Close to one in five people living in towns, cities and megacities across the world do not have access to a safe, basic toilet, according to WaterAid. Some 600 million urban dwellers globally rely on a humiliating and haphazard array of the only services available to them in slums: filthy and crowded communal toilets, or…
It’s no question that among the litany of things that can make running a social enterprise a challenge, financing is chief among them. Especially as entrepreneurs navigate their way towards growth and sustainability they often need to explore different funding models or strategies to help them avoid turbulent financial times. Sometimes that means slow and…
The United Nations is inching closer toward establishing a global framework to measure the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, more than one year after the universal poverty, health, inequality and climate change agenda was approved. But lack of available data and clarity on how these ambitious targets can actually be measured will likely leave the new…
Donald Trump will become the 45th US president after a stunning victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Republican nominee’s victory came down to a handful of key swing states, despite months of polling that favoured Mrs Clinton. The battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and North Carolina cleared the way for his Brexit-style upset. Global markets plummeted,…
American voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday after a star-studded climax to a campaign that could elect either the first female president of the United States or a celebrity billionaire who threatens to rewrite the rules of politics forever. Minutes after midnight the traditional first election day ballot was cast in Dixville Notch,…
If there is an irrepressible human trait it’s the determination, against all odds, to reconnect. Though governments seek to atomise and rule, we will keep finding ways to come together. Our social brains forbid any other outcome. They urge us to reach out, even when the world seems hostile. This is the conclusion I draw…
By: Cathy McIlwain (Professor of Geography, Queen Mary University of London), Caroline Moser (Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester) One in three women around the world currently experience gender-based violence. Harmful practices such as trafficking, forced marriage, domestic violence and female genital mutilation occur both in public and in private spaces. Today, these forms of violence…
By: Vanesa Castán Broto (Senior Lecturer Environment and Sustainable Development, UCL) Habitat III- the United Nation’s global conference on the future of cities – has come to a close. About 30,000 people gathered in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the key issues facing cities today and sign off on the New Urban Agenda – the global…
By: Sayma Akhter ?(PhD researcher, Bangor University) , Morag McDonald (Professor of Ecology & Catchment Management, Bangor University) , Ray Marriott (Research fellow, Bangor University) Theobroma, the genus to which cacao, or “cocoa” as we know it, belongs, translates from the Latin as “food of the gods”. Ask any serious chocoholic and they would agree…