Some animals that depend on the forest tell us a great deal about the health of their environment and the effectiveness of efforts to preserve it. In the Philippines, environmentalists and government officials are using a new system called the LAWIN Forest and Biodiversity Protection System to monitor the state of forests in an unprecedented…
Last week I sat in a workshop about expanding access to treatment for all people living with HIV, regardless of their clinical stage or CD4 count, and remembered my early years working on HIV programs in sub-Saharan Africa. As I reflected on how far we’ve come, I thought about some of the biggest lessons I…
Do you feel that climate change is impacting your city? If so, what is the day-to-day impact? Tagir Carimo: Pemba saw its first major effect of climate change three years ago, when we experienced heavy rainfall across the municipality. Since then, the city has been suffering from several events due to climate change, including soil…
World Population Day on July 11 reminds us to focus on population trends and discuss the most pertinent issues facing our population today. This year’s theme is “Investing in Teenage Girls,” and it serves to highlight the importance of empowering the largest generation of girls in history. According to the United Nations Population Fund, there…
In the new context of thousands upon thousands of terabytes of data and millions of database rows, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) professionals find ourselves faced with a new reality. We are now expected to not only understand the data ourselves, but then to transform the raw data to something our audiences can easily use for…
The Dominican Republic has one of the highest crime rates in the Caribbean. In your view, what is the most pressing challenge facing the country’s criminal justice system? The essence of the problem is our low prosecution rate. As you say, the Dominican Republic is the fourth most crime-prone country in the Caribbean. Over the…
There are several countries that often come up when people talk about international development and the global economy, countries that need not be listed because you can probably already name them. Indonesia is not usually among them, but as these five facts show, there is a lot at stake in this large and incredibly diverse…
Global health leaders have consistently identified motivation and retention of health workers as hurdles to achieving the vision of universal health coverage. In its strategic plan, the Jordan Ministry of Health suggests that 2.7 percent of doctors and 6.8 percent of nurses leave the country every year. What issues do you believe have the most…
“No one is going home soon,” stated the moderator at a recent Society for International Development-Washington panel discussion about the global refugee crisis. This simple observation drives home the reality that governments, aid organizations, and refugees themselves have confronted around the world for nearly five years. It is a reality that has more recently entered mainstream…
You’ve said that you believe public financial management is the foundation of sustainable development in southeastern European countries. How does this belief translate into the work you’re doing on AKT? I am fully confident that in any part of the globe, including southeast Europe, public financial management is the basis for sustainable development. I apply…
Mainstreaming resilience has catapulted to the top of the development agenda in recent years. It is now an integral part of climate change strategies at the local, national, and international level. Resilience, once a secondary outcome, has become a principal objective in designing and measuring the results of both climate adaptation and mitigation in addition…
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked with female artisans in Morocco and witnessed firsthand the barriers they faced in economic development. Poor education, which prevented many from completing paperwork; low self-confidence or hope for a better future; lack of capital to invest in business licenses, equipment, and training; and a lack of…