Is the world getting better or worse?

When it comes to cooking indoors over open fires, the harmful health effects can be equal to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. This indoor air pollution plagues nearly nine out of every 10 Bangladeshi households, which use wood and other biofuels to cook inside.

Over time, exposure to smoke from indoor cooking leads to deadly diseases such as lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease. This is why it's the most deadly environmental problem in the world. In Bangladesh, such indoor air pollution is responsible for 10-15 percent of all deaths.

By Nicholas Newman, Oxford Prospect.  Increasingly, we are hearing the term that something must be done to solve the world’s almost never-ending ending crises. The media is full of pressing appeals that every problem is urgent and must be tackled immediately, with often little regard to the economic and social costs involved. Unfortunately, for policy makers, the real world of geopolitics and budgetary issues forces politicians to prioritise decisions. Often such policy decisions will be both tough to make and politically unpopular with the public at large.

What's the best way for the United Nations to help the developing world? Right now, the organisation is in the process of setting its global development agenda for the next 15 years - and the most important thing to do is to set goals which it can actually achieve, and to work out what the best way to spend its money is. Economics may well show the way.