Posts tagged with 'poverty'
A Green Recovery Starts with Cities
A Green Recovery Starts with Cities
National governments face an enormous triple challenge right now: recovering from COVID-19, creating sustainable and inclusive development, and addressing the climate crisis. New research shows that focusing on cities is key to overcoming these challenges while generating considerable economic, social and environmental benefits. A ...
3 Shifts to Advance Adaptation and Resilience in 2021
3 Shifts to Advance Adaptation and Resilience in 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic did not break the world, but rather revealed a world already broken. COVID-19 and the climate crisis exposed the fragility of economies and societies, upending the lives of people worldwide and, in particular, harming vulnerable communities and countries already facing ...
The Great Reset: 7 Environment and Sustainability Stories to Watch in 2021
The Great Reset: 7 Environment and Sustainability Stories to Watch in 2021
2020 upended life as we know it. The coronavirus killed almost 2 million people and counting, while roughly 100 million people fell into extreme poverty. The world entered its worst recession since the second world war. Deep-rooted racial and economic injustices were ...
Better Trash Collection for a Stronger Recovery: Solid Waste Management as a Pillar of Urban Change
Better Trash Collection for a Stronger Recovery: Solid Waste Management as a Pillar of Urban Change
Solid waste workers have been indispensable to protecting cities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their heroic examples, from India to Vietnam to Latin America, have helped cities keep moving. But a critical alignment of factors is making their ...
Urban Sanitation Is a Climate and Economic Issue Too
Urban Sanitation Is a Climate and Economic Issue Too
Along the Ngong River in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s slum neighborhoods and home to more than 100,000 people, residents face a dual threat when the rains come. First, the river rises, flooding into streets and houses. Then the water reaches ...
After the Crisis: How COVID-19 Can Drive Transformational Change in Cities
After the Crisis: How COVID-19 Can Drive Transformational Change in Cities
Across the world, from Wuhan to New York City, cities are on the frontline of the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. Starting with overwhelmed heath care systems, cities are experiencing unprecedented strain across social, economic and environmental systems as economies grind to ...
Local Communities Aren’t Just Climate Victims. They’re Climate Adaptation Leaders
Local Communities Aren’t Just Climate Victims. They’re Climate Adaptation Leaders
“Poor and vulnerable” is a common refrain in climate change stories. It’s a phrase used with good reason, to highlight how climate change disproportionately affects the disenfranchised. Economically, politically and socially vulnerable communities feel climate impacts first and hardest. They have fewer ...
Cleaner Air, New Jobs, Reduced Inequality: The Benefits of Low-Carbon Cities
Cleaner Air, New Jobs, Reduced Inequality: The Benefits of Low-Carbon Cities
Climate action is rarely a primary consideration when investments are made in cities. Roads and transport networks are built to improve mobility, homes to provide shelter, offices to create places to work. But with more than three-quarters of global emissions ...
Do Bus Rapid Transit Systems Improve Equity? A Look at the Evidence
Do Bus Rapid Transit Systems Improve Equity? A Look at the Evidence
Some time ago, professor Christo Venter of the University of Pretoria sent me an intriguing message: Did I have data on how bus rapid transit systems, or BRTs, affect equity in cities? Impact evaluations for changes in travel time, cost, ...
From Grassroots Organizing to Affordable Housing: A Conversation with Diana Mitlin
From Grassroots Organizing to Affordable Housing: A Conversation with Diana Mitlin
Diana Mitlin is a Principal Researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development’s (iied) Human Settlements program, conducting research on urban poverty and community development. Mitlin is also an academic, teaching on Global Urbanism at the University of Manchester. ...
“Threading the Needle” of Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice for Cities
“Threading the Needle” of Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice for Cities
This blog is part of our World Resources Report (WRR) series. The WRR looks at cities as drivers of economic and social opportunity, and simultaneously as areas with concentrations of poverty, environmental degradation, and inequality. Responding to these opportunities and ...
Energy and sustainable cities are key to India's economic growth
The two things India must get right for its economic future
Taking even a quick look at India’s current pattern of growth, it’s not hard to see both the rising energy insecurity and the stress that cities across the country are experiencing. Congestion, urban sprawl, and poor access to reliable energy ...
Congestion pricing has the potential to pave the way for more equitable mobility in China's cities. Photo by GuoZhongHua/Shutterstock.
Congestion pricing can make Beijing a more equitable city
China’s capital city of Beijing is already home to 5.4 million cars, the most of any Chinese city. The country’s rising wealth means that this is a trend unlikely to stop. This rapid motorization has led to many city government ...
Technology is allowing city residents to interact with their surroundings in new ways, which can have both the benefit of advancing sustainable development and the drawback of reinforcing social divisions. Photo by Daniel Chavez/Flickr.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: New mapping algorithm poses problems and promise for cities
Yahoo Labs has recently created a mapping algorithm that helps pedestrians find not the shortest route to their destination, but the most attractive one. This is great for visitors who want to spend every second of their time sightseeing in ...
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define important priorities for international development over the next 15 years, including the need for safe, sustainable, and inclusive cities. Photo by Justin Swan/Flickr.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals emphasize sustainable cities in latest draft
At the 2012 Rio+20 Summit, the United Nations member states began the ambitious process of defining the social and economic priorities for humanity over the next fifteen years. The open and participatory process and the initial negotiations amongst the world’s ...
Right Menu Icon