For information only - not an official document

UNIS/OUS/054
17 November 2010

Re-issued as received

World's Least Developed Countries Can Increase Productive Capacity, Say Making It Magazine Contributors

VIENNA, 17 November (UN Information Service) - Least Developed Countries (LDCs) can meet the challenge of the global economic crisis by improving productive resources, entrepreneurial capabilities, and production linkages, according to contributors to the latest issue of the magazine Making It: Industry for Development.

The United Nations' High Representative for LDCs, Cheick Sidi Diarra, writes in his article that it is only by strengthening their productive capacity that the world's poorest and most economically vulnerable countries can build up their resilience to external shocks and lessen their dependence on foreign aid.

Ahead of the Fourth UN conference on LDCs that will take place in May 2011, Making It also features an interview with Debapriya Bhattacharya of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in which he highlights the dilemma of how to "marry" economic growth with poverty reduction. The LDCs need help to bring about structural changes in order to achieve "inclusive, broad-based, productive growth", says Bhattacharya.

With the Cancún climate change conference just weeks away, Making It features two dispatches from the climate frontlines. Kiribati's president, Anote Tong, talks about the threat to his country's very existence in the form of rising sea levels and temperatures, while Fijian youth activist, Krishneil Narayan, calls on the people of the industrialized countries to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to save the Pacific region from disaster.

Milford Bateman, author of Why Doesn't Microfinance Work?, argues in the new issue of the magazine that community-controlled and owned financial bodies are the real key to poverty reduction and sustainable development, and the International Trade Centre's Patricia Francis defends global trade against charges that it is causing climate change.

Making It's website - www.makingitmagazine.net - contains not only all the content of the print versions but other original articles and features, as well.

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For more information, please contact:

Charles Arthur
Editor, Making It
Telephone: (+43-1) 26026-3638
Email: c.arthur@unido.org