Op-eds and Opinion

The population in China is aging rapidly. The proportion of people aged 60 years and above is expected to increase to 35% by 2050, turning the population into one of the oldest in the world at a fast pace. While aging poses great challenges, if managed well, these can be overcome to generate opportunities. Reforms to foster labor mobility and upgrading human capital will reduce the labor shortages stemming from aging. Greater public and private investments to strengthen elderly care services and facilities will create employment opportunities and improve people’s well-being.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has reshaped urban transport across Asia and the Pacific. Many Asian cities banned or severely restricted public transport usage, forcing travelers to switch to alternative forms of transport.

Even before the pandemic, women in Asia and the Pacific were already at clear disadvantage in the labor market.

Images of dying or dead whales stuffed with plastics, sea turtles caught in fishing nets, and seagulls covered in oil underscore the perilous state of our oceans more powerfully than any statistics.

Sri Lanka is considered one of the world’s most vulnerable countries with regard to climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic spares no one. But its consequences for health, social and economic conditions are unequal and disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable. The pandemic is also eroding the global middle class.

Marine ecosystems are threatened by extinction. Over the past 50 years, the world has lost nearly half of its coral reefs and mangrove forests, while marine populations have halved and global fish stocks depleted by a third.

For the vast majority of us, last year was defined by the unanticipated calamity of COVID-19.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 has been acclaimed as one of the most important climate actions in the world.

Since the 1990s, advanced countries have seen low productivity growth, something that also afflicted developing countries in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.