Humanitarian Unknown 052.
1. The UN Between Decline and Renewal
Despite the gloom in New York, member state coalitions have responded to Security Council deadlock and other UN dysfunction with diplomatic innovations.
From Richard Gowan.
2. Mastercard Foundation Pulls Out of $100M Commitment to African Startups
In 2024, investment in African startups fell 25% year on year to $2.2 billion. African entrepreneurs believe it’s time they stop depending on Western philanthropists.
Reported by dámiláre dòsùnmú .
3. How Poverty Fell
"A recent paper by Armentano, Niehaus, and Vogl is not interested in why poverty fell, on a big picture level. Instead, they study how poverty fell: what did it look like for individual households in countries that saw large moves out of poverty? What were the typical mechanisms by which a family in Indonesia went from being desperately poor to getting by? Was it receiving government subsidies? Moving to a city? Working in a more lucrative industry?
This post will explore that paper’s high level conclusions, for a lay audience. If you want to know how people got way less poor during the last 30 years in a handful of pivotal countries, it’s your lucky day".
By Justin Mills.
4. Extreme Heat Can Age You As Fast As a Smoking Habit
"A study published in the journal Science Advances makes the case that extreme heat is aging millions of Americans more quickly than their counterparts in cooler climates. The impact of chronic exposure to high temperatures, researchers found, is equivalent to the effect of habitual smoking on cellular aging."
From Zoya Teirstein .
5. Why Environmentalists Are Still Losing
"Despite ever-present warnings about climate change, environmental politics and policy remain the preserve of well-educated and genteel urban dwellers, the “new ecological class”. This demographic’s concern and sense of urgency is undoubtedly sincere. But its domination over the movement’s main organizations — from legacy NGOs such as Greenpeace, Oxfam, and the WWF to the tepid Green parties of western Europe — has been politically catastrophic."
By Harrison Stetler .
6. The Story Behind the Internet’s Most Viral Political Meme
At issue is a set of heatmaps from a scientific article exploring the “moral circles” of liberals and conservatives. Welp.
Really cool piece from Frank Jacobs .
7. Lessons of Demopolis
"The liberal democracy package is so widely admired today, and so seldom scrutinized, that people tend to forget that it is, in fact, a package. Even skeptics lump democracy together with liberalism: in early 2008, the then President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan called on Western governments to stop obsessing about democracy, by which he meant: stop focusing on human rights. When Fukuyama, Pinker or Musharraf uses ‘democracy’ to refer to a commitment to universal rights or the separation of church and state, few stop to ask questions. But let’s do just that."
Very good, from Josiah Ober.
8. The Languages Lost To Climate Change
"Indigenous communities have deep relationships with the land they have occupied for generations, and this close relationship is reflected in the languages they speak — how they talk about the landscape, and how they express the beliefs and customs in which those languages developed. When their relationships with the land suffer, so can their languages."
How climate catastrophes and biodiversity loss are endangering languages across the globe.
Long read by Julia Webster Ayuso .
9. I Went to the Health Industry’s PR Awards. L. Mangione Wasn’t the Only One Haunting the Night.
"The PR industry needs the health care industry. And the health care industry needs good PR."
By Alexander Sammon .
10. Trump Is Trying to Remake the United Nations
Washington has signaled that it wants the international body to focus on preserving peace, but it could be looking to rubber-stamp its bilateral priorities.
From Richard Gowan again, the ultimate UN whisperer.