Urban areas are increasingly prone to flooding due to climate change, rising urbanization, and inadequate stormwater management. A recent paper estimated that 1.81 billion people, or 23% of the world population, are directly exposed to a 1-in-100-year flood event, posing significant risk to lives and livelihoods. As climate change further disrupts weather patterns, river flows, and sea levels, […]
With more than 50 percent of its population living in hardship, Guatemala has one of the highest poverty rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is undoubtedly a difficult situation for us to accept, but from a historical perspective, we can nevertheless see that some progress has been made . For example, in the mid-1980s, around […]
Learning to read is deeply influenced by language abilities which begin developing at birth. To be able to read, children need to ‘sound out’ words (decode) and understand what those words mean (language comprehension). Reading comprehension is a product of these two tasks and a deficit in either skill will severely limit a child’s ability […]
The 2023 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals provides a comprehensive overview of the progress made towards achieving the SDGs. The report highlights critical findings that are essential to understanding the current state of the world and the challenges that lie ahead. Below are a few we found particularly impactful. 1. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Saved Many […]
In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a follow up to, Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About, which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of […]
All countries must urgently invest in resilient, equitable health systems At the halfway point to 2030, half the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services and the proportion of people facing financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending has worsened . As world leaders convene at the SDG Summit during the 78th UN General Assembly in New […]
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, countries have been embracing more protectionist measures and shying away from multilateral trade agreements. However, the rise of smaller preferential trade agreements, or PTAs, has been a promising development towards bolstering international trade. PTAs set rules for commerce and remove trade barriers among a limited number of member countries. […]
As countries respond to the pressing challenges of climate change and environmental degradation, the re-use, re-manufacturing, and recycling of products in a circular economy offers a promising path for sustainable economic growth. Renewable energy, water treatment, textiles, electronics, and ICT recycling, and industries that reuse organic materials are key to the circular economy. While the […]
In today’s rapidly changing world, citizen engagement has emerged as a crucial element in development projects. By empowering citizens and involving them in decision-making processes, development interventions can become more inclusive and responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people they are designed to benefit. The World Bank´s Caribbean Hotspot Project, implemented under the Critical […]
India’s Reliance Retail is in talks with existing investors including the sovereign wealth funds of Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia for combined new investments of around $1.5 billion, three sources with direct knowledge of the plan said. Reliance Retail is India’s largest retailer and is led by Asia’s richest person Mukesh Ambani. The talks […]
