Toxic Air – The ‘Invisible Killer’ that Stifles 300 Million Children

About 300 million children in the world are living in areas with outdoor air so toxic – six or more times higher than international pollution guidelines – that it can cause serious health damage, including harming their brain development.

Longer, But Less Meaningful Lives?

The last one hundred years life expectancy has increased by about 25 per cent-from near 80 to near 100-in some countries. But, instead of increasing playful childhood, education, work and retirement by 25 per cent, the age of retirement has moved much less than the age at death.

Gorbachev Appeals for Sanity, Dialogue

President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous tensions, which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.

Are Public Enterprises Necessarily Inefficient?

From the 1980s, various studies purported to portray the public sector as a cesspool of abuse, inefficiency, incompetence and corruption. Books and articles with pejorative titles such as ‘vampire state’, ‘bureaucrats in business’ and so on thus provided the justification for privatization policies. Despite the caricature and exaggeration, there were always undoubted horror stories which could be cited as supposedly representative examples. But similarly, by way of contrast, other experiences show that SOEs can be run quite efficiently, even on commercial bases, confounding the dire predictions of the prophets of public sector doom.

Climate Doomsday – Another Step Closer

Almost inadvertently, humankind is getting closer everyday to the point of no-return towards what could be called the ‘climate doomsday’. Now, globally averaged concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has surged again to new records in 2016… and will not dip below pre-2015 levels for many generations.

Funding Lags to Combat Land Degradation

Land degradation already affects millions of people, bringing biodiversity loss, reduced availability of clean water, food insecurity and greater vulnerability to the harsh impacts of climate change.

UN Must Fight Tax Evasion, Says UN Expert

A UN Human Rights Expert has called on the international community to fight tax evasion and abolish tax havens that siphon off essential resources from human rights protection and global development.

Who Should Lead the WHO Next?

Health problems increasingly transcend the borders of the World Health Organization’s 194 member states, a challenge which the six candidates vying to lead the global body must address with care.

How to Save Thousands of Children’s Lives

When disasters strike, children are among the most vulnerable, and humanitarian aid agencies need to be able to respond immediately to save their lives.

World Must Tackle the Biggest Killer of Whales – and it’s not Whaling

Every two years, governments from across the globe gather to debate the fate of the world’s whales. And every two years, Japan, Norway and Iceland find themselves in the firing line for their refusal to end commercial whaling.

Governments and Social Movements Disagree on Future of Cities

The Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development and the alternative forums held by social organisations ended in the Ecuadorean capital with opposing visions regarding the future of cities and the fulfillment of rights in urban areas.

UN Extends Condolences on Passing of H.M. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand 

On the morning of 13 October 2016 members of the UN General Assembly observed a minute of silence in honour of Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand, who died earlier that day.

Funding Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities in Developing Countries

About half of the world’s 65 million school-age children with disabilities in developing countries are reportedly out of school, according to a new report regarding inclusive education funding for children with disabilities.

Privatization the Problem, Rarely the Solution

Privatization has been one of the pillars of the counter-revolution against development economics and government activism from the 1980s. Many developing countries were forced to accept privatization as a condition for support from the World Bank while many other countries have embraced privatization, often on the pretext of fiscal and debt constraints.

Changing Climate Threatens World’s Smallholder Farmers

Farmers are already experiencing the effects of climate change but can also help to fight it, according to a new report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

U.N. Urban Summit Gives Rise to a Mixture of Optimism and Criticism

Experts and activists greeted with a mixture of hope and skepticism the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), which opened Monday Oct. 17 in the capital of Ecuador, and which seeks to produce a new urban agenda for cities and their inhabitants.

Q&A: Land Degradation Could Force 135 Million to Migrate in Next 30 Years

One of the critical challenges facing the world today is that emerging migration patterns are increasingly rooted in the depletion of natural resources.

From City 50/50 to Planet 50/50 – How to Step it Up for Gender Equality and Sustainable Development

Urban development ministers, mayors from all over the world, city planners, architects and municipal authorities, civil society and private sector will meet in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, for Habitat III, the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (17-20 October, 2016), to adopt the New Urban Agenda as well as to strategize and agree on its implementation.

We Can Eliminate Hunger and Poverty Quickly with Greater Commitment

Why do people go hungry? Mainly because they do not have the means to get enough food, whether by producing it themselves or by purchasing it. There is more than enough food to feed the world. All those who currently go hungry can be adequately fed with about two percent of current food production, much more of which is wasted or lost. The main problem is one of distribution or access, rather than production or availability.

Eradicating Poverty – a Lofty Ideal or Achievable Goal?

The first Sustainable Development Goal calls for us to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. The goal and the deadline are ambitious - and they need to be. We do not have the luxury of time.

Inclusion in Markets Replaces Exclusion from Success – How Seeds and Insurance Can Lead to Pride

“Humiliation and exclusion” – what a fascinating thematic twist to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty! Too often, discussion of poverty focuses entirely on material resources. Those play an important role, but are only part of the story. We all know people who seem happy with very little, and others who are definitely unhappy with riches. However, having children publicly sent home from school because of unpaid fees is just one of the many humiliations faced by small farmers and other resource-poor people around the world. The resulting exclusion from education and the society of their peers is a terrible burden to force upon children. Poverty brings many others as well.