Posts tagged with 'Rwanda'
I’ve watched in horror as Europe burns. Ferocious wildfires have swept through Spain, France and now Greece, scorching towns and forests and spewing toxic smoke. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes. Many will have little left to return to. European ...
At 5 a.m., an electric bus glides out of its depot after charging overnight, ready to carry children to school without spewing diesel fumes. As the city stirs, heat pumps have already brought homes and offices to a comfortable temperature, ...
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits where Lake Kivu drains into the Ruzizi River along the border with Rwanda. The city’s steep hillsides turn heavy rains into fast-moving runoff that overwhelms drains, damages roads and threatens downstream communities. It’s ...
When torrential rains hit Kinshasa in April 2025, the city of 20 million came to a standstill. Floodwaters submerged more than half the city as the Ndjili River and smaller streams overflowed, quickly overwhelming the city’s drainage capacity. Lives were ...
Over the next few decades, Rwanda is positioned to become one of the most competitive investment destinations in East Africa. National targets, such as achieving upper middle-income status by 2035 and high-income status by 2050 (Vision 2050)1, signal the government’s ...
Challenging Discriminatory Cultural Norms to Build Fair, Resilient Communities in Sub-Saharan Africa
Social norms and gender biases are widely recognized as major barriers to the social and economic empowerment of women, people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups, including limiting their participation in governance and decision-making. For instance, in many parts of the world, domestic and caregiving ...
Nations around the world are ushering in a new decade of climate action through revised nationally determined contributions (NDCs), due this year. The urgency for climate action has never been greater, especially with 2024 marking the warmest year on record globally. While ...
Which neighborhoods are suffering the most from rising urban heat? Where is flooding the biggest challenge? What other cities around the world are struggling with air pollution, and what can we learn from those that have improved the quality of ...
Walking through Nyandungu Eco-Park in Kigali, Rwanda, it’s difficult to imagine that just a few years ago, industrial machinery and bedraggled grasses stood where lush trees and flowers now grow. Like in many wetlands across the city, the incursion of polluting industry ...
In the summer of 2024, Dutch citizens ranked climate change as the most serious problem facing the world. Just a few months later, they elected a national government that ran on a platform of pulling back its climate policies. This isn’t just ...
As cities try to restore the benefits of natural systems by mimicking how ecosystems function, one option they can use is nature-based solutions (NBS). However, cities often struggle to determine which types of interventions best suit their local context, due ...
Despite accounting for less than 3% of global terrestrial area, cities have had an outsized impact on our approach to planetary boundaries, affecting biodiversity and consumption of materials and energy. Studies show that cities have become responsible for 78% of carbon emissions, ...
As countries prepare their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for submission ahead of this year’s UN climate change conference (COP30), there is growing recognition that effective climate action requires strong collaboration between national and subnational governments. Only about a quarter ...
Sprawl is a known and widespread challenge for rapidly growing cities across the world. Unplanned, inefficient development encroaches on natural resources and ecosystems, often reaching far beyond established transit networks. Residents of sprawling urban areas often face socioeconomic vulnerabilities and ...
Transforming Transportation 2025 is in the books. After a year of geopolitical turmoil and escalating climate impacts, the transport sector is seeing rapid change on multiple fronts. Across two days of events, leaders in government, business, academia and civil society ...
