Farmer-led development projects in places like Tanzania, shown here, can increase access to food and water, and reconnect people to nature.
(Cecilia Schubert/flickr)
Chinese investment is driving an unprecedented investment boom in global infrastructure. But despite its claims to be pursuing green development, China’s building bonanza is harming the planet.
Irrigated fields, like these in Nigeria, increase the risk of workers getting malaria.
Arne Hoel / World Bank
Health investments raise worker productivity, but firms may not observe changes in worker effort. Technology that measures physical activity demonstrates these potential gains.
Smallholder agriculture in southern Ethiopia. Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity.
Leah Samberg
According to the UN, world hunger is rising for the first time in 15 years. The answer is not only growing more food, but also buffering small-scale farmers against climate change and armed conflicts.
Scientists estimate that by 2020, non-communicable disease will account for almost 70% of the total disease burden.
Shutterstock
According to a new UN report, more than two billion people around the world do not have access to clean, safe water in their homes. Most of the work of getting water falls to women and girls.
Antibiotics are administered to surgery patients to prevent infections.
shutterstock
Infection of wounds for surgery patients is on the rise in developing countries. A shorter dose of antibiotics is appropriate.
Heavy gray smog blankets northeastern China, including Beijing and Tianjin, on Dec. 18, 2016 during a five-day air pollution ‘red alert.’
NASA Earth Observatory
New research shows that importing goods from low-wage countries has helped US manufacturers shift production to less-polluting industries, produce less waste and spend less on pollution control.
No need for a bank: Just a smartphone and a blockchain.
Houman Haddad/UN World Food Program
Nir Kshetri, University of North Carolina – Greensboro
Already becoming a darling of Wall Street, blockchain technology’s biggest real benefits could come to the world’s poorest people. Here’s how.
How will the downgrade of Zika’s emergency status affect women like this 23-year-old Vietnamese woman and her baby born with microcephaly?
Vietnam News Agency/AAP
Scientists from the developing world perceive current visa rules as a major impediment to professional travel. They miss out on opportunities to collaborate globally.
South Africa’s economy will be hit hard if universities can’t finish the year.
Cornell Tukiri/EPA
Economic models suggest that South Africa’s GDP would fall, inequality would deepen and unemployment would rise if university graduates don’t enter the labour market in 2017.
The financial safety net for South African children is better than in most countries. But other vulnerabilities aren’t taken care of adequately.
Reuters
The lack of service integration and the paucity of welfare services make poor people’s task of caring for their familes much harder. A small monthly cash transfer can’t solve all their challenges.
Community activities in Kampala, Uganda, organised by SASA!
Raising Voices/STRIVE
Millions of people live without access to electricity. Now it’s a battle between coal and renewables to bring cheap power.
A woman in Burkina Faso collects firewood. Developing nations – and particularly women in these nations – are more vulnerable to climate change, and have less ability to adapt.
CIFOR/Flickr
Climate justice is becoming an increasingly important part of climate action.
Major development banks are funding logging, mining and infrastructure projects that are having enormous impacts on nature. Here, forests are being razed along a newly constructed road in central Amazonia.
William Laurance
Big new investors such as the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank are key players in a worldwide infrastructure, and that could be bad news for the environment.
Bilateral investment treaties are stacked in favour of developed countries, the main sources of foreign direct investment.
Reuters/Tiksa Negeri
More developing countries are getting out of bilateral investment treaties that favour investors, seeking a framework that allows host states to regulate investment in line with their public policies.