Mothers, carbon, trash, vanishing ice and “secret lives”: Watch a movie for Earth Day and learn.
Category: Gender Equality
Millennium City and Millennium Village Students ‘Stand Up for Girls’ on International Day of the Girl
In sub-Saharan Africa, only 63 percent of girls complete their schooling, according to the World Bank. Yet our own research in the Millennium Cities indicates that girls who continue their education will have far greater opportunities, and they will be in a better position to care for themselves and their families. To celebrate the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl, by “Standing Up for Girls” and their right to a quality education, a number of the Millennium Cities and Millennium Villages Project sites held rallies, marched and participated in debates on girls’ issues.
IKEA Foundation Pledges $2.5 Million to Earth Institute Project in India
In partnership with Earth Institute researchers, the IKEA Foundation has pledged over $2.5 million to help improve the quality of education through pilot projects in two Indian states.
Master of It All: One Woman Scientist Pays Tribute to Another
Lamont-Doherty geophysicist Robin Bell pays tribute to colleague Kim Kastens who is retiring from Lamont after 31 years. Kastens was the first woman co-chief scientist on the JOIDES Resolution, first woman faculty member to join Columbia’s geology department, founder of Columbia’s joint journalism and environmental science master’s program and a pioneer in the field of geoscience education research.
Goals for Rio: A Path to Sustainability
In an article published in The Lancet, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs outlines his own ideas for sustainable development goals, and how how these goals can build on the Millennium Development Goals, the UN’s set of targets that aim to reduce extreme poverty and boost social well-being in many other ways by 2015.
Making Sanitary Pads to Help Keep Girls in School
MCI is lucky enough to work with two amazing Ethiopian women from the region of Tigrai, in the north of the country where the Millennium City of Mekelle is located. Both women have gone abroad to become talented professionals and both have resolved to transform the lives of women and young girls in their native region, returning home, one permanently, in order to do so.
Population, Consumption and the Future
As the world population grows toward 10 billion, consumption of water, food and energy is expanding at a rate that cannot be maintained without depleting the planet’s resources. If we fail to address these two issues together, we face a grim future of economic, social and environmental ills, warns a new report prepared by a group of scientists and other experts for the Royal Society.
“The Population Bomb: Defused or Still Ticking?” Seminar Recap
“Thank you for coming on this gorgeous day, to sit in an airless, lightless room and discuss how to save the world,” said John Mutter, director of Columbia’s PhD in Sustainable Development and a member of the Earth Institute faculty, in welcoming the audience of the Sustainable Development Seminar, “The Population Bomb: Defused or Still Ticking?” The seminar brought together a panel of demography and population experts, who, Mutter calculated, shared a total of 121 years’ experience in the field. It became apparent, upon the beginning of the discussion, that the population bomb was not so much ticking, as exploding. The current world population, which is estimated to be 7 billion, is projected to reach 10.2 billion by 2100.
Celebrating International Women’s Day: Triumphs and Challenges
There is much to celebrate, this International Women’s Day. Three fabulously courageous women won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and just a year earlier the United Nations established UN Women, a new agency dedicated to gender equality worldwide and headed by another strong woman leader and role model, former President of Brazil Michelle Bachelet. School enrollments of girls are unprecedentedly high, the world has finally begun to mobilize around safe childbirth and other women’s health issues, and the World Bank is reporting this week that we have achieved the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), halving extreme poverty, well before the United Nations’ 2015 deadline, thereby easing the lives of hundreds of millions worldwide. Yet a tremendous amount of work waits to be done.
Spring 2012 Internship Positions Announcement
This spring the Earth Institute, Columbia University is offering Columbia students opportunities to intern within various departments and research centers at the Earth Institute. All full-time Columbia and Barnard students are eligible to apply for internships. These internships are funded at a rate of $15/hr for 10 hours per week and up to a maximum [...]
