Employment, Skills and Human Capital
Black communities in the United States will see the flood risk in their neighbourhoods climb at least 20% over the next 30 years, experts are predicting. The US Supreme Court on 30 June constrained the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants under the landmark Clean Air Act anti-pollution law. The ruling may impact a Securities and Exchange Commission bid to force companies to disclose their emissions. Renewable sources of energy can help countries mitigate climate change, build resilience to volatile prices, and lower energy costs. This is especially critical now as spiking fossil fuel costs, triggered by the war in Ukraine, are debilitating poor energy importing countries. Imagine today’s high inflation like a car speeding down a hill. In order to slow it down, you need to hit the brakes. In this case, the “brakes” are interest rate hikes intended to slow spending. However, some central banks are hitting the brakes faster than others. Several sub-Saharan African central banks are exploring or in the pilot phase of a digital currency, following Nigeria’s October introduction of e-Naira. Nigeria was the second country after the Bahamas to roll out a CBDC. For decades, carbon markets have been seen as part of the solution to climate change. They have mostly been dominated by the private sector, but this will soon change. More than two thirds of countries are planning to use carbon markets to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCS) to the Paris Agreement. Countries such as Chile, Ghana, Jordan, Singapore and Vanuatu are already building end-to-end, state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to support their participation in international carbon markets. Scientists predict that humans can live up to 150 years without significant medical intervention. The key to achieving this long life isn’t a well-kept secret: Eat better and exercise more. But this is easier said than done. There’s an abandoned coal power plant in upstate New York that most people regard as a useless relic. But MIT’s Paul Woskov sees things differently. About 2.6 billion people – nearly half of the global population, most of them in Africa, Asia and central and south America – rely on biomass fuels, like wood and charcoal, or kerosene to cook meals, heat and light their homes. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 549.1 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 6.33 million. More than 12.09 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data. Food systems account for over one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Any successful strategy for reaching the ambitious — and critical — emissions targets outlined in the Paris Agreement must involve changes to how we grow, process and distribute food. Picture a group of “climate change warriors”, massing together in a battle to save the planet. Did you imagine a line of mushrooms? Well, maybe you should have, according to scientists at Boston University in the United States. What are humans doing in space and why are we talking about bases on the Moon or missions to Mars when there is so much here on Earth that requires our immediate attention? The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook report indicates that cyberattacks increased 125% globally in 2021, with evidence suggesting a continued uptick through 2022. In this fast-changing landscape it is vital for leaders to take a strategic approach to cyber risks. In the end, it took a well-timed coffee break to smooth the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. The Group of Seven rich democracies will commit up to $5 billion to improve global food security, a senior U.S. official said, as the group responds to worries in developing nations about the threat of hunger triggered by war in Ukraine. EU countries have clinched deals on proposed laws to combat climate change, backing a 2035 phase-out of new fossil fuel car sales and a multibillion-euro fund to shield poorer citizens from CO2 costs. In order to communicate sustainability, you must do sustainability first. It sounds obvious but in these greenwashing times, it needs to be said. Wondering how to talk about environmental or social sustainability should only come after you have done something about it – and it’s okay if that something is in progress. Anybody who has been trying to make or do things right knows that to “do” sustainability is a process and a long one at that. Why are some nations rich and others poor? Can the governments of poor nations do something to ensure that their nations become rich? These sorts of questions have long fascinated public officials and economists, at least since Adam Smith, the prominent Scottish economist whose famous 1776 book was titled “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Passive cooling strategies can reduce the load on air conditioning by as much as 80%, report researchers. Green water – the rainwater available to plants in the soil – is indispensable for life on and below the land. But in a new study, we found that widespread pressure on this resource has crossed a critical limit. The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 3, or SDG 3, declared a universal health goal to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” by 2030. The way to its realization is through “universal health coverage (UHC) and access to quality health care, (and ensure) no one must be left behind”. Inventors and their inventions have constantly changed the way we live. An inventor in China gave us the compass for navigation, another in Germany invented the printing press and several creative minds were involved in coming up with the electric light bulb. The course of history is shaped by such inventions and the future will continue to be shaped by them, too. By upgrading its power system and quadrupling growth in wind and solar capacity, Europe could save an estimated €1 trillion by 2035. Hot on the heels of COVID-19, the world faces more turmoil. This year, Davos 2022 aptly focused on the tragic war in Ukraine and its ripple effect on global finance, food, and energy systems. The current state of the world reminds us to what degree energy underpins our aspirations for a more sustainable future for all – and how broken the global energy system is.Show Agenda posts
View more Employment posts
Black communities in the US will be hardest hit by floods caused by climate change, say scientists
Monday 4th of July 2022
Australia battles flooding – and other environment stories you need to read this week
Monday 4th of July 2022
These developing countries are leading the way on renewable energy
Monday 4th of July 2022
Interest rate hikes vs inflation: How are different countries doing it?
Monday 4th of July 2022
Exploring and piloting digital currencies is becoming more popular amongst African central banks, but why?
Monday 4th of July 2022
Countries set to join carbon markets as the world demands a green economic transition
Monday 4th of July 2022
How can wearable technology increase our lifespans?
Monday 4th of July 2022
Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet
Monday 4th of July 2022
Here’s how the fuel we cook with can affect our mental health
Monday 4th of July 2022
COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this week
Monday 4th of July 2022
Explained: how engineered crops can fight climate change
Monday 4th of July 2022
Is fungi the most underused resource in the fight against climate change?
Monday 4th of July 2022
Space: How advances up there can help life down here
Friday 1st of July 2022
How to protect your company from cyber attack – the Global Cybersecurity Outlook at Davos 2022
Friday 1st of July 2022
What is NATO and what happened at the NATO summit?
Friday 1st of July 2022
G7 commits $5 billion to tackling global food insecurity
Friday 1st of July 2022
New EU climate change deals: Banning fossil fuel cars by 2035, and what else?
Friday 1st of July 2022
The 7 ways to successfully communicate sustainability
Friday 1st of July 2022
Why some nations are wealthier than others – and what it means for future prosperity
Friday 1st of July 2022
Here’s how passive cooling can help us to survive extreme indoor heat
Friday 1st of July 2022
Human activity is disrupting the freshwater cycle, here’s how to change that
Friday 1st of July 2022
How autonomous mobile clinics can transform healthcare in least developed countries
Friday 1st of July 2022
4 award-winning young inventors who are changing the world
Friday 1st of July 2022
Going green could save Europe €1 trillion in fossil fuel costs
Friday 1st of July 2022
How to make clean, affordable energy available to everyone
Friday 1st of July 2022
Gender Parity
Women in science are less likely than their male counterparts to receive authorship credit for their work, a study shows. Women and girls around the world are getting help to escape sexual violence through an innovative ethical fashion business. There is much to celebrate when it comes to universities’ progress on gender equality, but there are areas that require significant improvement, too. Gender inequality coupled with the climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It poses threats to ways of life, livelihoods, health, safety and security for women and girls around the world. Millions of people around the world struggle to manage menstrual health, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. A survivor of sexual violence in war has given a powerful message to Davos about its impact – and called for greater global action to tackle it and to help survivors. During the last two years, experts have gauged the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on various productive industries of the global economy. But the care economy, a sector profoundly affected by lockdowns, did not receive enough attention from experts. From women giving birth in bomb shelters to maternity hospitals under siege and pregnant women being forced to flee, harrowing images from Ukraine illustrate the vulnerabilities of women caught in conflict. The COVID-19 pandemic has set back progress to close gender gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by a decade. According to the 2021 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report it will now take 69 years to close gender gaps in the region. Effective public-private collaboration can help reverse these negative trends. When Joeli Brearley was four months’ pregnant, she was brushing her teeth one morning and missed a call from her company. Since the pandemic, many employers and employees have come to value greater flexibility in working arrangements. Flexibility is often framed as a women’s issue: when the insurance firm Zurich included the words “part-time”, “job-share” and “flexible working” in its job adverts, for example, the number of women applying for management roles increased by nearly 20%. “From my own knowledge of these things, physics is not something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it … There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think that they would rather not do,” Katharine Birbalsingh, chair of the UK government’s Social Mobility Commission and a secondary school head teacher, told the Commons Science and Technology Committee on April 27 2022. “Reader, I married him.” So says Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 romance – a line so famous because of the hurdles she must jump to get to that point. Pakistani student Mah Jabeen credits a new public bus system in her home city with saving her from being stuck at her parents’ house doing chores – or even having to get married. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a sensitive topic. People are afraid to get things wrong or to use the wrong word. It doesn’t help that the words involved are confusing. Burnout and stress for women at work have reached “alarming levels”, a new report warns. Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook is a survey of 5,000 working women across 10 countries by professional services firm Deloitte Global. Only 22 percent of the leadership positions of America’s top research universities are filled by women, according to a new report by the Eos Foundation. The situation for women of color is even more dismal, at only 5 percent. These numbers are even more striking when taking into account the academic success of women, who achieved more Bachelor’s degrees for the last 40 years, more Master’s degrees for the last 35, and more Doctoral’s for the last 15 in the U.S. than men. This article was originally published by the Atlantic Council. This version has been shortened. The UK’s roads are some of the main culprits of its greenhouse gas emissions. And in 2020, 92% of passenger kilometres travelled in the UK was made by cars, vans and taxis. That means getting around by private vehicle has a disproportionately large negative impact on the environment. As organizations explore ways to become more diverse and inclusive, what skills might help them be more successful? Evidence from both developed and developing countries is showing that men and women have different patterns in traveling and accessing public spaces. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing across sectors and industries and while it has great potential to benefit society, this can only be realized if AI truly represents the diversity of the populations it represents. Even though the MeToo movement sensitized a large audience to the lopsided power dynamics between the genders in Hollywood, the lack of representation of women in behind-the-scenes roles is not often cast into the limelight. As data from the Celluloid Ceiling study sponsored by San Diego State University shows, the percentage of women working as directors, writers, editors, producers and cinematographers on the 250 highest-grossing U.S. movies is only rising slowly. Still, only 25 percent of those roles were filled by women in 2021. The unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is undeniable: Women have been affected disproportionately, as they dropped out of paid employment at higher rates than men, taking on responsibilities for the care of children and the ill. Multiple crises from conflict to climate change are exacerbating the challenge, hitting developing economies particularly hard. Women scientists are more likely to develop treatments for women, but many of their ideas never become inventions, research by Rembrand Koning says. What would it take to make innovation more equitable?Show Agenda posts
View more Gender posts
Women in science less likely to be credited for their work, study shows
Wednesday 29th of June 2022
Here’s how one woman is empowering domestic abuse survivors around the world
Thursday 23rd of June 2022
These 10 steps can help universities tackle gender inequality
Friday 17th of June 2022
Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected
Thursday 16th of June 2022
The unsanitary truth about period poverty – and what governments can do
Thursday 9th of June 2022
This survivor gave a powerful message about sexual violence at Davos 2022
Wednesday 25th of May 2022
Care economy: an opportunity to create jobs and close the gender gap
Wednesday 25th of May 2022
Why women’s rights must be at the heart of crisis response
Tuesday 24th of May 2022
In Latin America, public-private partnerships support a gender-inclusive recovery
Monday 23rd of May 2022
The motherhood penalty: How childcare and paternity leave can reduce the gender pay gap
Thursday 19th of May 2022
The myth of flexibility for women in the workplace
Monday 16th of May 2022
There are reasons girls don’t study physics – and they don’t include not liking maths
Friday 13th of May 2022
The book character gender gap: AI finds more men in fiction than women
Friday 13th of May 2022
This bus network in Pakistan is empowering women. Here’s how
Thursday 12th of May 2022
Six misunderstood concepts about diversity in the workplace and why they matter
Monday 9th of May 2022
Here’s why hybrid working means more stress for women
Friday 6th of May 2022
Gender gap persists at all levels of leadership in US universities, report finds
Tuesday 3rd of May 2022
Stocks on Mars and savings accounts on Venus? How to accelerate female economic empowerment
Friday 29th of April 2022
Here’s how transport apps have highlighted the gender imbalance in the transport sector
Friday 29th of April 2022
The key skills needed to build diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging in the workplace
Wednesday 20th of April 2022
Transport has a gender bias problem. This is what needs to change
Wednesday 6th of April 2022
3 women in AI who are helping bridge the gender equity gap
Wednesday 6th of April 2022
This is how female representation is rising across the film industry
Thursday 31st of March 2022
Meet the women entrepreneurs who are breaking down ‘glass walls’
Friday 25th of March 2022
A lack of female scientists means fewer medical treatments for women
Thursday 24th of March 2022
