BY EUGENIO DÍAZ-BONILLA Article 2 of the Paris Climate Agreement sets out the principal goals of the pact, including holding the increase in the global average temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and increasing adaptability and resilience. It also establishes the additional purpose of “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” It is not
BY JESSICA LEIGHT AND NAUREEN KARACHIWALLA Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to prolonged school closures around the world that have disrupted the educational progression of hundreds of millions of students. According to UNESCO, these closures peaked around June 2020, at which point 50% of all students worldwide—more than 800 million—were out of school. Particularly in developing countries, where
BY SWATI MALHOTRA The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted trade of food and farm products, and the agricultural sector is under immense pressure to overcome trade barriers while also responding to climate change. With ongoing tensions between major economies and with current structural impacts in trade and food security, the upcoming (and now twice-postponed due to the pandemic) 12th WTO Ministerial Conference is
BY KATE AMBLER, KELLY JONES AND MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN Empowering women is a goal of many development programs, both as a primary objective and a tool for increasing family welfare and stimulating economic development. Conventional wisdom suggests that empowered women invest more in children, and this has translated into policy: Many large-scale cash transfer programs are designed to target women. However, the
BY HODA EL-ENBABY, DANIEL O. GILLIGAN, NAUREEN KARACHIWALLA, YUMNA KASSIM AND SIKANDRA KURDI Cash transfer programs have become one of the most popular ways to reduce poverty in low-income countries and have made substantial strides in doing so. Recently, attention has turned to the design of these programs, such as whether to target transfers explicitly to women, as well as
BY SWATI MALHOTRA, ALAN DE BRAUW, ERWIN BULTE AND EVGENIYA ANISIMOVA The agricultural productivity gap between actual and potential yields in Africa south of the Sahara has been a persistent challenge since the post-World War II independence movement. Despite efforts by governments, international foundations, UN agencies, and private investors, smallholder agricultural production—which dominates in Africa—continues to lag behind its potential,
BY THOMAS FALK, DENNIS SCHÜPF,WEI ZHANG AND ILKHOM SOLIEV India is globally the largest groundwater user and simultaneously among the world’s most water stressed countries (WRI 2016). Almost two thirds of the water requirement for irrigation and 85% of domestic water use depend on groundwater (World Bank 2010). The growing competition over water resources can only be addressed by systemic
BY MELISSA HIDROBO, NAUREEN KARACHIWALLA AND SHALINI ROY Mental ill-health is a significant disease burden. It is responsible for 8% of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) globally—one DALY represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health. In low and middle-income countries, adequate care for mental illness is largely inaccessible and the treatment gap (the percentage of individuals who require care but