Posts tagged with 'poverty'
An Innovative Jobs Program in Odisha, India Helped Informal Workers Through COVID-19 and Beyond
An Innovative Jobs Program in Odisha, India Helped Informal Workers Through COVID-19 and Beyond
When India’s federal government announced a public health lockdown on March 24, 2022 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it generated desperate scenes. Economic activity ground to a halt. Millions of migrant workers traveled back to their home states. In ...
Can Cities Thrive in Turbulent Times? 3 Questions for Cities in 2022
Can Cities Thrive in Turbulent Times? 3 Questions for Cities in 2022
Infectious disease outbreaks can have enduring influence on urban design and several have irrevocably shaped how modern cities feel and function. For example, parks, wide street design and even the home bathroom are all important legacies of cholera outbreaks; today, ...
7 Major Transformations to Solve Urban Inequality
7 Major Transformations to Solve Urban Inequality
Owusu lives with his wife and four children in the Tantra Hills neighborhood of Accra, Ghana, where he shares his residence with five other tenants and their families. The house has a toilet and electricity, but the costs for both ...
Lessons from Durban’s Approach to Water Resilience
Lessons from Durban’s Approach to Water Resilience
A decade ago, the South African city of Durban was facing severe water shortages. Dam reservoirs were decreasing at alarming rates, and were 20% lower than average levels. At least one in four residents were already living in water-stressed informal settlements. ...
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 ...
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