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Helping to reshape the UN's approach to better serve the continent and merge the UN-led Sustainable Development Goals with Africa's own 2063 Agenda, are top priorities for the newly minted UN Special Adviser on Africa. Cristina Duarte, who is also Under-Secretary-General on African Affairs, took up her position at the helm of the Office (OSAA), in August. Previously, she had served…

COVID-19 continues to sweep across the world, and has now spread from the developed world to the global South. With rural populations making up three-quarters of the world’s poor, the impact of the pandemic will inevitably be most devastating in developing nations. Emerging evidence from this pandemic and experience from previous disease outbreaks and other crises show that it’s…

The Hotspot Analysis Tool for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP-HAT) combines in a single framework national environmental and social data (i.e. territorial accounts) with trade information for the estimation of supply-wide environmental pressure and impact indicators (i.e. footprints). For the estimation of footprint-type indicators, two approaches are applied: Environmentally…

Participants discussed how by working together we can “solve our most critical sustainable development challenges” and achieve the targets set out in the SDGs, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Key takeaways included the need for strong engagement with people and communities, the importance of data availability and access to improve…

Based on research using a machine-learning tool to analyze over 500,000 published reports and articles and economic modelling, the research project finds that an additional USD 14 billion per year until 2030 is needed to achieve SDG 2. The researchers propose ten interventions organized around three focus areas: On the farm, Food on the move, and Empower the excluded. The ‘Sustainable…

Changes in consumer and corporate behaviors together with more efficient land use planning and management can help us meet the demand for essential goods and services without compromising our stock of productive land resources. Land degradation neutrality is a framework that policymakers can use to address vulnerabilities in the global, regional and national economies exposed by the…