Office at the United Nations, New York

27 May, 2011

Poverty Reduction Using ICT Education: The Case of Lao

There is increasing recognition that local ownership is critical to the success and sustainability of poverty reduction initiatives. While large numbers of agricultural extension workers in many countries have valuable knowledge of local conditions, they often lack the breadth of knowledge and skills that would make them creative problem solvers in their local communities and enable them to draw upon available funding. Under a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Lao PDR, UNU-IIST, in collaboration with the University of Bremen, has begun to design the software that will tap the potential of ICT infrastructure to support capacity building at grassroots level in the country. This seminar highlights the novel challenges presented by the construction of such a system, from the perspectives of computing and cognition.

4 May, 2011

Sustainable Consumption and Production: Educating, Engaging and Empowering Stakeholders for Low Carbon, Inclusive Growth

This side event of the 19th UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD19) aims to highlight the role of education in promoting consumption and production systems that lead to low carbon, inclusive growth. Members of the Interagency Committee for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) will present and assess ESD actions that have the potential to reorient modern consumption and production patterns.

23 March, 2011

Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security

This policy-focused Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropocene (GEHSHA) addresses new security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks posed by global environmental change and disasters. The major focus is on coping with global environmental change: climate change, desertification, water, food and health and with hazards and strategies on social vulnerability and resilience building and scientific, international, regional and national political strategies, policies and measures including early warning of conflicts and hazards. The book proposes a political geo-ecology and discusses a 'Fourth Green Revolution'.

24 February, 2011

The Future of Global Development: Is It In Entrepreneurship?

This event aims to bring to the fore the most contemporary and pressing issues surrounding development and entrepreneurship. Although much is expected of entrepreneurship, it remains however a misunderstood terrain. The event, The Future of Global Development: Is it in Entrepreneurship?, will draw on a new publication entitled Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (edited by Wim Naudé and published by Palgrave Macmillan, December 2010) and the two year project at UNU-WIDER which led to it. Contributing to this richly dynamic area of research, and emphasizing the importance of institutions for understanding how entrepreneurs can play an innovative role to the greatest benefit of society, the book has been described as "...the single most informative work on the topic of entrepreneurship and economic development in print...a must read", (Prof. Roger R. Stough, George Mason University).

22 February, 2011

Where is Global Health Heading?

Threats to sustainable global health include poverty and inequality, rising vulnerability diseases and natural hazards, water and sanitation issues, uncontrolled urbanization, marginalization of rural populations, unsafe living conditions, and lack of health infrastructure. Most importantly, there is a severe lack of human capacity building programs for the health sector critical to achieving reasonable health indicators in developing countries. This can be attributed to policy restrictions, migration of healthcare workers, and constraints in finance, infrastructure and expertise. Case-mix or DRGs is a disease classification system with the objective of creating mutually exclusive, clinically meaningful categories of cases with similar resource utilization. The system has been used as a tool to enhance the quality and efficiency of healthcare services in many developed countries. Case-mix has the reputation as an effective and efficient tool for providing payment for health financing schemes.

17 February, 2011

Should Africa Industrialize?

Africa's post-independence leaders - like many developing country policy makers in the 1960s and 1970s - looked to industrialization as the key to rapid economic growth. But, the state-led, import substituting industries they created were frequently unsustainable, and efforts to spur industrial development in Africa largely vanished in the 1980's. While the last two decades of the 20th Century were boom times for industry in low and middle income countries; industry was moving out of Africa. This presentation addresses two questions: why Africa should industrialize and how. Recent research indicates that economies with more diverse and sophisticated industrial sectors tend to grow faster. Africa, however, is moving in the opposite direction. New evidence on changes in industrial structure and sophistication for 18 African economies between 1975 and 2005 shows that industry in most African economies has declined in relative importance, diversity, and sophistication. Lack of industry limits growth: this is why Africa should industrialize.