Sustainability
Microfinance was meant to help the world’s poor, but in Cambodia, it’s plunging people deeper into debt
Microfinance was hailed as a way to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people without access to credit. It worked so well that Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus was awarded a Nobel Prize. But then, banks jumped in to get in on the profits. To manage high debt levels, Cambodians are migrating for work, eating less and even pulling their children out of school.
UN climate chief on coronavirus and climate change: We must ‘address these two fundamental, existential crises together’
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, continues to wrangle world leaders to make and meet ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions — even amid the pandemic.
Global response to COVID-19 should be a model for action on climate
As Washington starts to talk infrastructure as a way to put people back to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, a team led by congressional Democrats is working to develop long-term solutions to climate change that will help rebuild the economy.
What Munich’s coffee houses learned about waste from beer culture
Take-out coffee cups are a popular American import that are filling up the country’s trash bins. Now there’s an effort in Munich to replace throwaway cups with cups you borrow and return, inspired by the longstanding practice at the city’s famous beer gardens.
As latest UN climate change summit looms, delegates have plenty of work to do
Creating the Paris Agreement in 2015 was a monumental accomplishment. Establishing an actionable work plan has proved to be an even tougher task, but that is the goal at the latest United Nations climate summit to be held in Poland in December.