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Freshwater scarcity is increasingly perceived as a global systemic risk. In its last seven annual risk reports, since 2012, the World Economic Forum lists water crises as one of the top five risks to the global economy in terms of potential impact.1 A recent study shows that two thirds of the global population live under conditions of severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year.2…

Statistics on global water challenges are daunting: 3 billion people don’t have basic handwashing facilities. A quarter of the world’s population live in countries facing extremely high water stress. There are more than 500 dead zones — areas of the ocean without enough oxygen for most marine life to survive — from untreated wastewater. The solutions to world’s water crises, though,…

In 1994, Ayman Nassar, an Egyptian-American who grew up in California, briefly abandoned his studies at the University of Colorado and followed his older brother to Egypt. “There were so many opportunities,” Nassar told me. The Nassars come from a family of Egyptian industrialists. They had owned a leather tannery in Alexandria which was nationalized by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the…

It’s time to reconsider food. Around the globe, food production, distribution, management and waste threaten wildlife, wild places and the planet itself. Today, 7.3 billion people consume 1.6 times what the earth’s natural resources can supply. By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9 billion and the demand for food will double. So how do we produce more food for more…

Across the diversity of ILC’s network of over 200 civil society and intergovernmental organisations, our members have defined a common goal. People-Centred Land Governance (PCLG) responds to the needs, and protects the rights, of the women, men and communities who live on and from the land, respecting that they should be the ultimate decision-makers on how their land and natural resources are…

Secure land rights for women is recognized as critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly for eradicating poverty and ending hunger and gender equality (Goals 1, 2 and 5). Progress has been made in securing women’s land rights through titling, but the challenges women face require a more robust range of interventions to ensure that they can make decisions on land…