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Sexuality Education Begins to Take Root in Africa
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In Kenya, primary and secondary school students take courses called Life Skills Education. So do students in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Swaziland. South Sudan adds “peace-building” to the subject title. Lesotho, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia are more direct. These countries add the word “sexuality” to the course name.
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Healthcare Facilities in Developing Countries a High Risk for Coronavirus Transmission
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The front lines in the battle to limit damage from the new coronavirus are expanding.
Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, emerged in China and then blossomed in comparatively wealthy countries like Italy, South Korea, and the United States.
Now, the virus is spreading in poorer regions — in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and parts of Latin America — where essential defensive measures against infectious disease are often missing.
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A Conversation with Rodolfo Camacho on Using Data for Water Security
›Friday Podcasts // Water Security for a Resilient World // Water Stories (Podcast Series) // March 20, 2020 // By Eliana GutermanWhile there are many uses for global data sets and innovative data analysis technologies, the most important thing, Rodolfo Camacho said in this week’s Water Stories podcast, is not analyzing the data. It’s the collaboration among countries sharing data. Camacho, Project Director at Winrock International and Chief of Party for USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership (SWP), sat down with Lauren Herzer Risi, Project Director of the Environmental Change & Security Program to discuss the importance of big data and machine learning on improving water security. -
Destruction of Habitat and Loss of Biodiversity are Creating the Perfect Conditions for Diseases like COVID-19 to Emerge
›Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.
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Cardiovascular Disease Can be a Silent Killer During and After Pregnancy
›Stacy Ann Walker could have died.
During what she thought was going to be a normal exam, Stacy learned that she would need to have a C-section. While recovering in the hospital, she began to have breathing problems and after some testing was told that her heart had been scarred by an earlier bout of rheumatic fever. Shortly after, she also learned that she had heart failure, an enlarged heart, and problems with multiple heart valves.
She was 29.
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It’s Time We Scale Up Climate Leadership
›The urgency to address climate change is only growing. As youth step up and are increasingly vocal about climate change, international negotiations—most recently at COP25—fail to deliver the ambitious global action required for effective response.Where does this leave the communities most at risk from climate impacts? How can they adapt and transform in the face of enormous threats, sometimes to their very existence? With researchers and policy experts often focused on technological fixes and pushing new solutions to specific threats, it’s easy to assume that transformation is underway to respond to the new climate reality. In reality, transformative change is tough—especially when up against ingrained habit, culture, and a lack of political and financial resources to support it. Perhaps most importantly, transformative change requires effective leadership and champions—those people who build political will and create momentum to move policy innovations or on-the-ground action.
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How Natural Resources Could Help Build Peace in Afghanistan
›Potential water wars due to plans for multiple dams, violent opium cartels supporting world heroin markets, and many conflict-financing minerals including everyday talc used for baby powder. These are the types of natural resources stories that usually make front page news about Afghanistan. But natural resources have a significant role to play in stabilizing Afghanistan. Instead of being a source of conflict, they may help with peacebuilding by creating livelihoods and creating opportunities for ex-combatants.
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Can Singapore’s NEWater Spark a Wastewater Revolution in China?
›China is one of the “thirstiest” countries in the world with a per capita water availability a quarter of the United States. With population, pollution, and water shortages growing unabatedly, reclaimed water (e.g., treating wastewater to drinking water standards) could be the answer to China’s water insecurity. In China, extensive research in the 1980s into water reclamation and urban investments supporting infrastructure in the 2000s sparked production capacity in the country to rise from 63 billion gallons a day to 236 billion gallons per day between 2009 to 2015. Today, however, reclaimed water is a mere drop in the bucket meeting less than 1 percent of total urban water use. China could look to the tiny Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore to learn how it tapped reclaimed water to turn its water-scarce tiny island into a high-tech hydrohub.
A Publication of the Stimson Center.
While there are many uses for global data sets and innovative data analysis technologies, the most important thing, Rodolfo Camacho said in this week’s 
The urgency to address climate change is only growing. As youth step up and are increasingly vocal about climate change, international negotiations—most recently at COP25—fail to deliver the ambitious global action required for effective response.
