human health and disease have made great strides in the present day world, while more emphasis on causal relationships of various diseases with various factors both internal as well as external is being studied. No conclusive data or little evidence suggesting climate change as responsible in the changing patterns of disease is available. But extreme changes in temperatures like cold and heat waves coupled with the increased or decreased precipitation levels causing famines and floods and the presence of aeroallergens with increased air pollution levels cause a brunt on human health on an individual level. Vector borne diseases are directly affected with the change in temperature and precipitation levels. Water related diseases arising due to poor quality, quantity of water with minimal personal hygiene share a complex association. Loss of human lives, health infrastructure, and public properties by the calamities like storms, cyclones, hurricanes which we witnessed in Asia, America in recent times are a forecast for the future world to tackle this situation now or never. On the other hand, vulnerable population of low to middle income countries suffer the greatest brunt of climate change related health burden. Thus mitigation of health related impact of climate change should be tailor made keeping in view the regional health threats. Effective strategies need to be devised at all levels of healthcare delivery system.

At the outset of global efforts to understand and confront climate change, migration was presented as a cautionary tale: a security threat compromising the stability of affected societies and surrounding countries, which justified mitigation action. Thirty years later, the negative view of migration persists, but it is much more nuanced and contested by a plethora of research that suggests a complex picture of intersections between climate change, disaster risk, and population movements. The chapter provides an overview of these intersections, particularly in the Asian context. The presentation is divided around three main themes. The first deals with the initial framing of climate change and disasters as a cause and migration as a threat. It describes the causal mechanisms proposed and how regional evidence does or does not support migration fears. The second theme introduces current efforts to reframe migration as a means to adapt to the effects of climate change. Evidence from existing experience using migration to confront environmental stress, individually by people themselves or through resettlement programs, is reviewed. The third theme refers to emerging issues derived from confronting climate change and disasters on a background of moving populations. Two issues receive specific attention: addressing the needs of migrant populations affected by disaster crises and the role of remittances in responding and recovering from them. The final section synthesizes the three themes, identifying the prospects of reducing human insecurity and providing security through migration, or despite it.

The nature and dynamics of ST in South Asia are complex in which social, economic, and political processes are ingredients of both processes and outcomes. An important dimension is acute inequalities in all aspects of social and economic life. Universal access to basic services and equal opportunities for all are yet to become the cornerstones of the South Asia’s ST process. The challenge for the South Asian countries is to alter the sectoral share pattern towards manufacturing given its higher productivity and employment growth potentials compared with both agriculture and services. This is necessary to overcome the process of arrested and incomplete industrialisation. For South Asia, the key policy challenge is to achieve economic growth that is both inclusive and driven by productive ST.

This article discusses the subject in two sections: the state of development prior to the COVID-10 pandemic and an analysis of the possible trends in development during the 2020–21 period. The pre-pandemic state of development in the international system was energized by numerous centers of economic activity in the West, Asia and the developing world. At no time in the past, countries had become so deeply integrated and interdependent. In the aftermath of COVID-19, the global economy experienced an unprecedented level of economic contraction, affecting supply chains, labor markets and investment. The decline in economic activities for millions of enterprises will mean that they can neither pay their employees nor manage their debts. The issue of development, particularly for the developing countries, will be overshadowed by the global change in the trends and behavioral patterns of consumption and employment caused by this pandemic. This change will have serious effects on the entire demand in 2021 and beyond. It seems that both households and enterprises will be inclined to increase their savings rates which will naturally have repercussions for investment and consumption. The social-class gaps, poverty, debt and budget deficits will deepen. The importance of information technology and artificial intelligence will intensify. In the post-COVID 19 international system, the role of the government will become more prominent. The interrelationships between the members of the triad “the government, the private sector and the public good” have once again returned to the focus of developmental theories.

Technology application has become a common phenomenon in the tourism industry throughout the world. In Bangladesh, tourism service providers have started to use various technologies which are comparatively less competitive and not much cutting-edge. Contributions from the use of such technologies are still unexplored in the country context, due to unavailability and incalculable characteristics of necessary data and empirical information regarding their contribution. This chapter, therefore, focuses on explaining the use of innovations and technologies in the tourism industry of Bangladesh and how these revolutionary technologies have an impact on the socio-economic growth of the country. Grounded on the literature studies we have developed a framework that may explain how technology application leads to socio-economic development in any country. In addition, considering the inestimable nature of the data on their relation to social and economic progress, we used the accessible secondary sources to come up with a comprehensive idea of the outcomes of technology implementations in the tourism industry on socio-economic growth in an emerging country like Bangladesh. Finally, based on the findings we discussed implications of the present investigation to the upliftment of the tourism industry for the socio-economic advancement of the country.

The findings in the previous seven chapters show us that the human capital gains potentially available through education and migration are contingent on time and place. What unites wildly divergent cases is the desire of parents and children to improve their lives and future prospects, often using migration as a tool to improve human capital gains. At the same time, the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic put at risk these gains, although the degrees to which human mobility and educational investment are reduced by the circumstances of 2020 are yet to be seen.

The ‘Pandemic’ has wrought untold miseries on the poor. Millions of people are estimated to be pushed into extreme poverty. As the world is turning ‘upside down’, this is the time to revisit the existing system of financial inclusion and to reconsider the role of banking sector in providing financial services to the low income population. With new technologies coming into vogue, banks in India can play a significant role in the poverty alleviation process. This chapter emphasizes the need to change the narrative of financial inclusion and indicates that the low income population can be tapped by the banks as a viable business segment.

Since it embarked on reform and opening-up in 1978, China has tested and proved through practice the effectiveness of its national strategy to allow some people and regions to get rich first. Through effective income distribution reform, China has ensured the people’s basic livelihood needs, but also led its people on the path toward prosperity, laying a solid foundation for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. In 2016, China became the world’s second largest economy.

With deepening globalization, the status and role of cities worldwide are becoming increasingly prominent.

International migration is considered to be an essential key for development, especially in developing countries. It is, in fact, a positive force for development in South Asian countries. The South Asian countries have been a significant source of migration to different parts of the world for a long time.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to not only the loss of enormous lives, but the dramatic impact on global financial markets. By considering 29 global systemically important banks from four regions (North America, Europe, China, Japan), we employ the proposed truncated D-vine dynamic mixed copulas model to investigate the evolution of the systemic risk of global banking system during the COVID-19 pandemic period. From empirical results, as a worldwide shock, the COVID-19 pandemic does have increased the systemic risk of the global banking system. Specifically, the systemic risk level of the global banking sector was moderate during the period when the COVID-19 pandemic burst only in China, and increased rapidly when the virus spread over the world, then cooling down when emergency actions were taken by countries. In addition, the systemic risk contribution of banks in most regions (like North America, Europe, and Japan) under the similar epidemic situation during the COVID-19 period, seem to be not impacted by the evolution of the panic (as well as the systemic risk level), while the systemic risk contribution of Chinese banks kept falling due to its opposite situation to others in this period.

This chapter summarises the findings in previous chapters. Structural changes in the labor market and aging are among the major issues for China’s social policy reform. In principle, China’s stratified and regionally varied welfare regime could be a major focus of future reforms. Based on the discussions in this book, China’s welfare system is likely to continue to be managed and financed by local governments. Future major reforms in social policy areas are likely to depend on financial pressure from the large-scale urbanization and rapid aging of Chinese society. One extremely interesting direction is whether there will be a new synergy between social and economic policy implementation under the new growth model for high-quality growth.

Humans have basic needs to satisfy, which are widely expressed as adequate food, shelter, clothing, education, clean water and air, sanitation, and good health, among others. These universal physiological needs are at the core of the material aspect of human security. Meeting these needs is a requisite for survival and essential for human well-being. Human insecurity occurs when these basic needs are not met. Failure to satisfy them is unjust and a serious denial of basic human rights and security. Recent literature points out that unsatisfied basic needs may not solely be attributed to poverty and lack of access to basic services but also to pressing environmental factors such as climate change impacts and disaster risks. This chapter contends that the provision of basic needs, which forms the very core of human security, will be progressively threatened in many parts of Asia as climate changes and disaster risks escalate. It further argues that climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies have been employed by many Asian countries, although there is yet no comprehensive assessment of their effectiveness in satisfying the human basic needs and security of the poor and vulnerable sector. The chapter concludes that it is crucial to mainstream CCA and DRR in national and local development agenda particularly in the less economically developed and more vulnerable countries in Asia, with the end view of protecting the basic needs and security of the poor in the context of changing climate and increasing incidence of disasters.

This study attempts to fill the gap of a country-level analysis on scarcity of common property resources (CPR) and its impact on women’s unpaid CPR-dependent work in India. It conceptualizes regions of environmental scarcity and analyses the pattern of women’s CPR-dependent work across these regions for two periods of time. The study is based on secondary data. It uses two sets of unit (household) level data published by the National Sample Survey Organization. The findings establish a non-linear relationship between scarcity of CPRs and spread and depth of women’s activities dependent on CPR. While the spread of participation is high at both ends of the spectrums, i.e. abundance and scarcity of CPRs, they are lower at moderate levels, thus forming a U-shaped curve. However, this pattern changes above a certain level of scarcity, beyond which the spread of engagement in the CPR-dependent activities fall. The study brings out the evidences of exclusion or forced withdrawal of the marginalized socio-economic groups, particularly Scheduled Castes, as scarcity of CPR increases. Unless policies and institutions work towards preserving and enhancing village commons with a nuanced understanding of the intersectionality of caste and gender in rural India, particularly in the more environmentally scarce areas, severe livelihood pressures possibly leading to withdrawal of women from paid work and also social tension and conflicts could be expected as a result of their alienation from the resource essential for survival.

Although still based on the commodities trade, China’s relations with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have grown increasingly complex over the past two decades, as demonstrated by the changing trends in investment and finance to the resource-rich region. There, Chinese entities continue to be active in key sectors, including extractives and agriculture, which make China a major economic partner to many of the region’s largest economies, including Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. In comparison with the past, between 2017–2020, the region also played a larger role in China’s foreign policy, which has come to include the region more frequently in its programs, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In comparison to much of Asia, where the hardline stance adopted by the administration of Donald J. Trump was received favorably by countries which look toward Washington as a security partner, LAC countries broadly rejected the administration’s antagonism toward Beijing. This was on the one hand a consequence of the administration’s heavy-handed approach to LAC, which only exacerbated Washington’s long-term neglect of the region, and on the other hand the result of China’s already significant presence in many of its countries.

In this chapter the author refutes assertions that food shortage is a doomed feature of the planned economy and that the market economy is the cure. Employing historical evidence and statistical data, Yang Songlin argues that there is no definitive causality between planned economy and shortage as suggested by Janos Kornai and others. Famine and casualties from hunger can happen in the market economies and in democracies, like India. While the world has long been able to produce sufficient food to feed its entire population, many countries in Africa are still struggling to provide basic livelihood for their people.

Despite the strong growth momentum for the Takaful industry, attempts to introduce non-Muslim countries have coincided with inadequate success. Takaful remains focused in key markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia; Saudi Arabia; the UAE; Bahrain, and other Muslim countries.

International remittances of migrants to their home countries offer massive potential to contribute to poverty reduction goals. However, despite the welfare gains associated with remittances and their impact on poverty reduction, the average cost of remittances remains more than double the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target of 3%. However, newly evolving technologies such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLTs) can help to achieve this target. To support the migration-related SDGs and poverty reduction, it is crucial to utilize recent technological innovations and establish legal channels of remittance transactions. Developing Asia requires to let new players, such as blockchain remittance companies and DLT-based applications, operate through banks, national post offices, and telecommunication companies to increase competition and lower remittance costs. This chapter explores the recent literature on the significant potential of remittances for poverty reduction and the importance of financial sector adaptation with new technological megatrends in the payments system to increase financial inclusion. Furthermore, it will investigate new business models for cost reduction and finding ways to make remittance cheaper. The chapter will provide several case studies and policy recommendations.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by the People’s Republic of China, (PRC) has been noted by several scholars to be a massive project aimed at enhancing the Eurasian trade network. Some stakeholders have noted that the program appears to be altruistic. Although partner countries and the PRC both stand to gain from the program, it still leaves doubt in some scholars’ minds about the PRC’s main aim. This, to a large extent, could be one major factor why some European countries were slow to accept the program. However, it does not negate the fact that the program came when several European countries were in search of investments to lift their economies. The current study seeks to add to the pioneering body of literature on the BRI by focusing on a sample of 36 European countries and evaluating their global value chain (GVC) participation and positions before and after the BRI, and the impact on energy efficiency investment. The result shows an even GVC participation by most European countries before the BRI. There were negative and positive position indices of the GVCs after the BRI with a negative dominance. The dominant negative positions could be as a result of the initiative still being in its early stages; considering that a number of European countries were slow to adopt the BRI projects. The result showed no statistically significant prediction of the GVC participation in energy efficiency investment both before and after the BRI. The chapter provides policy recommendations on fostering the energy efficiency and green investments in BRI European countries.

South Africa is not only endowed with immense mineral resources, but also one of the world’s largest producer of platinum, gold and diamond. However, controversies surround the trickling down effect of the wealth generated from these resources with respect to the workforce and communities where these mining activities take place. Indeed, the above resources are not adequately transmitted either directly to transform lives of the workforce or indirectly to the communities hosting foreign or domestic mining companies. Almost all mining activities in South Africa come with severe direct negative consequences on the workers, the population and the environment in the host communities. The citizens who live in proximity to the mining environment are obviously exposed to the harmful and toxic effects of the mining activities and such exposure increases their venerability to these negative consequences. The plight of the people directly affected by negative consequences of mining has not been adequately addressed. There is growing evidence that seemingly inadequate efforts have been made by the major actors in Marikana, South Africa, Lonmin (Pty) platinum mine, the government of South Africa and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to ameliorate the effects of mining activities to workers and the communities. For these reasons, the affected people have found legitimate reasons for agitation that has degenerated into labour-related civil conflicts. The study therefore outlined the causes of these resource conflict as well as the historic management approaches and recommends sustainable peacebuilding and management strategies.

In spite of China’s notable progress and policy innovation in socioeconomic development, the country confronts obstacles forestalling severe drought crises facing 1.4 billion people. Environmentally, China is threatened by the dual and paradoxical challenges of flooding in the south and drought in the north as well as extreme pollution levels. Although drought is historically an environmental phenomenon in China, it is evident that climate change will accelerate its impacts. In terms of the drought scenario for China, the impacts will be severe and will increase exponentially. Between January 2009 and April 2010, China experienced three severe drought episodes that were classified at the once-in-a-100-year level. This chapter argues that the human security perspective, first enunciated by the UNDP in a landmark 1994 report, offers a useful prism through which to examine the country’s profound 2009–2010 drought crisis, the government response, and the continuing effect upon society nearly a decade later.

This chapter examines the “human factors” of the famine and argues that it was a policy failure. The author argues that the famine can to certain extent, be called a “man-made catastrophe” partly because compulsory government purchase has deprived rural population of access to fair food distribution and because what are called the ultra-leftist or adventurous experiments were taken to extremes at grassroots level in some localities when grain harvest was poor. However, while famine casualties were heavy in some places like Guangshan county in the Henan province, such tragedies did not happen in its neighbouring counties like Luoshan and Xin.