When World Bank President Jim Kim visits the Democratic Republic of Congo this week, he will find a country rich in natural resources but blighted by a lack of basic services. The world's poorest country has not only been ravaged by civil wars, but by decades of grandiose...

Li Liguan lives at the outskirts of Loudi city in Hunan province. A former farmer, he was uprooted from his land to make way for a stadium. Now he tries to benefit from the construction boom by hauling bricks and renting out...

The World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) is the most important source of development finance for the world's poorest countries. A new round of finance is supposed to support goals such as inclusive growth, gender equity, and climate...

This is the story of Yanopah, a tiny water molecule who has been travelling the world's waterways for millions of years. Yanopah has seen it all. She has spent thousands of years at the depth of dark oceans, hibernated in icecaps and glaciers, traveled down streams and rivers, and taken...

Renewable energy solutions are not only good for the environment. If done well, they can pay for themselves and reduce poverty around the world. This is the message of the 2012 Ashden Awards, which just recognized inspiring renewable energy programs from Afghanistan, Cambodia, East Africa, India and Indonesia.

Some projects are so destructive that no reputable actors want to get involved with them. Think of the oil wells in Sudan's conflict zones, China's Three Gorges Dam, and the gas pipelines in Burma. If the price is right, however, some will still be tempted to do business...

Kikwit is a town of almost a million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Its inhabitants have no access to electricity. Because the water pumps are no longer working, they have no access to clean water either. In the 1990s, the town made news through an outbreak of...

Ikal Angelei, the founder of Friends of Lake Turkana in Kenya, receives the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco today. The award honors an activist who is defending the interests of 500,000 poor indigenous people against a destructive hydropower dam, and has successfully taken on...

Jim Yong Kim -- a public health expert, president of Dartmouth College and astute rapper -- is the U.S. government's candidate for the presidency of the World Bank. As Dani Rodrik, a development expert at Harvard University, summed it up this morning, "It's nice to see...

All life on Earth began in the sea some 3.5 billion years ago. Yet there is a twist to this story. New research shows that almost all fish species that inhabit the oceans today moved there from rivers and lakes. This sheds new light on the importance of...

Most of the world's poorest people lack access to basic services such as clean water and electricity. The World Bank and the Group of 20 are now proposing a new strategy to scale up infrastructure investment in developing countries. They pay lip service to the...

In a crucial decision for the people and ecosystems of the Mekong River Basin, the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam have just agreed to delay the Xayaburi Dam, the first of eleven dams proposed for the Mekong River. They agreed to first...

Democracy is a messy affair. It forces government officials and politicians to face parliamentary scrutiny, pesky journalists and grassroots pressure. While they uphold democracy and good governance in their rhetoric, governments and the World Bank have begun to shift important decisions about global development to the Group of 20, a...

If the World Bank and an Indian power utility have their way, the Rampur hydropower project in Northern India will increase global CO2 emissions by 15 million tons, at a cost of $164 million to unsuspecting energy consumers in Sweden. The project is a textbook example of how hydropower companies...

As food prices rise, the lands of rural communities are being snatched up for plantations at an alarming rate around the world. According to the World Bank, large agricultural land deals made up an area bigger than California in 2009 alone. A new report documents how the controversial...

When I was in fifth grade, we spent a week at the Marmorera Dam in the Swiss Alps, where we learned about the wonders of hydropower, the "white gold" of Switzerland. I loved the cute village which had been rebuilt on the reservoir, and admired how the 91...

According to a new report which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published today, the sky is the limit for the expansion of renewable energy. With an investment of slightly less than 1% of global GDP, renewable energy could contribute up to 43% of the world's energy...

Only 140 kilometers from our Berkeley office, the Folsom Dam towers 100 meter high over the American River. When it was built in the 1950s, the project was supposed to withstand the most severe flood in 250 years. Yet after it was completed, strong floods suddenly became more...

The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the world's largest hydropower project. It has often been touted as a model for dam building around the world. Now the Chinese government has officially acknowledged the project's serious social, environmental and geological problems. What are the...

With more than 150 dams proposed for construction and 11 projects in operation, Northeast India is one of the hotspots of global dam building. The biggest project under construction is the Lower Subansiri Dam on the border between the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Social movements...