When it comes to summarizing all that an institute as diverse as UNU-MERIT achieves in a year, where does one begin? Our work spans education programmes and capacity development efforts to media engagement and thought leadership to research projects big and small, and so much more. Nevertheless, we’ve done our best to give a snapshot of UNU-MERIT’s impact in 2023 through these five key contributions to sustainable development: Responded to the climate crisis Few parts of life fail t...
Four UNU-MERIT researchers (Sanae Okamoto, Shyama Ramani, Rasmus Lema and Alejandro Álvarez-Vanegas) have co-authored articles for a COP 28 bookazine from the global affairs media network Diplomatic Courier, entitled COP 28: Saving Gaia to Save Ourselves. This special edition, which was published on 21 November 2023, focused on three main questions: – How do we craft better collaborative learning ecosystems to better equip youth and adults to address the climate crisis? R...
From 30 Nov to 12 Dec, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Expectations are high for the year’s climate negotiations, which will focus on combatting temperature rise and the conclusion of the first global stocktake, which crucially assesses progress on the Paris Agreement goals. UNU-MERIT will be contributing to the discussions by taking part in the following side events and sessions: All times below are in Gulf Standard...
A guest post by Francisco Mango, alumnus of last year’s 2021-22 MPP cohort Research indicates that subnational actors may play a key role in the fight against the climate crisis Climate change is perhaps the most critical threat to human development. Despite this, multilateral agreements on carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – the most likely explanation of climate change – have led to frustrating outcomes. The repeated failures of governments to ful...
A joint post by Dr Rasmus Lema (UNU-MERIT) and Dr Clovis Freire (UNCTAD) Hydrogen will play a crucial role in the mounting global efforts to decarbonize our economic systems in the coming decades. Many developing countries have the potential to influence the hydrogen economy, which may provide one-fifth of total energy demand by 2050, especially in those areas that are difficult to electrify. This opens green windows of opportunity for economic development and diversification. Green hydrogen cou...
Dr Rasmus Lema joined UNU-MERIT as an Associate Professor in January 2022. Rasmus’ broad research interests cover structural change and development, new and emerging technologies, and global value chains and innovation systems. He currently investigates economic development opportunities and constraints arising from the green transformation in emerging economies and sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, Rasmus is co-editor in chief of the Journal Innovation and Development and vice-chairman of the Gl...