School of Public Health » Sustainable Development

Donate rice by learning language

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:36:25 +0000

Do you like to play games? Who doesn’t? Everybody enjoys playing games. What about playing a game to advance your language skills? You can advance your knowledge in English, Italian, Spanish, French and Korean by FreeRice.com website. And guess what? for each correct answer, the program donate 10 grains of rice to people in need in developing world.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program. Basically this site has two goals:

Provide education to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The source of income is the advertisement on the site. I played on the site, it was fun. The fun part is the amount of rice that you donate by playing the game. You advance your language, you donate rice, you feel good and proud to be a part of such efforts for reducing the pain of hunger.

IISD and ASB-ICRAF help developing countries negotiate maximum benefits from REDD-plus

admin — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:57:03 +0000

CANCUN—December 4, 2010—The International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Alternatives to Slash and Burn Partnership at the World Agroforestry Centre (ASB-ICRAF) have launched the second phase of their project—Building REDD Capacity for Developing Country Negotiators and Land Managers—to help developing countries get the most from complex negotiations at the climate change talks.

REDD-plus is about reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and other related issues in a way that benefits developing countries. These benefits include conserving biodiversity and improving the livelihoods of communities.

REDD-plus negotiations are a highly technical and rapidly evolving subject and many developing countries require support to understand their options and to develop strategies to effectively negotiate an appropriate REDD-plus decision under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“The goal is to ensure negotiations account for broader sustainable development benefits for developing countries, while retaining the integrity of greenhouse gas emission reductions,” said IISD associate Deborah Murphy.

The project is focused on assisting UN-REDD Program pilot countries. It aims to help these developing countries improve their capacity for policy analysis. The project will contribute to regional coordination, undertake policy research, raise awareness of on-going REDD-plus activities, and build the foundations for collaboration between southern actors and institutions.

Project activities in 2010–2011 include one REDD Development Dividend Task Force meeting, two regional workshops, the development of two policy papers and a web platform to support South-South information sharing on REDD-plus. -more-

The project will be delivered by IISD and ASB-ICRAF, with generous support from the government of Norway.

Prosperity Index

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:55:08 +0000

Two years ago I talked at this blog about a new index for measuring wellbeing. The index was Happiness. Now we have another index developed by the Legatum institute. The Legatum Prosperity Index is the world’s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing; unlike other studies that rank countries by actual levels of wealth, life satisfaction or development, the Prosperity Index produces rankings based upon the very foundations of prosperity – those factors that help drive economic growth and produce happy citizens over the long term.

Following a turbulent year marked by a global economic crisis, the Legatum Prosperity Index seeks to answer these two fundamental questions. It defines prosperity as both wealth and wellbeing, and finds that the most prosperous nations in the world are not necessarily those that have only a high GDP, but are those that also have happy, healthy, and free citizens.For downloading the report you can click here.

Happiness Index, an indicator for well being

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:45:49 +0000

Are you happy? When do people feel happiness? If they don’t have anything to eat make them happy, or if their babies are dying from pneumonia is a happy situation. If they live under Bomb and there is no hope in their country makes them feel as developed and happy nation. Of course, normal human in the mainstream is not happy in any above conditions and circumstances. If you feel free, just, fare, hopeful, sound, safe, with access to food, clean water, education, health care, medicine, shelter, job and security, then you feel fine and it sounds well being and make you happy.

Country of Bhutan came with the idea of happiness index as an indicator for sustainable development. Based on the Global Projection of Subjective Well-being Study, Denmark is the happiest nation in the world, and Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Bahamas are 2nd to 5th happiest nations. United States is 23rd and United Kingdom 41st. Iran 96th and Sudan, Ukraine, Moldova, Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi with 173rd to 178th are among less happy nations in the world.

By using GIS 9.2 software and with using data of Human development report, 2007, I compared GDP/capita and happiness index of Eastern Mediterranean countries (EM Regional Office of WHO), unfortunately because of war there is no data about Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at Yemen, in this poor country it seems people are happier than some countries with much higher GDP/capita.