In 2015, world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly agreed to 17 goals for a better world. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the aim is to meet these objectives by the year 2030 in a bid to end poverty, achieve gender equality, ensure access to quality education,...
“Adam und Evelyn,” a bittersweet German love story in the summer of 1989, captures both the promise and the peril of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Adam and Evelyn are an East German couple. Evelyn yearns to flee to the West. Adam is happy behind the Iron Curtain as a dressmaker. She leaves and...
The World Bank Group’s Mahmoud Mohieldin believes innovative financing and partnerships are needed to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Countries that have invested in human capital, infrastructure and decent systems of social protection have made more progress than others in...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Ahmad Alhendawi, the secretary-general of the World Organization of the Scout Movement and former UN youth envoy. With 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24, youth around the world face their fair share of challenges. Whether...
With nothing to require companies to invest in line with the development agenda, corporate ventures in Africa might come to resemble Chinese neocolonial corporate models that do not actually alleviate poverty but rather enable it. The European Union’s annual Development Days event brings...
Amidst a doctors’ strike and a hurricane in Haiti, a story of one couple’s determination to bring health care to the island. In May 2016, when I heard the news of the doctors’ strike taking place in Haiti, my heart sank. Doctors, nurses and medical residents had been on strike since March...
Fossil fuels provided a one-time-only quantum leap in growth. Coming up with a new economic model should be on everyone’s bucket list. The economy, we have been taught, is a cat with considerably more than nine lives. The bottom might drop out of the stock market, but it will rebound—again...
The term “development” is just colonialism applied to the natural world, says Derrick Jensen. “Sustainable development” is a claim to virtue. The word “development” used in this sense is a lie. The word “develop” means “to grow,” “to progress,” “to become fuller,...
Corporate Social Responsibility lacks a defined connection to job creation. The Rise of Corporate Social Responsibility – A Tool for Sustainable Development in the Middle East report argues that companies can contribute to sustainable economic development in the Middle East and North...
