Renewable energy has emerged as an increasingly competitive way to meet new power generation needs. This comprehensive cost report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlights the latest trends for each of the main renewable power technologies, based on the latest cost and auction price data from projects around the world. Broadly, the study finds:
Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017
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The Global Risks Report 2018
Each year the Global Risks Report works with experts and decision-makers across the world to identify and analyse the most pressing risks that we face. As the pace of change accelerates, and as risk interconnections deepen, this year’s report highlights the growing strain we are placing on many of the global systems we rely on. The Global Risks Report 2018 is published at a time of encouraging headline global growth. Any breathing space this offers to leaders should not be squandered: the urgency of facing up to systemic challenges has intensified over the past year amid proliferating signs of uncertainty, instability and fragility.
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Internet of Things: Guidelines for Sustainability
Our analysis of over 640 Internet of Things (IoT) deployments worldwide suggests that IoT has development benefits that could be maximised without compromising the commercial viability. The IoT Guidelines for Sustainability provide recommendations related to cooperation, investment and business models, and impact measurement to encourage the prioritisation of sustainability goals within commercial strategies
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Advancing Financial Inclusion Metrics: Shifting from access to economic empowerment
Financial inclusion is at a turning point. Due to advances in technology, the unprecedented advent of transactional and behavioural big data and greater multistakeholder collaboration, there is a realistic opportunity to reach the financially excluded – estimated to be 2 billion – and the many more that are underserved. A key ingredient to achieving this ambitious goal will be an improved system for measuring the progress of financial inclusion, and the benefits that accompany this progress. Developing a more nuanced understanding of the customer is, thus, required for widespread adoption and use of digital finance in emerging economies, unleashing an estimated $3.7 trillion in GDP by 2025.
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HRW World Report 2018
World Report 2018 summaries key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from late 2016 through November 2017. In his keynote essay, “The Pushback Against the Populist Challenge,” Executive Director Kenneth Roth says that the surge of authoritarian populists appears less inevitable than it did a year ago.
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Fishing for data: the role of private data platforms in addressing illegal, unreported and ...
New technologies offer unique opportunities to support fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance, particularly for countries in Africa and other regions without the means to patrol their waters or enforce legislation against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and overfishing. This is the first comprehensive analysis of fisheries data platforms available. The briefing note highlights how developed countries and multilateral organisations have been slow to exploit these ...
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The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World
As the debate about whether the internet is safe for children rages, The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World discusses how digital access can be a game changer for children or yet another dividing line. The report represents the first comprehensive look from UNICEF at the different ways digital technology is affecting children, identifying dangers as well as opportunities.
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Renewable Energy Market Analysis: Southeast Asia
Energy consumption in Southeast Asia has doubled in just over two decades. With annual economic growth exceeding 4%, the region can expect energy demand to rise further in the years ahead. This regional market analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) examines the challenges of economic and population growth, the need to boost energy supply, and growing environmental and energy security concerns. Energy underpins future growth and supports the region’s progress toward key ...
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Reward work, not wealth
Last year saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history, one more every two days. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, and nothing went to the bottom 50%. Dangerous, poorly paid work for the many is supporting extreme wealth for the few. Women are in the worst work, and almost all the super-rich are men. Governments must create a more equal society by prioritizing ordinary workers and small-scale food producers instead of the rich and powerful.
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Rights Abuses and Forced Labor in Thailand’s Fishing Industry
Despite several years of highly publicized efforts to address problems in the Thai fishing industry, the Thai government has not taken the steps necessary to end forced labour and other serious abuses on fishing boats. This report documents forced labour and other human rights abuses in the Thai fishing sector. It identifies poor working conditions, recruitment processes, terms of employment, and industry practices that put already vulnerable migrant workers into abusive situations—and often keep them there.
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Violence against women and girls and resilience
Gender inequalities generate risks for women and girls on a daily basis. In Chad, more than 35% of women have been victims of physical, psychological and/or sexual violence at the hands of their partners, while adolescent girls are highly vulnerable to child marriage and female genital mutilations. This report explores why it matters for development programmes to address violence against women and girls (VAWG) if they aim to build people’s resilience to disaster risks and climate change, particularly in fragile environmental, economic and political contexts. Based on empirical evidence, this study shows that VAWG is not necessarily perpetrated in times of conflict and by combatants only. The most reported forms of violence (child marriages, physical and sexual assault by known perpetrators, polygamy, and the denial of resources and opportunities) all have adverse impacts on survivors’ reproductive health and on their ability to secure their livelihoods.
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A design experiment: imagining alternative humanitarian action
Recent efforts to reform the humanitarian system have resulted in tweaks to current practices without challenging the assumptions, approaches and architecture that have underpinned the system for decades. Given that the way humanitarian actors are working is simply not working, it is time for a system rethink. But what would humanitarian action look like if it were reimagined based on lived, human experiences? As part of the Humanitarian Policy Group's ongoing work on remaking humanitarian action for the modern era, we embarked on a journey using Design Thinking to map people's actual experiences, and more importantly, to have those experiences shape what needs to change and how. We asked how international humanitarian action might become adaptable and accountable in ways that recognise people affected by crisis as the agents of change in their own lives.
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Development – A Private Affair? The involvement of the Italian private sector in rural ...
Debates about the role of private sector in development have been growing internationally in recent years. In Italy, new Law no.125/2014 encourages private sector actors to increase their involvement. What needs to be further clarified is how this role should be played out, and based on which development objectives. The debate on the potential benefits of a greater involvement of the private sector in sustainable development in ODA-recipient countries relies on a small number of cases and on insufficient data. This paper looks at the information available on the role of the Italian private sector in participating in and implementing development programmes funded through Italian ODA in one of the key sectors of Italian development cooperation policy: sustainable agriculture and rural development. It gives recommendations for secondary laws that will determine the action of these players in the Italian development cooperation system.
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The Known Traveller: Unlocking the potential of digital identity for secure and seamless travel
Is a Known Traveller Digital Identity the disruptive innovation the global travel security ecosystem needs? The cross-border movement of legitimate travellers has for decades enabled and sustained international trade, tourism-driven economic growth and increased tolerance across cultural and social divides. However, the travel system is under pressure from the growing number of travellers, infrastructure capacity limits and ever-increasing risk and security requirements. In particular, efforts to address increasing cyber and physical risks to national security can have adverse effects on the benefits of international travel.
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Innovation with a Purpose: The role of technology innovation in accelerating food systems ...
What if we could harness the power of technology innovation to help transform global food systems? By 2050, global food systems will need to sustainably and nutritiously feed more than 9 billion people while providing economic opportunities in both rural and urban communities. Yet our food systems are falling far short of these goals. A systemic transformation is needed at an unprecedented speed and scale. At the same time, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving disruptive technology innovations across many sectors. Agriculture and food systems have been slow to benefit from these developments – the sector lags significantly behind in harnessing the power of technology and making it widely accessible.
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Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Life on Land
The stress on the earth’s natural systems caused by human activity has considerably worsened in the 25 years since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. As a result of the “great acceleration”1 in human economic activity since the mid-20th century, research from many earth system scientists’ suggests that life on land could be entering a period of unprecedented environmental systems change.
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Gender and youth livelihoods programming in Africa: building knowledge to improve practice
Gender plays an important role in shaping young people’s transitions into work. In order to be effective, interventions aimed at supporting young people’s access to employment or entrepreneurship opportunities should be tailored to address gendered barriers. This report explores the gender-related barriers faced by young women and young men, reviews the many approaches that programmes take to confront these barriers and tries to establish whether and how these approaches have been successful. It finds that programming with gender-responsive components can have positive effects on gender equality in relation to participation, performance and opportunities. Evidence on the impacts of gender-responsive programming – and on long-term change – is, however, lacking.
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Meat: the Future Time for a Protein Portfolio to Meet Tomorrow’s Demand
The provision of universally accessible, affordable, safe and sustainable protein in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (“21st-century protein”) is a pressing issue that cuts across systemic challenges, such as consumption, the environment, food security, health and trade issues. It also offers a great opportunity to harness innovations in technology and science that the World Economic Forum has termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This short introductory paper has been produced for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2018 in Davos-Klosters to stimulate and promote discussion on this topic, in particular through a session entitled, Tasting the Future of Food, on Tuesday 23 January, 12.30-13.45.
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South Africa's Electricity Choice
The South African government’s obsession over the past decade with nuclear power may finally come to an end with a new president and administration committed to restoring good governance and securing reliable electricity supply at least cost to support economic growth and development. The inherent complexity of nuclear procurement, financing, and especially construction, means no new nuclear generated electricity could flow for at least a decade even with immediate procurement, and then only at prices well above other electricity options. The risk that the project might collapse as unfinanceable, or through corruption, creates further uncertainty around South Africa’s electricity choices.
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Locked Up Without Evidence – Abuses under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act
In October 2015, following elections in August, the Sri Lankan government under President Maithripala Sirisena agreed to a consensus resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council under increasing diplomatic pressure. The resolution committed the government to ensure accountability for conflict-related abuses by enacting several transitional justice mechanisms. Along with other human rights related reforms, the government also pledged to repeal the PTA, but has not yet done so. This report, based on interviews with 34 former detainees or their relatives, documents serious human rights violations under the PTA including severe torture and sexual abuse, as well as systematic denials of due process. While the cases detailed here address the experiences of only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of people who suffered under the PTA, the accounts underscore the need to ensure that any new counterterrorism legislation is rights-respecting and does not replicate past abuses.
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