Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Cyclone Pam Worsens Hardship in Port Vila’s Urban Settlements

By Catherine Wilson
Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam, which swept through the South Pacific Island state of Vanuatu in mid-March, has deepened hardships faced by people living in the informal settlements of the capital, Port Vila. Winds of up to 340 kph and torrential rain shattered precarious homes, cut off fragile public services and flooded communities with unsealed roads, poor drainage and sanitation.

Nepal: A Trailblazer in Biodiversity Conservation

By Naresh Newar
At dusk, when the early evening sun casts its rays over the lush landscape, the Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 200 km south of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, is a place of the utmost tranquility.

Pollution a Key but Underrated Factor in New Development Goals

By Stephen Leahy
Pollution is likely to be the most pressing global health issue in the coming years without effective prevention and clean-up efforts, experts say.

Indonesian President Unyielding on Death Penalty

By Sandra Siagian
When Indonesia’s law and human rights minister visited one of the country’s prisons in December last year, he met a Nigerian convict on death row for drug trafficking, who performed songs for him before leaving him with a parting gift.

Opinion: Education as a Cornerstone for Women’s Empowerment

By Dr. Kirsten Stoebenau
Earlier this month, the Barack Obama administration announced a new initiative designed to improve girls’ education around the world. Dubbed “Let Girls Learn,” the programme builds on current progress made, such as ensuring girls are enrolled in primary school at the same rates as boys, and is looking to expand opportunities for girls to complete their education.

Hold the Rich Accountable in New U.N. Development Goals, Say NGOs

By Thalif Deen
When the World Economic Forum (WEF) met last January in Switzerland, attended mostly by the rich and the super-rich, the London-based charity Oxfam unveiled a report with an alarming statistic: if current trends continue, the world’s richest one percent would own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016.

Opinion: Water and Sanitation in Nigeria – Playing the Numbers Game

By Clinton Ikechukwu Ezeigwe
In Nigeria, it’s all about the numbers. My nation recently became the largest economy in Africa by some distance, with a GDP of well over 500 billion dollars.

Opinion: ‘We Owe It to More Than Half of the Global Population to Do a Better Job’

By Josephine Ojiambo
Undoubtedly, we are at a crucial time in the advancement of gender equality.

Development and Taxes, a Vital Piece of the Post-2015 Puzzle

By Lyndal Rowlands
Public funds are vitally important to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), making corporate tax avoidance trends a pressing issue for post-2015 Financing for Development discussions.

Opinion: Sustainable Development Goals Could Be a Game-Changer for Water

By Betsy Otto and Kitty van der Heijden
Suppose money was being deposited and withdrawn from your bank account, but you didn’t know how much. And suppose you knew you had bills coming due, but you didn’t know when or what amount would be required to cover them.

Women in the Philippines at the Forefront of the Health Food Movement

By Diana Mendoza
When Tinay Alterado’s team from ARUGAAN, an organisation of women healthcare advocates, visited Eastern Visayas, a region of the Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, they noticed that the relief and rescue sites were flooded with donated milk formula, which nursing mothers were feeding to their babies in vast quantities.

Nobel Peace Laureate Calls for Global Human Compassion to Combat Child Slavery

By Lyndal Rowlands
Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called for globalised human compassion to combat the global and persistent problems of child labour and child slavery.

Key to Preventing Disasters Lies in Understanding Them

By Ramesh Jaura
The Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction concluded on Wednesday after a long drawn-out round of final negotiations, with representatives of 187 U.N. member states finally agreeing on what is being described as a far-reaching new framework for the next 15 years: 2015-2030.

Middle Income Nations Home to Half the World’s Hungry

By Thalif Deen
Nearly half of the world’s hungry, amounting to about 363 million people, live in some of the rising middle income countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Women Turn Drought into a Lesson on Sustainability

By Zofeen Ebrahim
When a group of women in the remote village of Sadhuraks in Pakistan’s Thar Desert, some 800 km from the port city of Karachi, were asked if they would want to be born a woman in their next life, the answer from each was a resounding ‘no’.

Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry in Need of a Makeover

By Amantha Perera
Over the past three decades, 50 percent of the 544,150 square kilometres that comprise Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, has been taken over by the palm oil industry.

Opinion: Gender Equality, the Last Big Poverty Challenge

By Preethi Sundaram and Fiona Salter
It is estimated that women account for two-thirds of the 1.4 billion people currently living in extreme poverty. They also make up 60 per cent of the world’s 572 million working poor.

Sendai Conference to Move From Managing Disasters to Risk Prevention

By Jamshed Baruah and Katsuhiro Asagiri
As the world inched towards a crucial United Nations Conference in Sendai, Japan, Margareta Wahlström, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), assured that there was “general agreement” on the need to “move from managing disasters to managing disaster risk”. 

Coal: Burning Up Australia’s Future

By Suganthi Singarayar
With less than a year to go before the United Nation’s annual climate change meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in November 2015, citizens and civil society groups are pushing their elected leaders to take stock of national commitments to lower carbon emissions in a bid to cap runaway global warming.

Opinion: The World Sees Progress Against Undernutrition, but it’s Uneven

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
In 2014, an estimated 805 million people – one in nine people worldwide – were estimated to be chronically hungry. All but 14 million of the world’s hungry live in developing countries, i.e., 791 million are in developing countries, where the share of the hungry has declined by less than half – from 23.4 per cent (1990-1992) to 13.5 per cent (2012-2014).

In India, an Indoor Health Crisis

By Athar Parvaiz
For years, Kehmli Devi, a middle-aged woman from the village of Chachadeth in India’s northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, has prepared her family’s meals on a wood-burning stove.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*