In rich countries, the biggest causes of death are strokes, heart attacks and cancer, accounting for more than two-thirds of all deaths. But for the poorer world, people often assume that infectious diseases like diarrhoea, tuberculosis, AIDS, (...)
There are plenty of things, which those of us lucky enough to live in the industrialised world take for granted; running water and flush toilets are among the most basic of these. 2.5 billion – almost half of the developing world – lack even a basic (...)
Ebola has received much of the attention in 2014, killing about 8,000 people. Over the same period of time, however, about 4 million people died from AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. The truth is that, despite great progress in healthcare, much (...)
Where should the global community focus its attention over the next fifteen years? Health, nutrition and education may seem like obvious top priorities but, more surprisingly, there is also a strong case for broadband access to be considered. (...)
Air quality has improved dramatically in rich countries over the past century. Around 1880, when the air was worst in London, it is estimated that 9,000 people died each year from air pollution, about one of every seven deaths. Today, London air is (...)
In a world where there are so many worthwhile targets demanding our attention, we need to focus on those where we have the best chance of doing the most good. How about saving more than 14 million newborn by 2030? That's a pretty eye-catching (...)
The world faces many problems, and feeding a growing population adequately is certainly one of them. The good news is that we are well on track to halving the proportion of people suffering chronic hunger between 1990 and 2015. The bad news is that (...)
If we think about development priorities for the next 15 years – with the Millennium Development Goals expiring in 2015 – adequate nutrition and basic education immediately come to mind. Illicit financial flows (IFF) would not be top priority, but (...)
As the United Nations is currently debating how to allocate about $2.5tr in development aid for the 2015-2030 period, education will most likely gain prominence. But do we fund early education or secondary school? In a paper commissioned by the (...)
COPENHAGEN: This decade has seen remarkable progress against humanity's greatest challenges. Consider the declaration of victory over polio in India, which seemed impossible 10 years ago. January marked one year since the country's last reported (...)
COPENHAGEN: Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased ten-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective (...)
COPENHAGEN: One of the world's biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere.
Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling (...)
COPENHAGEN: Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.
Climate negotiations have been in (...)
COPENHAGEN: Extreme weather is often said to be one of the main reasons for taking firm action on global warming. Nowadays, no hurricane or heat wave passes without a politician or activist claiming it as evidence of the need for a global climate (...)
COPENHAGEN: When Denmark's new government ministers presented themselves to Queen Margrethe II last month, the incoming development minister established his green credentials by rolling up to the palace in a tiny, three-wheeled, electric-powered (...)
COPENHAGEN: Thirty years ago, the world got its first inkling of impending catastrophe when five young gay men in Los Angeles were struck down by the illness that became known as HIV/AIDS. Today, the disease has a truly global impact, claiming 1.8 (...)
COPENHAGEN: Amid a growing wave of concern about climate change, many countries — including Brazil, Australia, the United States, and the members of the European Union — passed laws in the 2000's outlawing or severely restricting access to (...)
NEW YORK: In May, the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change made media waves with a new report on renewable energy. As in the past, the IPCC first issued a short summary; only later would it reveal all of the data. So it was left up (...)
COPENHAGEN: At this century's start, leaders from every country agreed to pursue the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The ambition was to improve significantly the lot of the planet's most disadvantaged citizens before 2015.
The (...)
COPENHAGEN: Turmoil across the Middle East and Northern Africa has refocused attention on the impact that political tensions or interference can have on the price and availability of energy imports. Against consumer fears of gas-price hikes, energy (...)
NEW YORK: When parts of Japan were devastated recently by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, news of the human toll was quickly overshadowed by global fears of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant. The concern was (...)
COPENHAGEN: Political rhetoric has shifted away from the need to respond to the “generational challenge” of climate change. Investment in alternative energy technologies like solar and wind is no longer peddled on environmental grounds. Instead, we (...)
SYDNEY: Spectators at February's Daytona 500 in Florida were handed green flags to wave in celebration of the news that the race's stock cars now use gasoline with 15 percent corn-based ethanol. It was the start of a season-long television marketing (...)
KOLKATA: On the eastern edge of Kolkata, Dulu Bibi, a 25-year-old mother of four, worries about the cost of treating her two sick boys. Her husband earns 80-90 rupees ($1.90 or €1.40) a day. The family's basic diet is low in the essential (...)
COPENHAGEN: Several thousand officials from 194 countries just gathered in Cancún, Mexico, for yet another global climate summit. Dissatisfied with the pace of climate diplomacy, many individuals are now wondering what they can do about climate (...)