For most people, home is where you feel the safest. In this post, Kaori Yoshida discusses women’s safety in cities through reflecting on topics of community building, root shock and gentrification.

Julia Nethero explores the shortcomings of urban low-income housing, which fall particularly on women who are responsible for the household’s well being, and how participatory design and management ameliorate those challenges.

“Thank you for coming on this gorgeous day, to sit in an airless, lightless room and discuss how to save the world,” said John Mutter, director of Columbia’s PhD in Sustainable Development and a member of the Earth Institute faculty, in welcoming the audience of the Sustainable Development Seminar, “The Population Bomb: Defused or Still Ticking?” The seminar brought together a panel of demography and population experts, who, Mutter calculated, shared a total of 121 years’ experience in the field. It became apparent, upon the beginning of the discussion, that the population bomb was not so much ticking, as exploding. The current world population, which is estimated to be 7 billion, is projected to reach 10.2 billion by 2100.

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.

Educating girls and women is an important step in overcoming poverty. Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3 reflect the commitment that female education has a strong relationship with many other development indicators, and that education is an indispensable tool for women empowerment and the reduction of poverty. Girls’ education and the promotion of gender equality in education thus become vital tools for accelerating rural development.

Megatons of carbon dioxide, radiative forcing, technology deployment, cap-and-trade systems: this is the common vocabulary of climate change. Concepts of equality, justice and ethics are relative latecomers to this highly specialized and technical world. Where they have emerged, terms like ‘climate justice’ usually refer to the interests of developing nations as a whole, reflecting the deep… read more

When gender is mentioned in the context of climate change, it’s generally to point out women’s greater vulnerability to climate change’s impacts. Indeed, women do tend to be more vulnerable than men, especially in less-developed countries, and they have different capacities to cope. The reasons for the gender differences include rights to home and land… read more