The Bond that is Educating Girls Across India

Barely five months into the start of Sneha's year at a government school in Bhilwara, a town in India's desert state of Rajasthan, the bubbly 15-year-old was pulled out by her parents. They wanted her to stay at home instead, to look after her four younger siblings and to cook and clean for the family as her parents worked on their farm.

Legal Weapons Have Failed to Curb Femicides in Latin America

Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region.

Migrants Send Record Amounts to Home Countries, but Overall Poverty Pertains

At the end of this year, migrants will have sent 466 billion dollars to family and friends in their countries of origin. Despite this record amount these remittances have little to no effect on the dire economic state of affairs in those home countries. Earlier this week in Brussels, a group of experts convened to think of ways to make the sent money work in a way that benefits more than just a few lucky families. 

Re-Defining Poverty in its Many Dimensions

Poverty has many dimensions beyond a lack of money. The need for a better understanding of the multiple ways people experience poverty is gaining momentum, as is the importance of measuring the often - overlapping deprivations people face. Understanding both is vital for better decision making.

Marine Waste is Turning the Earth into a Plastic Planet

Africa risks being the worst plastic-polluted place on earth within three decades overtaking Asia, says a continental network calling for African contributions to solving the growing threat of marine waste.

Q&A: The Arrival of the African Blue Economy as a Real Prospect

The first every global conference to address the twin focuses on both conservation and economic growth of the oceans has fulfilled the broad range of expectations it set out to define.

‘What Fish Can Do for the WTO’

Fish will soon be off the menu, unless global leaders strike a deal ending multi-billion dollar harmful fisheries subsidies blamed for threatening world fish stocks and widening the inequitable use of marine resources.

‘A Turtle is Worth More Alive Than Dead’

On the north-eastern shores of Trinidad and Tobago, on the shoreline of Matura, more than 10,000 leatherback turtles climb the beaches to nest each year. But there the local community is keenly area of one thing: ‘a turtle alive is worth more than a turtle dead.”

Global, Inclusive Partnerships Essential for the Future Sustainability of our Oceans and Seas

Throughout history, oceans, seas, lakes and rivers have provided life and livelihoods to people around the world. Today, they are a multi-trillion-dollar global economy supporting hundreds of millions of people and helping drive economic growth in all corners of the world.

Climate Change Drives Up Rural Poverty in Latin America

Only 18 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean live in rural areas, but these are increasingly hotbeds of poverty, and climate change is playing a major role in this phenomenon.

How Australia Sustainably Manages the World’s Last Wild Commercial Fishery of Pearl Oysters

Australia’s remote north-western Kimberley coast, where the Great Sandy Desert meets the sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean, is home to the giant Pinctada maxima or silver-lipped pearl oyster shells that produce the finest and highly-prized Australian South Sea Pearls.

The Start of an Important Global Conversation on the Blue Economy

This November, Canada, along with Kenya and Japan, is proud to host the world’s first global conference focused on the world’s ocean economy: the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

Expectations High for First Global Blue Economy Conference

In a matter of days the world’s blue economy actors and experts will converge in Nairobi, Kenya for the first ever global conference on sustainable blue economy.

Women Must be at the Heart of Africa’s Blue Economy

The blue economy has quite rightly been described as the ‘New Frontier of the African Renaissance’. Its potential for a continent on which almost two thirds of its states have a coastline, whose trade is 90 percent sea-borne and whose lakes constitute the largest proportion of surface freshwater in the world, is enormous.

Solar Energy Drives Social Development in Brazil’s Favelas

"We can't work just to pay the electric bill," complained José Hilario dos Santos, president of the Residents Association of Morro de Santa Marta, a favela or shantytown embedded in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

Improved Husbandry Practices Boosts Aquaculture in Kenya

Despite the humid late October midday weather in Kisumu County near the shores of Lake Victoria, Jane Kisia is busy walking around her fish ponds feeding her fish. As she rhythmically throws handfuls of pellets into the ponds, located within her homestead, the fish ravenously gobble them up.

Cuba’s Only Semiarid Region Reinvents Agriculture to Survive

At a brisk pace, Marciano Calamato and Mireya Noa walk along the dry, yellow soil of their farm, where they even manage to grow onions in Cuba's unique semi-arid eastern region.

E-Commerce Giants Under Fire for Retailing Hazardous Mercury-Based Cosmetics

A coalition of over 50 civil society organizations (CSOs), from more than 20 countries, have urged two of the world’s largest multi-billion dollar E-commerce retailers – Amazon and eBay – to stop marketing “dangerous and illegal mercury-based skin lightening creams.”

Kenya Looks to Lead the Way in Developing the Blue Economy’s Potential

For many years now, the economic potential of the African continent has been discussed, promoted and hailed by everyone from economists to policymakers to world leaders – and with very good reason. After all, Africa is a vast, populous, developing continent with enormous natural and human resource riches and a raft of rapidly developing economies which are helping create prosperity and raise living standards and social opportunities through economic growth.

Women Make the Voice of Indigenous People Heard in Argentina

The seed was planted more than 20 years ago by a group of indigenous women who began to gather to try to recover memories from their people. Today, women are also the main protagonists of La Voz Indígena (The Indigenous Voice), a unique radio station in northern Argentina that broadcasts every day in seven languages.

Q&A: All Sustainable Development Goals Relate in Some Way to the Oceans

When Peter Thomson, the United Nation’s Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, heard in 2010 there was going to be a 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, he knew he had to include the ocean question.