The isolated hills in landlocked Laos have become the newest portion of a multi-billion-dollar highway system connecting China to Southeast Asia. Laos, a region once impoverished by decades of conflict and isolation, now finds itself in the middle of a fast-paced flow of people, goods and services benefiting from China and the Asian Development Bank’s decade-long plan for an integrated regional trade route. A new road linking Laos to its richer neighbors brings up the question of balance between rapid economic progress and environmental protection in less-developed countries. While Laos is certainly among the world’s most environmentally pristine countries, and for that reason an appealing backpacking destination, its people seek a life beyond meager trading in opium and tiger bones. Laos is the final link in a 6,500-kilometer overland route expected to boost trade and tourism from Singapore to Beijing. Supporters of this regional highway network argue that the new trade route will help reduce poverty by providing access to markets, income, and employment opportunities. According to the International Herald Tribune, total trade between China and the Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam has risen from $5.7 billion a decade ago to $53 billion in 2007. The highways will also provide people with easier access to social services, such as health clinics, and increase revenue in the tourism sector. Critics from abroad, however, are quick to argue that the network of highways will contribute to widespread pollution and natural resource depletion as well as promote illegal wildlife and timber trade. For Laotians, the concerns aren't environmental but social.

Lao expert Martin Stuart-Fox of Australia's University of Queensland said many Lao people now feared the "truck-stop development" of their country. "Lao friends of mine fear that social ills such as HIV/AIDS and prostitution will flourish, and that it will make it easier to lure young Lao to be exploited — sexually and otherwise — in Thailand and Vietnam."

Move over Italy. Developing countries are the up-and-coming leaders of the leather market, boasting cheaper production costs and fewer environmental regulations.

There is a good chance that your soccer ball, leather belt or aviator jacket was tanned in one of Pakistan’s 2,500 leather factories in the industrial centers of Karachi, Kasur, and Sialkot. The factories mostly employ poor people from neighboring areas, especially young children who will work for cheap wages. In one town alone, Kasur, more than 700 children worked in leather-tanning factories, according to the International Labor Organization.

NPR's Marketplace recently profiled a 17-year-old Pakistani boy, Mohmen, who's worked in the tanning industry since he was 13.

Like so many of Pakistan’s child workers, Mohmen has sacrificed his childhood to support his family. He has toiled in a hazardous leather tanning factory for four years. Six days a week Mohmen moves animal skins from a cart to a conveyor belt.

His heavy workload is not the only thing in the factory that will begin to take a toll on Mohmen. A 1996 Swedish study found that leather tannery workers experience an increased risk of cancer due to their exposure to toxic chemicals.

Mohmen would like to leave and go home to his family but he knows that he cannot. “How can I go home if I have to keep paying somebody? I keep paying what my family owes.” He is just a kid, but he is in an adult world where there is no rest from poverty's harsh realities.

Ciclovía Documentary shot by Streetfilms

Bogotá, Colombia is holding a 70-mile long block party. And everyone’s invited.

Ciclovía — "bike path" in Spanish — is an event that closes down major roads for pedestrian use every Sunday and holiday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Created in 1976, it rapidly grew from eight miles and 140,000 bicyclists to 70 miles and an average of 1.5 million weekly riders. Ciclovía is championed as a community building event that attracts people from all backgrounds for a day of biking, walking, skating and dancing in the streets.

In the above video, Bogota’s former park commissioner Guillermo (Gil) Penalosa discusses Ciclovía’s main appeal: social integration.

You will see people in $5,000 bikes and others in $50 bikes, and all having the same fun! Rich and poor, young and old, men and woman, tall or short... ALL!

Cited for “endless benefits” such as the improvement of personal and public health, Ciclovía has inspired other cities to develop similar programs, including Guadalajara, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; and Paris, where an expressway along the Seine is transformed into a pedestrian refuge one month out of the summer.

Cities in the U.S. are also developing similar programs, starting with El Paso, Texas. This Sunday Portland, Ore., is clearing 6 miles of roadway for six hours in its inaugural "Sunday Parkways." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his city's plans for Ciclovía-like event this August that would stretch from 72nd to the Brooklyn Bridge along Park Avenue.

Events such as Ciclovía are not only free, but they also bring all sorts of people together to get healthy and build a happy community. It seems like a no-brainer that every city should have a Ciclovía!