Expert Opinions & Stories

High prices of essential goods and services have become a pressing issue for the poor and vulnerable in Asia and the Pacific despite decent economic growth and declining inflationary trends so far in…

Economic performance in Asia and the Pacific has proved to be quite resilient to the shocks of the past few years – the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the cost-of-living…

Stories of growing vulnerability make regular headlines across all Asian and Pacific small island developing States (SIDS). With tens of thousands of people displaced every year due to climate and…

As the world is still gearing up to welcome 2024, let us find a moment to reflect on some of the key trends of the past year and pursue now to embrace the path towards hope and promise for everyone,…

Bhutan is one of two countries globally that maintains a carbon-neutral status and is the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that can claim this title. However, as the country recovers from the…

We are living in an era of a polycrisis: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and the Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to send shockwaves through Asia and the…

More and more developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region are struggling under mounting public debt, making it difficult for them to invest in sustainable development.

External debt servicing…

The latest synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for grim reading: Every fraction of a degree of warming comes with escalated threats, from deadly heatwaves to…

The unprecedented fiscal firepower used to protect the vulnerable from the harsh socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic contraction have pushed the average…

The start of the “Decade of Action” to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has also marked the start of an unprecedented period of overlapping crises.

The Covid-19…

2022 started with an abnormally warm January for North and Central Asia, followed by civil unrest, and the lingering impacts of COVID-19. How the year ahead would look like is still fraught with…

After two years of human devastation, the world is learning to live with COVID-19 while trying to balance the protection of public health and livelihoods.

For countries in Asia and the Pacific,…

Emerging from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy has been shaken yet again, this time by geopolitical events that threaten to set back the nascent post-COVID-19 economic recovery,…

Even as Asia and the Pacific continues to be the fastest growing region in the world, economic growth has been slowing since the 2008 global financial crisis. Add the COVID-19 pandemic to the mix,…

In a joint statement, the Executive Secretaries of the United Nations Regional Commissions have called for enhanced regional cooperation to develop nature-based and technological solutions for…

From Suva to Seoul, people wearing face masks is now a common sight in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past years, face masks have become a regular feature of everyday life to protect from…

If the world wants to beat back the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure no one is left behind in the recovery, two issues thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic need attention: digitalization and regional…

Tomorrow marks the entry into force of a new international agreement promoting paperless trade, a timely reminder of how the COVID-19 pandemic has brought digital solutions to regional development…

Could you imagine a world where online chat platforms become the primary source of information for truckers on how to get across borders? This blog follows the Subregional SDG Forum hosted in…

Civilizations in North and Central Asia have ebbed and flowed, along with the river basins that feed and nurture them. Water has always been a key source of livelihood in this subregion, given that…