The Global Gender Gap Report 2014
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Through the Global Gender Gap Report 2014, the World Economic Forum quantifies the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracks their progress over time. While no single measure can capture the complete situation, the Global Gender Gap Index presented in this Report seeks to measure one important aspect of gender equality: the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics.
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The new Davos manifesto, let the whales save us and other top stories of the week
Friday 6th of December 2019
The new Davos Manifesto. A vision for a better kind of capitalism.⇒ Explore: Sustainable Development
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Have economists solved this puzzle from the Great Recession?
Friday 6th of December 2019
The Great Recession has left macroeconomists with many puzzles. One such puzzle is the alleged breakdown of the relationship between inflation and the output gap – also known as the Phillips curve.
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Climate change is forcing 20 million people a year from their homes, Oxfam says
Friday 6th of December 2019
The news that our climate is warming will no longer come as a surprise. What might shock you, though, is that every two seconds the crisis forces someone around the world to leave their home, according to a new study.
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What you need to know about 5G
Friday 6th of December 2019
5G, the fifth generation of mobile communications that enables global connectivity, is predicted to contribute $13.2 trillion to the global economy by 2035.
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A billion people live in data poverty – but what does it mean?
Friday 6th of December 2019
The ability to exercise many of our most basic rights and privileges – voting, driving, owning property, and traveling – requires standardized information to determine who is eligible for what. But, in the age of digital data, there is hope for the billion people worldwide who lack such information.
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I’m taking the train to Davos – here’s why
Thursday 5th of December 2019
The upcoming Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, will be special for me, not because it’s the 50th Annual Meeting, nor because it will be my 10th consecutive year in Davos, but because for the first time, I will be taking the train from the Netherlands for the entire journey. Why? Because it’s time to ditch the plane and embrace the train, not just for a daily commute but as a place to work.
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These social entrepreneurs are lighting up Africa
Thursday 5th of December 2019
For more than 800 million people around the world, sunset means a world without light.
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9 climate tipping points pushing Earth to the point of no return
Thursday 5th of December 2019
We may be about to pass – or may already have passed – tipping points in the Earth’s climate, according to a group of leading scientists.
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These are the countries where it’s easiest to do digital business
Thursday 5th of December 2019
This first appeared in the Harvard Business Review.
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4 ways data is improving healthcare
Thursday 5th of December 2019
Hospitals produce 50 petabytes of data per year. This mass of information comprises clinical notes, lab tests, medical images, sensor readings, genomics, and operational and financial data. At the moment, 97% goes unused – but this is changing, with great potential to transform the quality of medical care.
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How we can put civility back into civic engagement
Thursday 5th of December 2019
A rising tide of incivility threatens to drown America’s public discourse, a wave building from the dysfunction in the nation’s capital and washing over even the smallest towns. Voters are more divided than ever along political lines, and social media only amplifies the noise. The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania wants to bring people back together so that they can effect real change. The center’s latest publication aims to contribute to that goal. (It is available for free download and is titled, “We the People: A Philanthropic Guide to Strengthening Democracy.”)
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This silk seed coating could help crops grow in salty soil
Thursday 5th of December 2019
Providing seeds with a protective coating that also supplies essential nutrients to the germinating plant could make it possible to grow crops in otherwise unproductive soils, according to new research at MIT.
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The best students in the world, ranked by country
Thursday 5th of December 2019
The results are in for the OECD’s latest global test of 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading. The test, known as PISA (for Programme for International Student Assessment), is administered every three years and used—by some—to measure which countries are best preparing their students for the future.
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This female comic superhero is fighting India’s sex traffickers
Thursday 5th of December 2019
A female superhero will use her powers to fight sex crimes in India and the stigma that trafficking survivors face, in the third instalment of a comic series.
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More than 80% of adolescents worldwide aren’t getting enough exercise
Thursday 5th of December 2019
More than 80% of school-going adolescents worldwide are not getting enough regular exercise, the World Health Organization (WHO) found in the first survey of its kind.
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Why agility is key to success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – a book extract
Thursday 5th of December 2019
Successfully Navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution Requires Agility
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How venture capital can transform global health
Thursday 5th of December 2019
Important gains have been made in global health in the past few decades: the rate of deaths caused by malaria has halved, HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence and the same might soon be true for Ebola judging by the success of recent clinical trials. Human lives have been saved and this has translated into economic prosperity; healthy people make for healthy workers and family providers.
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Why the EU needs to learn to use the language of power
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform
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Sovereign investment funds could be the answer to the SDGs
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
Financing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is one of the main priorities for the international community. However, as major stakeholders agree on working together to achieve the goals by 2030, concerns are spreading that funding is insufficient to support the massive effort required. Indeed, the existence of the SDGs is evidence that funding is not flowing into the areas most needed to achieve prosperity.
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Climate adaptation could make the world more peaceful
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
As communities around the globe, especially those in poorer regions, are suffering increasingly from the negative impacts of climate change, the importance of climate adaptation is becoming more apparent. As described by the United Nations, adaptation involves reducing the risks faced by both humans and natural systems.
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Here’s what happened when a charity gave $1,000 each to poor households in Kenya
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
Sitting on the banks of Lake Victoria, Kenya’s Siaya County is rich in natural beauty. But thousands of people here live below the government’s rural poverty line of less than $15 a month.
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Plastic waste from Western countries is poisoning Indonesia
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
Every day, people in Western countries in Australia, Europe and North America diligently separate their household plastic waste to be collected and sent for recycling. But much of it isn’t recycled. Instead it is exported – sometimes illegally – to Indonesia and neighbouring countries, polluting the air and affecting the health of local people.
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Encryption is under attack. Here’s why that matters
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
The news that Interpol is about to “condemn” the spread of strong encryption is just the latest salvo in the crypto wars, a decades-long controversy between proponents of strong encryption, law enforcement and investigative bodies over the widespread use of encryption by technology companies. The central tenet of the law enforcement argument is that strong end-to-end encryption hinders the investigation and prosecution of crimes when suspects use it on their personal devices. For their part, privacy and human rights advocates contend that there is no mechanism “that (both) protects the security and privacy of communications and allows access for law enforcement”.
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Britain’s poet laureate has created a prize to highlight poetry about the climate crisis
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
“We are facing the most catastrophic threat to the future of our planet that we have ever encountered,” wrote British poet laureate Simon Armitage in a blog post to announce the launch of a new award for poetry about climate change.
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Women are hit harder by climate change. In Vietnam, they’re fighting back
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
Tran Thi Phuong Tien remembers when the floods came. Sitting at her cafe in Hue city, where she roasts her own coffee beans and serves sizzling beef that draws customers from the other side of the Perfume River, she recalls how Tropical Storm Eve hit the coast in October of 1999, pounding the region with more than its monthly average of rain in just a few days. The massive rainfall, which landed mostly upstream, conspired with the tide to cause the largest natural disaster for the area in the 20th century. The sea spilled aggressively through the narrow, unprepared streets of the communes and the single-storey homes of Hue. The unfeeling water rose shockingly fast.
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Greta Thunberg brings youth fury to the Madrid climate summit
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
Teen activist Greta Thunberg reached Europe on Tuesday after a 21-day catamaran dash across the Atlantic for a United Nations summit where she will invoke the fury of global youth at politicians’ foot-dragging over climate change.
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Is China the next frontier for the meatless industry?
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
China’s “free from meat” market, which includes plant-based products meant to replace meat, has grown 33.5% since 2014 to be worth $9.7 billion last year, according to . It predicts that the.
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Amazon fires are causing glaciers in the Andes to melt even faster
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
If you have turned on a TV or read the news during the past few months, you have probably heard of the widespread fires that wrought havoc on the Amazon rainforest this year. Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country’s logging and farming industries.
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The Netherlands is building ‘solar islands’ to fight rising sea levels
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
The famous poem “No Man is an Island” – meaning no one is completely self-sufficient – has resonated with Western society since the 17th century. But what if a man is an island comprised of solar panels? The odds of survival would be much higher.
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Putting a price on carbon will help New York state achieve a clean energy future
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
New York State, the 11th-largest economy in the world, recently enacted the US’ most aggressive climate change legislation. By 2040, according to the new law, the state must get all of its electricity from zero-emission sources.
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This tech company is aiming to plant 500 billion trees by 2060 – using drones
Wednesday 4th of December 2019
A drone can plant two trees per second, according to UK tech company Dendra, which is aiming to “re-green” the planet.
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Thailand’s ‘floating’ crosswalk is making drivers stop and look
Tuesday 3rd of December 2019
The Thai children walking on the zebra crossing look as if they are stepping from one white board, floating well above the road, to the next – but it is just an optical illusion, created by a volunteer group aimed at making roads safer for pedestrians.
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This Scottish startup is helping farmers grow plants with sea water
Tuesday 3rd of December 2019
A British startup is teaching farmers how to grow crops using water from a source which won’t run out – the sea.
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Gaps in global governance are holding back the world’s economy. Here’s how
Monday 2nd of December 2019
This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform
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Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2019 is ‘climate emergency’
Monday 2nd of December 2019
“Climate emergency” has been chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year 2019, rounding off a year of soaring concerns about the consequences of global warming.
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Africa’s shrinking lake shows the impact of climate change on women and indigenous people
Monday 2nd of December 2019
When Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim was a child, Lake Chad in her home country spanned 10,000 km2. These days it’s around 1,200 km2.
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Bank of England’s Carney to become U.N. climate finance envoy
Monday 2nd of December 2019
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney will lead a push by the United Nations to make the finance sector take proper account of the risks posed by climate change, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday.
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This Asian country has the most ‘complex’ economy in the world
Monday 2nd of December 2019
Countries Ranked by Their Economic Complexity
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Is nature or nurture more important when it comes to educating your children?
Monday 2nd of December 2019
The question of whether it is genes or environment that largely shapes human behaviour has been debated for centuries. During the second half of the 20th century, there were two camps of scientists – each believing that nature or nurture, respectively, was exclusively at play.
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12 feminist books everyone should read
Monday 2nd of December 2019
It would be impossible to compile all the books written by and for feminists in one list. There are fantasy novels and stories of women’s survival; essay collections and biographies; and so much more. Books on feminism and women’s experience reflect how diverse women’s experiences around the world truly are.
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If you work in these places, you’re at higher risk of being replaced by a robot
Monday 2nd of December 2019
Robots are displacing younger, less-educated, and minority workers in the Midwest manufacturing industry at the highest rates, a new report shows.
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These men are fighting child marriages in the Gaza Strip
Monday 2nd of December 2019
When two men arrived at Freeh Abu T’ema’s family home in Abasan Alkabeerah, a village located in the south of the Gaza Strip, he didn’t know that his life, as well as his daughter’s, would change forever.
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We’re in the age of ‘InstaGrat’ – and we need to learn to say no
Monday 2nd of December 2019
InstaGrat. It is not quite the same as Instagram, where we can put up pictures of what we want the world to see of us.
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Can Southeast Asia keep up with growing energy demand?
Monday 2nd of December 2019
The energy market in Southeast Asia is growing rapidly. Overall demand has increased by 80% since 2000, with millions of new customers gaining access to electricity.
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Davos 1973 to Davos 2020: How the world economy has changed
Monday 2nd of December 2019
As planning got underway in 1970 for the inaugural European Management Symposium in Davos, an obscure ski town in the Swiss Alps, the idea that companies should be mindful of far more than the bottom line was still fairly novel. That first version of what would become the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting helped establish the idea that businesses should serve society as a whole, and not just shareholders—a “stakeholder” concept memorialized in 1973’s Davos Manifesto.
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Davos Manifesto 1973: A Code of Ethics for Business Leaders
Monday 2nd of December 2019
As Professor Klaus Schwab unveils the new Davos Manifesto, a set of principles that will underpin the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2020, here’s a look back at the first Manifesto, signed in 1973.
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Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Monday 2nd of December 2019
A. The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large. The best way to understand and harmonize the divergent interests of all stakeholders is through a shared commitment to policies and decisions that strengthen the long-term prosperity of a company.
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Why we need the ‘Davos Manifesto’ for a better kind of capitalism
Sunday 1st of December 2019
What kind of capitalism do we want? That may be the defining question of our era. If we want to sustain our economic system for future generations, we must answer it correctly.
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The age of influence: why digital platforms must come clean about political ads
Friday 29th of November 2019
The nebulous realm of political advertising, issue advertising and microtargeting on digital platforms has sparked outrage and debate among industry leaders, political campaigners and citizens as to what needs to change in order to combat disinformation.
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This Thanksgiving, here’s why you should focus on being more grateful
Friday 29th of November 2019
As a physician, I have helped to care for many patients and families whose lives have been turned upside down by serious illnesses and injuries. In the throes of such catastrophes, it can be difficult to find cause for anything but lament. Yet Thanksgiving presents us with an opportunity to develop one of the healthiest, most life-affirming and convivial of all habits – that of counting and rejoicing in our blessings.
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Spying on whales: an extract from Nick Pyenson’s new book
Friday 29th of November 2019
This is an extract from Nick Pyenson’s book Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures. He is the Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian Institution and is part of the World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist Community. Join our Book Club here to discuss the extract.
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This is the UK’s first ‘plastic-free’ island
Friday 29th of November 2019
Anglesey, an island off Wales’ northwest coast, has become the UK’s first “plastic-free” county.
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution redefines the economy, no more ‘shareholders first’ and other top stories of the week
Friday 29th of November 2019
Making money in an automated world. The 4IR is redefining the economy.⇒ Explore: Future of Economic Progress
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How can we build a #fairerworld?
Friday 29th of November 2019
More information to come.
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Toronto wants to power its trash trucks with food waste
Friday 29th of November 2019
Toronto residents’ trash will soon be powering the collection of yet more trash. The Canadian city says it wants to become one of the first in North America to convert biogas created from organic waste into fuel to power its refuse collection vehicles, generate electricity and heat homes.
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Whales are vital to curb climate change – this is the reason why
Friday 29th of November 2019
They are majestic, massive and mysterious – and they could hold a secret for combating climate change.
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Deaths from HIV/AIDS are still falling
Friday 29th of November 2019
December 1 marks World AIDS Day, which aims to promote awareness of the disease and mourn those who have died from it. Earlier this year, UNAIDS reported that the number of deaths from the HIV/AIDS pandemic has fallen. In 2018, there were 770,000 AIDS-related deaths, a 33 percent decline in 2010. Though that may seem like good news, progress in reducing new infections, increasing access to treatment and ending deaths is actually slowing down. In some countries, considerable progress has been made and one notable example is South Africa where new infections and deaths have both been reduced by 40 percent since 2010.Elsewhere, progress has stalled and there have been worrying setbacks in Eastern Europe and Asia where new infections have risen 29 percent. UNAIDS reported that the gap between resource needs and resource availability is widening and for the first time, the AIDS response has fallen by nearly $1 billion. Last year, $19 billion was available for the response, $7.2 billion short of the estimated $26.2 billion required by 2020. UNAIDS urged all partners to step up action and increase bilateral and domestic funding for fighting the disease.
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This secret vault stores humanity’s most valuable knowledge – in case of an apocalypse
Friday 29th of November 2019
Hard copy
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European Parliament declares symbolic ‘climate emergency’ ahead of summit
Friday 29th of November 2019
European Union lawmakers declared a “climate emergency” on Thursday in a symbolic vote that heightens pressure for action against global warming at an upcoming summit.
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800 women die during childbirth every day – but we can save them
Friday 29th of November 2019
Countries need about $264 billion – the equivalent cost of 110 military aircraft – to end maternal deaths, gender based violence, child marriage, and provide family planning to all women by 2030, said a United Nations study.