Indian Ocean sea levels are rising unevenly and threatening the residents in some densely populated coastal areas of India and Bangladesh, besides the island nations of Maldives and Sri Lanka, a new study has said. Sea-level rise is particularly high along the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, as well as the islands of Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, says the study carried out jointly by the...

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford University today launched a new index to measure poverty levels which they said give a “multidimensional” picture of people living in hardship, and could help target development resources more effectively. The new measure, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support, the two institutions said in a joint...

Acute poverty prevails in eight Indian states, a new ‘multidimensional’ measure of global poverty has said. The measure claims that the eight states put together account for more poor people than those present in the 26 poorest African nations combined. The new measure, called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with the United Nation Development Programme’s (UNDP) support. It...

Eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries combined, a new measure of global poverty has found. The Indian states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, have 421 million "poor" people, the study found. This is more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries, it said. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures a range of "deprivations" at household levels. Developed by Oxford Poverty...

One in four corporate titans worldwide view biodiversity loss as a threat to their business growth, according to a new United Nations-backed study released today. It found that more than half of chief executive officers surveyed in Latin America and 45 per cent of their counterparts in Africa see biodiversity decline as detrimental to profits, compared to less than 20 per cent in Western Europe. The publication also found that business...