Young entrepreneurs from ‘Finish Society India’ and ‘Sidian Bank Kenya’ were honoured in this year’s ‘Sarphati Sanitation Awards’, presented at the opening ceremony of Amsterdam International Water Week on 30 October 2017. Shortlisted for the Award were (i) Mr Abhijit Banerji of Finish Society India, (ii) Ms Catherine Kisamwa of Sidian Bank Kenya and (iii) Andrew Foote of Sanivation Kenya. Mr Abhijit Banerji won the category prize of €25,000. Sidian Bank Kenya is a close partner in the FINISH IN...
Strangers who share one car. A network around a drug addicted youth who offer care themselves, under the guidance of a professional. A person paying back an hour of painting window frames with an hour of working in someone else’s garden. These are all examples of a more social economy, which is growing slowly but surely, also in the Netherlands. At Maastricht University, Prof. René Kemp is studying how this transition from an old to a new economy is taking shape worldwide. Working together to do...
A joint post by Rushva Parihar and Dorcas Mbuvi. … An estimated 2.4 billion people still do not have access to proper sanitation, of which about 1 billion still defecate in the open. These figures represent the enormous challenge of achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 and its specific target to “achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation” by 2030. Critically, reaching unserved populations at scale will require low-cost sanit...
The APPAM International Conference 2017 lived up to its theme of ‘Public Policy and Governance Beyond Borders’ – not least thanks to the academics, analysts, practitioners and students who joined from all around the world. I had the opportunity to present a paper on ‘Metropolitan Governance Cooperation and CO2 Transport Emission’, which I’m currently working on with Dr. Tatiana Skripka....
Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico were Latin America’s big winners in the 2017 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII), which ranks the world’s economies on their innovative capabilities (innovation inputs) and measurable results (innovation outputs)....
When President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement, the landmark climate accord signed by 196 nations that came into force in November 2016, the decision caused a significant negative backlash among other signatory countries. Given that the US is one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, its June 1 reneging on the deal delivered a blow to the global agreement. But, as many commentators were quick to point out, as long as other leaders didn’t follow Trump’s ...
“Worldwide about a billion people defecate in the open — including 600,000 in India. So when Sikkim in the far northeast of India was declared ‘Open Defecation Free’ in 2016, we were curious. How did this small state, capped by Himalayan peaks and dotted with Buddhist monasteries, manage it? How did Sikkim turn the tide?” asks PhD fellow Rushva Parihar. His supervisor, Prof. Shyama V. Ramani, is an expert on (the evolution of) development economics. In her usual transpare...
“Peru is at a critical juncture politically, economically and socially,” says Dr. Michiko Iizuka. “Their economy has been growing significantly for the past 10-15 years and during that period, poverty has decreased – but now economic growth is slowing due to the decline in commodity prices. This means that productivity gains, via increasing innovation, are crucial to maintain the current pace of development. In other words, Peru’s newly-elected president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski,...
Shyama V. Ramani, Professor of Development Economics at UNU-MERIT, has been working on the issue of sanitation since the tsunami of December 2004. It all started as a charity project to build toilets for women in a small coastal village in Tamil Nadu, her home state in the southernmost part of India. “The tsunami had destroyed the vegetal cover around the village and the women could no longer relieve themselves in the bushes as they used to. They needed toilets.” But the project failed, and so S...
In 2013, India became the fourth country in the world (after Russia, the United States and the European Union) and the only emerging nation to launch a Mars probe into space. But it remains part of the group of 45 developing countries with less than 50% sanitation coverage, with many citizens practising open defecation, either due to lack of access to a toilet or because of personal preference. According to the Indian census of 2011, only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households in India had their ...