Global Development
In an increasingly globalized world, international development efforts aim to improve living conditions, equity, and human rights around the world. Our global development section tracks this globalization and reports on specific equitable and sustainable development initiatives.
COP26 announces $1.7 billion funding for Indigenous forest protection
Indigenous communities play a vital role in environmental preservation, and to bolster the power of Indigenous wisdom in conservation, the governments of the UK, US, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands have announced a $1.7 billion funding pledge to support Indigenous peoples in reversing forest Read More...
COP26: Over 100 countries pledge to stop deforestation
The COP26 climate conference is in full swing and is celebrating its first big achievement: A pledge from more than 100 countries to end deforestation. The participating countries, which represent more than 85 percent of the world’s forests, have committed to ending and reversing deforestation Read More...
5 Optimistic predictions about the COP26 climate conference
The stakes (and tensions) are high this week as the COP26 climate summit kicks off in Glasgow. Big issues, like renewable energy and biodiversity, are being discussed on a global scale, and while there are huge issues to tackle, there are also reasons to be optimistic. Just the fact that world Read More...
Alphabet makes its low-cost water harvester open-source
According to WHO/UNICEF, about a third of the global population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water. More than half of these people, however, live in areas with just the right climate conditions to enable special water harvesting technologies to provide clean drinking water. This is Read More...
Study: Start of season metrics provide strong insights into future famine risks
Researchers from UC Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Center have released a new study that identifies how the start of season indicators could predict potential famines. Two key metrics are used to determine famine risk: availability and accessibility. Availability refers to yields, while Read More...
Barbados elects Dame Sandra Mason as new republic’s first president
Barbados is preparing to become a republic and has recently elected its first female, and first-ever, president. Dame Sandra Mason was the first woman to serve on the Barbados Court of Appeals and has served as the governor-general since 2018. In a bid to finally leave its colonial past behind, Read More...
Éléonore Laloux changes lives as first French public official with Down syndrome
In Arras, France, a city council member is making history as the city’s public official in charge of inclusion and happiness. Éléonore Laloux is the first and only person with Down syndrome to be elected to public office in the country. Laloux was recently awarded membership in the National Read More...
Egypt's State Council swears-in the nation's first female judges
Egypt’s State Council was established in 1946 and is an independent judicial body that deals with administrative disputes, disciplinary cases, appeals, reviews draft laws, decisions, and contracts that involve the government or a government-run body. And until recently, was exclusively Read More...
These are the inaugural winners of the Earthshot Prize
We have previously wrote about Earthshot Prize nominee Vinisha Umashankar, a clever 14-year-old student from Tamil Nadu who created a mobile ironing cart that runs off solar power. Although Umashankar didn’t win an Earthshot Prize, the five other recipients were recently announced. Here are the Read More...
UN votes to make a clean and healthy environment a human right
The U.N. Human Rights Council has finally recognized access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental human right, adding it to others─like food, shelter, and freedom from slavery─laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The resolution was first discussed in the Read More...