-UN News Many extreme environmental events have a devastating effect on people’s lives, and a new UN report reveals that many of them are linked by the same underlying causes. On the day the study is released, we look at the impact of a locust swarm on a Kenyan farmer, and the ways that Cyclone Amphan affected an Indian worker. The huge locust swarm which hit the Horn of Africa in the...

Although services provided by the gig and platform workers touch the lives of each one of us, we have little knowledge about the role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work. Such digital labour platforms have created unprecedented opportunities for workers, businesses and society. However, they also pose serious threats to decent work and fair competition. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shows that the...

-Hindustan Times Recent research at the London School of Economics examines a decade of high-quality farmer-buyer data from Kenya during a period when it introduced radical farm laws to encourage agri-businesses to determine impacts on small farmers In the debate on new farm laws, emotions are running high with concerns that small farmers are being pitted against large agri-businesses. The new laws contain mostly untried policies and it is difficult to gauge...

Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...

-The Indian Express June 5 was World Environment Day. We must strive to preserve our environment better if we want to prevent pandemics like COVID-19 This year’s celebration of World Environment Day — on June 5 — has been different compared to all the previous years, as human civilisation faces one of its biggest crises. The COVID-19 pandemic is larger than the environmental crisis of the 1960s and ’70s, which prompted the...