Based on the household level survey data, the paper makes a projection on China’s household consumption in 2049 with reasonable assumptions of disposable income, demographic structure, urbanization rate and total population in 2049. The results show that at annual income growth rates of 3%, 4% and 5%, China’s total household consumption in 2049 will be 71.0, 97.8 and 133.8 trillion CNY, respectively, 3.1~5.8 times of the total household consumption in 2015.

In urban areas around the world, increasing motorization and growing travel demand make the urban transportation sector an ever-greater contributor to local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The situation is particularly acute in developing countries, where growing metropolitan regions suffer some of the world's highest levels of air pollution.

Regional integration in Africa is underway but ongoing progress requires that the gains are widely spread. South Africa’s huge regional trade surplus in manufactured goods is already leading to protectionist pressures in neighbouring countries.

Agro-processing is a large sector, which is widely regarded as having significant potential, but the export performance of the region has been quite poor if South Africa is excluded.

Regional integration is making steady progress in Africa and a key objective is to improve the prospects for industrialisation by expanding the regional market. The paper draws on a combination of trade data analysis and industry case studies to better understand the links and synergies between regional value chains and regional integration. The trade data and case studies of three diverse sectors (garments, food retailing and automotive) demonstrate the expansion and diversity of regional trade and regional value chains in southern Africa.

When it comes to securing Cape Town’s future water supply, clearing alien plants from within the key water catchments will bring a better return on investment than building desalination plants.

South Africa has been in the grip of one of the worst droughts in decades with eight provinces having been declared disaster areas (all provinces except for Gauteng). The news that Cape Town could be the first major city in the world to run out of drinking water made headlines across the world in the beginning of 2018. In 2016, the University of Cape Town (‘UCT’) in collaboration with the Water Research Commission (‘WRC’) and the City of Cape Town (‘CoCT’) concluded a large-scale study on the impact of nudging to motivate water conservation amongst residential households in Cape Town.

In 2015, Malawi became one of Africa’s first countries to impose a ban on plastic bags, following global concerns around the environmental damages caused by single-use plastics and joining a surge of policy instruments to deal with the issue in Africa. However, this led to a backlash from the business community, who argued in court that the ban would lead to economic costs and job losses, following which Malawi stopped implementing the Environment Management (Plastics) Regulations of 2015 in accordance with a court order.

Development largely depends on how given places participate in global economic processes. The contributions to this book address various features of the integration of sub-Saharan Africa into the world economy via value chains, so as to explain corresponding challenges and opportunities.

SiriusXM Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School recently had a segment on the Cape Town water crisis.  Host Don Loney of the Knowledge@Wharton show discussed the current situation in Cape Town and what it tells us about the future of water in a changing climate with guests Carolyn Kousky of the Wharton Risk Center, Kevin Winter of the Unive