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No REDD+ Program Is an Island: Integrating Gender Into Forest Conservation Efforts
›Since 2005, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program (REDD+) has functioned as a mechanism to financially incentivize the preservation of forestlands in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But beyond its original use, some organizations have also started exploring ways it can help with other development initiatives, like women’s empowerment. [Video Below]
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Amy Luers: Broad Measures of Vulnerability Mask Opportunities to Build Climate Resilience
›In this era of “big data,” policymakers too often focus on overly broad statistics, says Amy Luers of the Skoll Global Threats Fund in this week’s podcast.
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Not Just Climate Change: Marcel Leroy on How Demography Contributes to Africa’s Scarcity Problems
›The Sahel has endured multiple debilitating food crises over the last five years and climate change has often been fingered as the culprit. But it is important to equally consider the amplifying effects of demographic trends on resource scarcity, says the University of Peace’s Marcel Leroy in this week’s podcast.
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How Do We Bounce Back Better? 2015 a Critical Year for Global Resilience, Climate Efforts
›According to NASA and a team of scientists from the University of California, significant portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet have begun an unstoppable slide towards oblivion, slowly melting in warmer-than-usual ocean currents that have been eating away at their bases. [Video Below]
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Melanie Nakagawa on Integrating Gender Into REDD+ at the Department of State and USAID
›A central tenet of John Kerry’s time as Secretary of State has been an emphasis on climate change. In a speech in Indonesia this year, he compared the threat of changing climate conditions to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Though the United States has been slow to enact major climate legislation, the Department of State has developed a “road map” for responding in its own way. The REDD+ program could play a major role in this response, says Melanie Nakagawa of the department’s policy planning staff in this week’s podcast.
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Lisa Meadowcroft on Integrating Water and Sanitation With Maternal Health Goals in Kenya
›In sub-Saharan Africa, women collectively spend an estimated 40 billion hours a year gathering water, often walking miles to the nearest source, which may not be clean, and braving exhaustion, harassment, and worse along the way. Water availability and quality at health clinics is often not much better, creating a crisis for women, especially pregnant women, throughout the continent. A mutual solution lies in better coordination between efforts to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and maternal health, says the African Medical and Research Foundation’s Lisa Meadowcroft in this week’s podcast.
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Solidarity and Stigma: The Challenge of Improving Maternal Health for Women Living With HIV
›Despite the fact that with proper interventions, the likelihood of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is less than five percent, expectant mothers with HIV or AIDS often face intense stigma and marginalization from health care providers around the world. As a result, in some areas, the mortality rate for mothers with HIV is seven to eight times greater than the rate for non-infected women, said Dr. Isabella Danel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. [Video Below]
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Disaster Risk Reduction Important to Preserve Development Gains, El Niño May Becoming More Frequent, Powerful
›As climate change threatens more extreme weather, it is becoming more important to incorporate disaster risk reduction into poverty-reduction efforts, writes the Overseas Development Institute in a new report. The authors of The Geography of Poverty, Disasters, and Climate Extremes in 2030 argue that the hard-won gains of development are threatened by vulnerability among the poorest to climate change disasters, especially droughts. “Up to 325 million extremely poor people will be living in the 49 most hazard-prone countries in 2030, the majority in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,” write Andrew Shepherd et al. Using an index measuring the risk of a nation’s exposure to natural disasters as compared with a nation’s vulnerability to extreme poverty (income less than $1 daily), the report singles out 11 nations at high risk in both categories.
Showing posts by Donald Borenstein.