In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development.

Soil mapping is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development

Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.

In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.

At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.

Devaluations are never easy.