The conference of parties (COP21) meeting in Paris last week arrived at a historic and new global consensus to stop climate change by committing to 1.5 Celsius increase in average temperature target. Promoting greenhouse gas (GHG) sinks or areas that absorb GHGs are an important way to mitigate climate change (see more in the IPCC report). Forests, along with oceans are the most important sinks in the world.
On World AIDS Day 2015, we are marking the culmination of 3ie’s third thematic window, which funded seven pilot programmes and rapid impact evaluations looking for ways to increase the demand for voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC). In late 2013, we awarded grants to project teams of implementers and researchers to pilot innovative programs for increasing VMMC demand and to conduct rapid impact evaluations of those programmes.
Replication research is often the space of junior researchers. As a well-cited research economist, with multiple international organisation affiliations, Paul Winters stands out in this space.
On 25 September 2015, 193 UN member states signed off on a new direction for achieving sustainable development by 2030. First among the 17 new sustainable development goals is the aim to end poverty in all its forms,and everywhere by 2030. This might seem like a tall order. As a first and important step, countries need to take stock of effective solutions that have worked and identify areas where more work is required.
Impact evaluation has grown in popularity as governments and development agencies have come to realise that it is the best way to assess if their programmes work or not. But will these evaluations help politicians, managers and funders know if an agency as a whole is ‘working’?
Small scale trials have repeatedly demonstrated the health benefits of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes. But the benefits disappear when many of these programmes are taken to scale. Large scale handwashing, sanitation and water treatment campaigns in India, Bangladesh, Peru and Vietnam have not led to a change in the behaviour of most of the people they target. So, the health impacts of these programmes are insignificant.
International humanitarian assistance reached a record high in 2014, with global contributions totalling US$24.5 billion,almost a 19 per cent increase since 2013.However, this isn’t good news for the sector as the demand for humanitarian assistance continues to outstrip supply. Humanitarian financing is now fraught with new challenges as the nature and number of emergencies that come under the realm of humanitarian action is constantly changing.
So, 2015 has arrived and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But shouldn’t we stop and ask how we have done on the MDGs first? “How we have done” can be seen an outcome monitoring question: have the targets been reached? But since we have fallen far short on some targets, such as access to improved sanitation, we need to dig deeper and ask which policies have been successful in helping achieve the targets.
It is unfortunate but distrust of vaccines remains widespread in the world today. In August 2003, a polio vaccination boycott was declared in the five northern states of Nigeria. Political and religious leaders argued that the vaccines could be contaminated with anti-fertility agents, HIV and cancer-causing agents. It took a full year to resolve the boycott but the one year period wreaked havoc on the status of polio across the world.
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