Poverty / Development35
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Climate Change to Exacerbate Rising Food Prices
Despite all human provisions to maintain a steady and even increasing food supply, post-Green-Revolution agriculture remains heavily dependent on seasonal weather. Just in the past few years, weather extremes caused significant jumps in food prices, causing social, economic, and political disturbances in both developing and developed countries. Between 2006 and 2008, world average prices rose…
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Millennium City and U.S. Students Chat and Read Aloud Online, Celebrating World Read Aloud Day
Words – and worlds – were shared in celebration of the second annual World Read Aloud Day, organized by LitWorld, on March 9, 2011. As part of LitWorld’s much larger celebration of reading, literacy and learning, students from across the Millennium Cities connected with students in the United States via Skype, to share stories and…
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Microsoft and the Earth Institute Launch Rural Technology Lab in Mali
By Matt Berg, ICT Director, Millennium Villages Project To demonstrate the critical role technology can play in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty, the Earth Institute, Columbia University has partnered with Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Community Technology Skills program to establish a computer programmer training center at the Millennium Villages project (MVP) office…
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A Tentative Year for REDD+: Placing Value on Forests
Forests, particularly tropical forests, are economically valuable for their biodiversity and, especially relevant for climate change, their ability to store carbon within their vegetation and soil. Alternately, destruction of forests releases carbon into the atmosphere. Deforestation and forest degradation account for 12-20% of GHG emissions. REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is a…
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Widening the World for Students
The following is a guest blog, authored by David Homa, an anthropology and economics teacher at Los Gatos High School in California, one of MCI’s School2School partners. As the world shrinks through the use of technology, it is possible to widen the world to students all over the world. During the past week, I have…
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Floods in Eastern Sri Lanka and North-Eastern Australia: Contrasts in Disaster Risk Management
Due to the ongoing floods in Sri Lanka, more than a million people are affected, 185,000 were displaced and 16 had died by February 5, 2011. The impact has been most severe on Eastern Sri Lanka a “Disaster Hazard and Vulnerability Hotspot”. The purpose of this post is to publicize information resources to help target…
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Despite Grim Water Futures, China and US Discuss Everything but Water
Notably absent from this week’s program is any planned dialogue regarding energy demand and water supply, two issues whose inverse trajectories are threatening the environmental and economic futures of both nations.
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Helping Water Work for Women in Mali
Last month I went to visit our Mali project site with two other Water Center staffers. We visited the village and garden where we worked last year (Koila Markala and Tibibas, respectively) and many other gardens where we hope to work in the future.
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Timor-Leste: Sustainable Development Initiative Launched by the Vale Columbia Center in Partnership with the Revenue Watch Institute and the Open Society Foundations
The Open Society Foundations have awarded $800,000 to the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment to promote integrated development in Timor-Leste in collaboration with the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI). Though rich in oil and gas, the island nation of Timor-Leste remains one of the least developed countries in the world. To use its revenues…
