News stories by Timothy Spence

European leaders have mapped out a bold agenda ahead of the Rio summit, vowing to transform development aid, help provide renewable electricity to the world’s neediest people, and bulk up the United Nations environment body.

Global demand for African oil and precious metals has fuelled a continental surge in exports, helping some of the world’s poorest countries rebound from the 2009 economic shock.

Facing unrest in the north and a struggle against poverty elsewhere, leaders of the African Union and their European counterparts are working as 'equal partners' to spread democracy and economic opportunity across the African continent.

With spiralling food prices threatening to leave millions more people hungry every year, European countries must abandon subsidies and higher production targets for biofuels, the anti-poverty group Oxfam warns.

The European Union missed its target of aid to developing countries by 15 billion euros in 2010 and is on course fall well short of future goals, according to a report on the world’s largest donor.

British researchers are working on techniques to improve seeds chances of surviving drought by tapping the potential of little-known proteins that regulate water intake.

Representatives of the world’s poorest nations are preparing to assemble a new 'programme of action' to reduce grinding poverty. Among proposals that could emerge from the U.N. Least Developed Countries Conference in Istanbul next month is a global tax on financial transactions that would generate billions of dollars a year for development assistance.

On a dusty street in the north-eastern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya one recent day, an elderly man sold heaps of tomatoes, fruits and other fresh produce from a makeshift trolley.

Beer manufacturers sell nearly 548 million litres of brew each day, but with every bottle, they are using many times that amount of water on a planet facing mounting resource challenges.

International efforts to replace poppy fields with food crops and improve living standards in impoverished northern Afghanistan seem undeniable progress in the conflict-ridden country. But some experts worry that these efforts will have unintended negative consequences for the nation’s neighbours, where water and energy resources are sparse and tensions run high.