Pakistan

Housing may be the Third World's most intractable problem, but mud, adobe, earth-bricks, soil-cement and other traditional building materials are cheap, readily available and can be made and used by the poor people themselves to build their own homes. Today, mud perhaps offers the only practical prospect for building the millions of houses which will be needed over the next twenty years. 

Asia has a rich cultural and natural heritage, but rapid development, population growth and an erosion of traditional practices are resulting in habitat loss and degradation, which is putting protected areas in Asia at risk and leading to serious decline in the biodiversity they harbour.

Includes readings from the final papers written by participants in the UNEP/UNESCO postgraduate training course in ecological approaches to resources development, land management and impact assessment held at the Technical University of Dresden between 1986 and 1989

The compendium shows how the scope of research has evolved at IFPRI, as well as in the wider development community. It covers a host of topics that bear on food and nutrition security, including development strategies, markets and trade, technologies for agricultural production, natural resource management, conflicts and natural disasters, subsidies and safety nets, gender roles, and health. Research on each topic is set into context to show how thinking has progressed over time.