Kerala, long regarded as a model of human development in the Global South, now confronts an intensifying triple challenge in the 21st century: climate change, food insecurity and livelihood vulnerability. Rising temperatures, erratic monsoons and an increased frequency of extreme weather events have fundamentally altered the state’s ecological and socio-economic landscape. These climatic shifts are no longer distant projections but lived realities that directly undermine agricultural productivity, disrupt marine ecosystems and destabilise rural incomes, thereby threatening the very foundations of food security and sustainable livelihoods. Agriculture, which remains predominantly rain-fed and dominated by smallholders, is very sensitive to climate variability. Paddy cultivation, once central to Kerala’s agrarian economy and food system, has witnessed a dramatic contraction in area. Today, Kerala heavily dependent on inter-state imports for rice and are vulnerable to supply shocks. The fisheries sector, faces parallel pressures from climate change. Livelihood vulnerability is compounded by the climate change impacts affects particularly for women and landless labourers. In response, Kerala has initiated a suite of policy measures, including the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC), the Kerala Climate-Resilient Agri-Value Chain Modernisation (KERA) project and the Kerala State Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (K-SBSAP) 2025–2035. The 2026–27 budget allocates ₹2,071.95 crore to agriculture and allied sectors, with dedicated funding for climate-resilient agriculture, paddy revival missions and fisheries transformation. Thus, securing Kerala’s future demands an integrated, cross-sectoral approach that strengthens local food systems, diversifies and protects livelihoods, embeds equity and health in adaptation planning and scales up climate finance and innovation. The paper aims to examine the interlinkages among climate change, food security and livelihoods in Kerala. The choices made in this decade will determine whether Kerala navigates the 21st century through deepening vulnerability or emerges as a model of climate-resilient, inclusive and sustainable development for tropical regions worldwide.

Transportation infrastructure is critical to economic transformation and sustainable development in emerging African economies, yet inadequate financing continues to constrain the development and efficiency of transport systems. This study examines the effect of transportation infrastructure financing on sustainable development, using economic growth as the principal indicator, with particular attention to public-private partnerships (PPPs), public investment, infrastructure bonds, concessional loans, and sovereign funds. The study adopted a quantitative survey design and analysed 2,836 valid responses obtained from transportation and logistics organisations. Least square regression was employed to examine the relationships between the financing mechanisms and sustainable development, while logistic regression was used as a robustness check. The results reveal positive and statistically significant relationships across all five financing mechanisms. Infrastructure bonds recorded the strongest estimated relationship (3.231), followed by public investment (2.841), sovereign funds (2.767), PPPs (2.764), and concessional loans (2.667), all significant at the 1% level. The robustness analysis further supports the consistency of the findings. The study concludes that diversified and effectively managed transportation infrastructure financing can contribute significantly to sustainable development in emerging African economies. It recommends stronger institutional capacity, improved governance, and strategic diversification of public and private financing sources.

This study examined how the external sector affects the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria from 1981 and 2023. The investigator used data on how much the manufacturing sector contributes to the country's total economic output, the exchange rate, foreign direct investments, the country's debt to other countries, how open the country is to international trade, official development aid, and money sent back by people living abroad – migrant remittances inflow. All these data came from reports by Nigeria’s central bank and the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The study used a specific method called Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds testing to analyze the data. The results showed that there is a long-term link between the different factors studied. In the long run, the exchange rate and trade openness have a negative and strong effect on manufacturing sector performance. On the other hand, foreign direct investments, the country's external debt, development aid from other countries, and money sent back by migrants all have a positive and strong effect on the manufacturing sector. In the short term, foreign direct investments, development aid, and migrant remittances inflow have a negative and strong effect on manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, the exchange rate, external debt, and trade openness have a positive and strong effect in the short term. Based on these results, the study concluded that opening up the economy, managing the exchange rate carefully, using external debt and aid in a productive way, and effectively using remittances inflow can help improve the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. The study also suggested that the government should create a clear policy that balances openness with building local capabilities and ensures that external resources are used well for developing manufacturing sector in Nigeria.