The reports from Sochi’s newly built hotels and Olympic Village have not painted their construction in the best light, with tales of doors that wouldn’t open, yellow drinking water, and collapsing fixtures…
Private sector-led growth might help.
DFID - UK Department for International Development
Justine Greening, the international development secretary, recently made a speech on how business can contribute to development. Three quarters of it was about the importance of economic growth in developing…
Small but powerful, the BRCK brings the web to those hard to reach places.
BRCK
The BRCK is, in a sense, just like the archetypal little black box. It does what you need and you don’t have to worry about its inner workings. The team developing it has a simple aim – to extend and stabilise…
Women comprise 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries.
CGIAR Climate
Our modern food system is a double-edged sword: delivering chronic under-nutrition due to shortages of nutritious food, and chronic obesity due to overconsumption. In Australia, we’re living among 60…
Some cardboard trees made by Hugo Boss and painted by children, because: sustainability!
Geoff Caddick/PA
While the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that became all the rage some time ago initially had worthwhile aims, it is now more commonly used by corporations to out-worthy their competitors…
Google says it can change the world with its Loon balloons.
iLighter
A flurry of initiatives aimed at connecting the billions – mainly in Africa – who still do not have access to the internet are underway. A few weeks ago, Google’s possibly aptly named Project Loon was…
Moving with the times. Mobile phones are a vital tool in African banking.
whiteafrican
Bitcoin has landed in Kenya. The online currency that was, until recently, the preserve of tech entrepreneurs and only the most pioneering financiers, is to go mainstream in Nairobi while the rest of us…
Universities do have a role to play in helping developing countries.
University image from www.shutterstock.com
The following is based on the Monash Richard Larkins Oration given by Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University last night in Melbourne. You can read and listen to our In…
The arrival of a healthy newborn baby is a cause for happiness and hope. But this is not always the case in the Western Pacific region, where a newborn dies every two minutes. Almost one third (30%) of…
Non-communicable diseases are the silent assassins in global health. Risk exposure begins in early childhood, and accumulates across the lifespan.
michaelwhays
What causes two out of every three deaths in the world, has been described by the Director-General of the World Health Organisation as “a slow motion disaster” and by the Secretary-General of the UN a…
It’s easy to find examples of good development in national parks - Cradle Mountain Lodge, for example - and examples of where it hasn’t worked.
Michael Dawes
You’d be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t love national parks, either as visitors or as reasonably-minded bystanders. But can those parks be loved to death? And, if so, who should step in to help…
Why is philanthropist Melinda Gates dedicating the rest of her life to improving women’s access to contraception?
DFID UK Department for International Development
Melinda Gates’ vow to put the availability of contraception back on the global health agenda – even if it means going against the Pope – has provided a welcome voice for logic and compassion. Speaking…
As many as one in four girls in the Pacific aged between 15 and 19 years are already mothers.
Graham Crumb
World leaders, international donors, government officials from developing countries and civil society organisations gathered at the London Summit on Family Planning overnight to support the right of women…
We need to take a better look at the role women can play in the Millenium Devlopment Goals.
AAP/EPA/Harish Tyagi
Mel Dunn, The University of Queensland and Danielle Logue, University of Technology Sydney
In part 11 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Danielle Logue and Mel Dunn note the striking absence of male voices in discussions of women’s empowerment, despite it being fundamental…
Land of the snow gums: Australian forests are dynamic.
Flickr/SplaTT
Forests spark emotional debates in Australia. Much of the rhetoric is about saving “the last of Tasmania’s wild forests” or how we must “stop logging in Australian native forests”. Australian forests…
Facing tough questions: NSW’s planning review must grapple with competing visions of development.
Flickr/Askew One
Later this year Brad Hazzard, NSW Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, faces a difficult decision. Will he prepare new state planning legislation that prioritises a desired outcome: healthy, functional…
Questions of planetary power: a mere 0.3% of transnational corporations control 40% of global revenue.
Flickr/paul (dex)
The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration. The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in…
Will the UN recommendations pull people out of poverty and reduce pressure on the environment?
The Advocacy Project
A recent cartoon (below) extrapolates the use of the word “sustainable”. It predicts that in 50 years each sentence will on average contain the word at least once. The cartoon is clever, and “sustainable…
Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in November last year was a very significant step towards reform in Burma.
EPA/Mizzima News
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is cautious, but says we are seeing the first signs of change in Burma, but the government there still needs to do more for its people. He is correct in saying “It is in our…
The world’s population is racing ahead compared to growth in the rest of the world.
AAP/Dean Lewins
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: As the global population passed the seven billion mark yesterday (give or take a few months – the data aren’t exact), Australia’s resident population will reach about 22.75 million…