This article is a contribution to the debate over Asia' s economic crisis. In particular it explores the actions and motives of one of the key actors in the Asian crashÐ the International Monetary Fund. The article demonstrates that the IMF does not have a monopoly of social or economic wisdom (far from it). If the Fund' s neoliberal crusaders can be reined in, and alternatives explored, the crisis can offer Asia the chance to forge democratic and sustainable alternatives to the ruinous development path of recent years. If not, then ordinary Asians could come to look back on the 1970s and 1980s as a golden era. That would indeed be a tragic testament to the failings of the`rescue packages' of 1997.The article begins by describing what actually happened in the three worst hit countries of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. It goes on to explore the human impact of the crisis. This provides the material for a detailed analysis of the IMF' s role, and of the numerous failings in its performance to date. The article concludes with recommendations for reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, and the international ® nancial system. Criticising the solutions imposed by the IMF in no way implies an uncritical endorsement of Asian development models. The political and economic systems in these countries have brought improvements in health, education and living standards. But the cost has been high in terms of sharpening the divide between rich and poor of environmental exploitation and loss of community control over natural resources, and of growth without economic democracy or the expansion of political participation.

The 'green economy' project claims to address the social, economic and ecological crises afflicting the world today, yet there appears to be too little elite consensus for it to be viable in the near future. Nicola Bullard and Tadzio Müller suggest that this absence of elite consensus renders the counter-hegemonic 'climate justice' project similarly weak, leading to a retreat from the global sphere of the (emerging) global climate justice movement. Yet on the ground there are strong and dynamic climate justice movements whose main challenge is to broaden their struggle beyond their current base and to create their own 'globality'.

No abstract

This issue of Development was prepared in the lead-up to the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), an intergovernmental conference organized by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to address malnutrition in all its forms. Held in Rome, Italy, on 19-21 November 2014, the conference took place 22 years after the first ICN. While the articles in this issue were completed immediately before ICN2, this editorial is written in its aftermath and therefore reflects on the outcomes of the process. Nutrition is considered a technical matter by most and the conference preparations attempted to de-root nutrition from its intimate relations with the nature of food systems as well as its broader social, economic and political determinants. In contrast, the articles in this issue highlight that nutrition is a profoundly political issue not only for its deep implications on people's rights, livelihoods and health, but also because of the consequences that choosing among alternative paths to nutrition may have on the nature and pattern of globalization. It is indeed one of the underlying framing issues of our times and the critical battlefield of the struggle between the hegemonic form of economic and cultural globalization and the alternatives offered by the solidarity and social economy as well as the philosophy and practice of Buen Vivir. The aspiration for adequate nutrition demarcates a critical crossroads: on one side, the emerging global food system that promotes unhealthy and unsustainable diets based on ultra-processed foods and beverages, and increasingly dispossesses small-scale food producers and their communities of resources, opportunities and dignity. On the other, a democratic and culturally diverse polyphony of local vibrant food systems based on food sovereignty, women's empowerment, biodiversity, deep environmental foundations, agro-ecological principles and economic pluralism. The forces at play are powerful. For the agro-industrial and pharmaceutical complex, malnutrition is indeed good business and so is the increasing incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases. Chronic illness with several consequential secondary diseases are goldmines for pharmaceutical companies, exactly as nutritional deficits offer ample market opportunities for supplementation, food fortification and genetic

No abstract