“They face a more complex, and daunting set of circumstances than the developing countries that embarked on industrialization after 1950,” the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) warned. “These changing and challenging circumstances require new thinking, and in particular new paradigms to guide researchers, policy makers, and international development organizations in the future.”

The book, presented in London and entitled ‘Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century: New Challenges and Emerging Paradigms,’ analyzes the circumstances and challenges facing developing countries in industrialization, and offers fresh ideas for new paradigms to carry forward industrial policy in the future.

It was co-edited by UNIDO Director of the Development Policy, Statistics and Research Branch Ludovico Alcorta, and is the result of a study prepared by UNIDO in partnership with the UN University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and the Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT).

Over the last two centuries, the experiences of the first wave of industrialized countries in Europe and the United States, and the more recent experiences of the East Asian Tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, India, and Viet Nam), have illustrated the transformative nature of industrialization, Alcorta said.

“There are reasons to believe that industrialization will continue to be one of the major engines of growth, transformation, and socioeconomic development. Industrial development enables a more rapid advancement toward developed country living standards. But many challenges remain, and new challenges have arisen,” he added.

“These include: integration into global value chains; the shrinking of policy space in the present international order; the rise of the Asian driver economies; new opportunities provided by resource-based industrialization; the accelerating pace of technological change in manufacturing; how to deal with jobless growth in manufacturing; creating adequate systems of financial intermediation; and how to respond to the threats of global warming and climate change.”

UNIDO’s mission UNIDO) is to promote and accelerate sustainable industrial development in developing countries and economies in transition. In recent years, it has assumed an enhanced role in the global development agenda by focusing its activities on poverty reduction, inclusive globalization and environmental sustainability.

It carries out two core functions: as a global forum, it generates and disseminates industry-related knowledge; and as a technical cooperation agency, it provides technical support and implements projects.

“The Internet offers a lot of potential and opportunities for sustainable development,” said the Director of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Haiyan Qian.

Qian’s remarks, delivered on her behalf, were addressed to more than 1,600 delegates from 128 countries at the conclusion of a four-day conference of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

The Forum included the participation of governments, intergovernmental organizations, business representatives, the technical community, civil society organizations, as well as any individual Internet users interested in Internet governance issues.

The theme for this year’s Forum was ‘Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic and Social Development,’ reflecting the increasing role of the Internet in the evolution of the various aspects of development, across all countries.

“We need to build capacities to address challenges and implement strategies, not only in our own countries and organizations, but also to assist others, especially those in developing and the least developed countries, as well as countries with economies in transition,” Qian urged.

The question of promoting sustainable development – which aims to meet human needs through resource-use that also preserves the environment – was central to the landmark UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which took place in Brazil in June this year.

One of the main Rio+20 outcomes was the agreement by member States to launch a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals, which will build upon the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – set in 2000 for achievement by 2015 or earlier – and converge with the post-2015 development agenda.

In her remarks, Ms. Qian said IGF’s “inclusive, participatory and transparent governance process” plays a “critical role” in driving the growth of the Internet, which she said was “clearly” bringing new social and economic opportunities to so many people in the developing world.

“This session of the IGF has again provided the valued platform for continuous consensus building and learning opportunities for all,” she said. “I am sure each one of us will bring back to our respective countries and organizations new ideas and approaches on how we can best deal with these crucial issues.”

The forum emerged after 2005, when countries attending the second of two conferences of the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society asked the UN Secretary-General to convene a new space for dialogue on Internet governance policy. Though not a decision-making body, it saw its initial five-year mandate renewed for a further five years by UN General Assembly.

IGF noted that activist groups drawn from civil society had demonstrated an “appetite to drive (the) global Internet agenda by attending the Baku conferences annual meeting in relative force.

“Civil society… was the highest represented stakeholder group at the forum,” IGF stated in a news release, citing others as Internet governance experts, government officials, international development representatives, academics, private sector representatives and other “inquiring global citizens.”

IGF said participation of women also increased significantly from previous years, and cited youth representation and activity as a “notable achievement” of this year’s meeting.

Several dozen experts and panellists participated in the gathering from remote hubs around the world – a development IGF said had become a “major strength” of the forum process. It also highlighted the rising use of social media platforms by delegates, noting that their use spiked “significantly” – enabling discussion to continue beyond the meeting rooms.

“There were thousands of ‘Tweets’ about the forum each day, which reached millions of others on the social information-sharing network,” IGF said.

The forum concluded on a day the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also highlighted the importance of communications for advancing development. The Paris-based agency did so in remarks delivered at UN Headquarters in New York to the UN General Assembly’s Second Committee, which deals with economic and financial matters.

“UNESCO approaches the issue of communication-in-the-service-of-development from the vantage point of fostering an environment in which freedom of expression, independence and pluralism of the media can exist,” UNESCO’s Senior Public Information and Liaison Officer in New York, Suzanne Bilello, told the committee, which is open to all 193 UN Member States.

“Of particular interest to us therefore is the need to ensure that the communication-for-development agenda gives sufficient emphasis to promoting free, independent and pluralistic media, whether on radio sets, mobile phones or printed pages, and including access to communication channels, such as community media, and not forgetting, also, the importance of media and information literacy,” she said.

Bilello added that, without progress in all those parameters, “societies cannot advance more specific practices, like health or agricultural communication, to optimum effect and participation by poor and marginalized people.”

But global FDI nevertheless declined by eight per cent in the first half of 2012 as economic recovery suffered new setbacks in the second quarter of the year, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), stated in its tenth Global Investment Trend Monitor. In the developing world, FDI inflows decreased by five per cent.

“The slow and bumpy recovery of the global economy, weak global demand and elevated risks related to regulatory policy changes continue to reinforce the wait-and-see attitude of many transnational companies toward investment abroad,” UNCTAD said in a press release on the report.

“UNCTAD’s longer term projections still show a moderate rise,” it added. “However, the risk of further macroeconomic shocks in 2013 can impact FDI inflows negatively.”

The report finds that global FDI fell $61 billion, with the decline mainly caused by a drop of $37 billion in inflows to the US and a fall of $23 billion in inflows to BRIC countries – Brazil, Russian Federation, India and China.

China nevertheless emerged as the world’s largest recipient of FDI in the first half of 2012, followed by the United States, the report notes.

It adds that FDI flows to the US might be stronger in the second half of 2012 because the value of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the third quarter of the year was “double those of the first half of the year,” and some further acquisitions are “already taking place or announced in the fourth quarter.”

One example cited by the report is the acquisition by the Japanese telecommunication company SoftBank of US firm Sprint Nextel for more than $20 billion. This will mark the largest investment ever by a Japanese company, the report says.

The position held by developing countries was made possible by the “steep fall” in FDI flows to the US and a “moderate decline” in flows to the EU, the report notes.

“For the first time, developing economies alone accounted for a half of the global total,” the report states, emphasizing it distinguished developing countries from the so-called “transition” economies, such as those of South-East Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“But while flows to Latin America and Africa rose, those to developing Asia decline,” the report adds.

“Investment leads economic growth but the current trends of investment flows to developing countries, particularly to Asia, are worrisome and the challenge for channelling FDI into key development sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture and the green economy remains daunting,” UNCTAD’s Secretary-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi, said in the news release.

In developed countries, the rise in flows to Europe and developed countries was not enough to compensate for the decline in flows to North America, the report says.

Compared to the full-year forecast of FDI inflows published in July, UNCTAD says it now projects that FDI flows will, at best, level-off in 2012 at slightly below $1.6 trillion.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 (SOFI), which was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), reveals that the number of hungry declined more sharply between 1990 and 2007 than previously believed. The new estimates are based on an improved methodology and data for the last two decades, the agencies said in a news release. The world has the knowledge and the means to eliminate all forms of food insecurity and malnutrition

Between the periods of 1990-92 and 2010-2012, the number of hungry people declined by 132 million, or from 18.6 per cent to 12.5 per cent of the world’s population. However, since 2007 global progress in reducing hunger has slowed and leveled off, which requires countries to take appropriate measures if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half by 2015, the report says.

“If the average annual hunger reduction of the past 20 years continues through to 2015, the percentage of undernourishment in the developing countries would reach 12.5 per cent – still above the MDG target of 11.6 per cent, but much closer to it than previously estimated,” the report says.

The revised numbers of hunger released today use updated information on population, food supply, food losses, dietary energy requirements and other factors. The numbers also reflect a better estimation of food distribution within countries.

“In today’s world of unprecedented technical and economic opportunities, we find it entirely unacceptable that more than 100 million children under five are underweight, and therefore unable to realize their full human and socio-economic potential, and that childhood malnutrition is a cause of death for more than 2.5 million children every year,” says the report’s foreword, written by FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze and WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin.

“We note with particular concern that the recovery of the world economy from the recent global financial crisis remains fragile. We nonetheless appeal to the international community to make extra efforts to assist the poorest in realizing their basic human right to adequate food. The world has the knowledge and the means to eliminate all forms of food insecurity and malnutrition,” they said.

The new estimates suggest that the increase in hunger during 2007-2010 was less severe than previously thought, and that the 2008-2009 economic crisis did not cause an immediate economic slowdown in many developing countries as was feared could happen. Many governments also succeeded in cushioning the shock and protecting vulnerable populations from the effects of rising food prices.

The new report notes that the methodology does not capture the short-term effects of food price surges and other economic shocks and adds that FAO is working to develop a wider set of indicators to better capture dietary quality and other dimensions of food security.

The vast majority of the hungry – 852 million – live in developing countries in Asia and Africa. While the number of malnourished people declined by almost 30 per cent in Asia and the Pacific over the past two decades, Africa experienced an increase from 175 million to 239 million people during the same period.

The report suggests adopting a twin-track approach based on support for economic growth, including agriculture growth involving smallholders, and safety nets for the most vulnerable. In addition, higher priority must be given to getting quality nutrition to prevent malnutrition co-existing with obesity and non-communicable diseases.

“What we are seeing now is a huge process of urbanization in the south which goes hand in hand with development. You cannot have one without the other. The problem is that the institutional architecture cannot keep pace with urbanization,” said the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Joan Clos at the opening of the 6th World Urban Forum in Naples, Italy.

“If there is no proper anticipation urbanization becomes a mess and if you try to correct the problem afterwards it costs a lot to fix. Countries are overwhelmed by urbanization. It’s like a tsunami. Urbanization goes faster than the capacity to manage it,” Clos said. “We need to re-design our cities to face these challenges.”

Clos stressed the importance of urban planning at national, state, and local levels to avoid informal settlements and slums, as well as high concentrations of people in mega capitals.

He stated that planning policies would help countries provide their citizens with jobs and prosperity while still tackling environmental challenges.

The World Urban Forum was established by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing problems facing the world today: rapid urbanization and its impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies.

Organized jointly by UN-Habitat, the Government of Italy, the Campania Region and the city of Naples, the theme for this year’s meeting, which will be attended by more than 3,000 participants, is The Urban Future.