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by Ben Block on April 2, 2009 As leaders of the world's 20 largest economies gathered in London this week, international financial institutions announced that the world economy would likely deteriorate more in 2009 than was previously feared. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that economic activity would shrink 2.7 percent; the World Bank projected a slightly more optimistic contraction of 1.7 percent. To gain perspective about today's many interrelated sustainability issues, Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block pulled aside Björn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), for an interview this week at a U.S. National Academies of Science climate change summit. Stigson has overseen the global coalition of some 200 leading corporations since 1995. How do you expect the ongoing recession to affect sustainable business efforts, such as reducing pollution, water consumption, and energy use? Are businesses turning away from corporate responsibility? The question I get from around the world is: Has sustainable development fallen off the table given there is a recession? My response is the opposite. What has happened is that sustainable development has come to a tipping point, in my view, and that the focus on the strategic aspect on sustainable development, climate change, and so on - that focus is even stronger than before. It's stronger in companies, and it's stronger in governments. The recession is not really a barrier or a blockage.

Aquatic Habitats in Sustainable Urban Water Management 'Aquatic habitats supply a wide range of vital ecosystem benefits to cities and their inhabitants. The unsustainable use of aquatic habitats, including inadequate urban water management itself, however, tends to alter and reduce their biodiversity and therewith diminish their ability to provide clean water, protect us from waterborne diseases and pollutants, keep urban areas safe from flooding, and support recreational ecosystem services and even the aesthetic enjoyment of our world. Aquatic Habitats in Sustainable Urban Water Management - the result of collaboration between UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme and its Man and the Biosphere Programme - aims at improving our understanding of aquatic habitats, related ecosystem goods and services, and conservation and sustainable use - with a special focus on their integration into urban water management.

'The economic turmoil brought about by the financial crisis of 2008, compounded by the impacts of a food crisis and pending climate change, has exacerbated many of the existing development challenges in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper explores the idea that inclusive, sustainable business partnerships hold the potential to address multiple development needs within MENA.'

Many health and development programs use behavior change communication (BCC) to improve people's health and wellbeing, including family planning and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and prevention of infectious diseases. BCC is a process that motivates people to adopt and sustain healthy behaviors and lifestyles. Sustaining healthy behavior usually requires a continuing investment in BCC as part of an overall health program. The tools in this issue of INFO Reports are meant to help with planning and developing a BCC component in family planning programs. Full paper in PDF format (987kb); Number of pages: 8p

'Despite demonstrable benefits, the rapid ascendancy of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLA) in the mid to late 1990s was followed by their quick demise among some donors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development agencies, as a result of internal politics and other factors.'

The world's poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and lack of access to clean, affordable energy services. Climate change, loss of biodiversity and depletion of natural resources are both national and global issues requiring cooperation among all countries. UNDP works to strengthen national capacity to manage the environment in a sustainable manner while ensuring adequate protection for the poor, by identifying and sharing best practices, providing policy advice and forging partnerships.

Transforming natural resource wealth into sustained growth and poverty reduction : a conceptual framework for Sub-Saharan African oil exporting countries

sustainable solutions in Mumbai

With this manual, the Grameen Foundation introduces Village Phone Direct, a variation of the Village Phone programme. This manual provides a template for creating local, sustainable Village Phone Direct programmes that simultaneously bring telecommunication and information services to the rural poor, create viable new businesses for micro-entrepreneurs, and expand the customer base of telecommunication operators.

Institute of Microfinance in order to facilitate their future and current research initiatives and enable researchers outside the Institute to get a list of readily available literatures on topics related to microfinance, has taken initiatives to start an annotated bibliography series. InM hopes that the annotated bibliography would serve the purposes of dissemination of information to the professionals, researchers, international agencies and academics as well as helping in our capacity building. Articles includes on general aspects of microfinance and on issues like microfinance borrowers, poverty, savings mobilization, loan recovery and repayment, employment, women empowerment, microfinance innovations, sustainability, competition etc. It is a unique effort to reach general readers with the theories and practices involved in microfinance of Bangladesh in a simplistic and comprehensive manner. Full paper in PDF format (624kb); Number of pages: 108p; Source: InM.

'Secondary urban centres lack the scale of larger urban utilities, a feature which attracts both public and sometimes private investment (national and international); yet they are often too large to benefit from the community-based and micro-finance mechanisms that are often applied with success in rural areas. Given their scope, there are potentially significant economic development and poverty reduction impacts to be gained through sustainable access to safe water, sanitation programs, and effective drainage in these areas. Thus, financing water supply and sanitation services in Secondary urban centres demands creative thinking. This paper reviews some of the creative ideas that have emerged to address the financial constraints to Secondary urban centres water and sanitation service delivery. The paper emphasizes domestic sources of finance for both hardware and software investments. These ideas involve a range of different stakeholders, including users, informal providers, utilities, governments, NGOs, domestic banks, and donors.'

Recently, gender perspectives have received more attention from various stakeholders due to consistent global advocacy and awareness-raising efforts that highlighted the importance of gender equality in disaster risk reduction. However, progress in mainstreaming gender perspectives into disaster risk reduction remains inadequate. Gender considerations are still largely marginalized from the disaster risk reduction process. Based on information provided in national reports on disaster risk reduction, such marginalization of women is especially true at the national level. In daily realities, women are key victims as well as resilient forces to natural disasters. Sri-Lanka Disaster Management Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, talks about the role played by women in disaster risk reduction and how gender issues have to be linked to the sustainable development goals nations want to achieve.

Even in hard times, it can make commercial sense for companies to develop markets that include poor people, and business models that address poverty. Businesses that create decent jobs, access to markets or goods and services that benefit low-income groups in emerging economies help to build healthier, wealthier, and more highly skilled communities. Those communities will provide the customers, suppliers, and employees that companies need for sustainable growth. Full paper in PDF format; Number of pages: 12p

'This paper summarises the events of a workshop on institutional collaboration in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The workshop was held in Pakistan in March 2009, and discussed the participatory research in livelihoods that two Norwegian organisations conducted in Afghanistan. The paper states that this work has great potential for contributing further toward capacity and institution building in Afghanistan in several rural development sectors, including water and sanitation (WATSAN).