Author: WHES

In May, the United Nations announced that while globally there are 200 million fewer hungry people than there were 25 years ago, twice as many African countries are now suffering food crises. Moreover, Pacific islanders’ access to sanitation facilities is declining, and just over half of that population has potable water.

ADDIS ABABA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A major United Nations summit to finance ambitious global development goals, from giving free education to all to dealing with climate change, fell short of developing countries’ expectations with few aid pledges.

Morton Biskind, a physician from Westport, Connecticut, was a courageous man. At the peak of the cold war, in 1953, he complained of maladies afflicting both domestic animals and people for the first time. He concluded that the popular insect poison DDT was the agent of their disease. DDT, he said, was “dangerous for all animal life from insects to mammals.”

Pope Francis spoke about the problems faced by the poor and indigenous peoples at the Second World Meeting of the Popular Movements at the Expo Feria Exhibition Centre in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, on Thursday.

The global humanitarian system, already under considerable strain, will soon be tested as never before. In 2013, the gap between the funds available for humanitarian aid and estimated global needs reached $4.5 billion, leaving at least one-third of the demand unmet. The gap seems certain to widen, as key donors cut their contributions and humanitarian disasters grow more frequent and severe.

In the never-ending fight against corporate welfare, the forces of fairness and economic rationality may have found a winning strategy: Divide and conquer.

Christine Lagarde took time off last week from grappling with the Greek debt crisis to make a speech about inequality. The managing director of the International Monetary Fund chose a nautical metaphor first used by John F Kennedy.

The following post by former IFPRI senior researcher Alberto Valdés is part of an ongoing series of blog stories celebrating IFPRI’s 40th anniversary. Each story authored by current and former IFPRI research staff highlights a key research topic through the years from the personal perspective of the researcher.

I was in Mali recently where I met a woman, Maimouna Coulibaly, who several years ago left her job in the United States and returned to her home country to start a seed company called Faso Kaba. She quickly and confidently ramped up production, from 100 tons per year to over 1,000. She is eager to keep expanding, but she’s having a hard time finding financing.

I can’t tell you how many times in the last month someone has come up to me and said something like, “Do you think I should stop eating almonds?” or “I really miss almond butter, but I just can’t bring myself to buy it anymore.”