News

Malaria remains in the top three diseases causing the highest mortality globally.

Professor Dan Banik was appointed Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria in November 2022 and delivered his inaugural lecture entitled “The Politics of Poverty in a Changing World Order: Challenges, Strategies, and Promising Practices” in Pretoria on Tuesday 23 May 2023. 

Author: Solveig Aamodt, Senior Researcher, CICERO Center for International Climate Research.

A unison sigh with relief could be heard among environmentalists worldwide when Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva was announced as winner of the Brazilian presidential election on 30 October 2022. Especially to those defending the environment, climate, and indigenous peoples’ rights, the four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration have felt like an incrementing disaster. The election of Lula saved the hope of a future for the Brazilian Amazon, but how easy will it be for Lula to put Brazil on a low-carbon and sustainable track?

There is considerable concern that the world is off-track in achieving the SDGs. As the SDGs are not directly referred to in treaties, local laws, or case law, a particularly relevant question is how and to what extent the SDGs are achievable when they are not legally binding

As part of the collaborative research project SustGOV, Addis Ababa University (AAU) organized a roundtable discussion on “Policy Coherence for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Ethiopia” with FDRE Parliament Standing Committee members.

Dan Banik is part of an external expert group that has been appointed by the Norwegian Government to make recommendations on ways to ensure effective financing for the SDGs.

This is an open call for all working on 'India in Africa' to submit a paper to the panel "India in Africa: Changing Modalities of South-South Cooperation" at ECSA 2023.

“India continues to grow its diplomatic and political clout, and is scaling-up its Africa outreach. However, Indian policymakers cannot assume that their country’s development experience provides a blueprint for African development. India’s African outreach must pay greater attention to African developmental requirements and priorities and cannot rest solely on the country’s normative imaginary.”

Read this short article written by Dr. Meera Venkatachalam and Professor Dan Banik.

Published in African Arguments

"India’s development cooperation with the African continent has gradually become synonymous with its economic diplomacy, as foreign policy is crafted to boost trade, investment and stimulate the overseas growth of Indian industries."

Read this short article on how modalities of development cooperation between India and the African continent are changing, written by Dr. Meera Venkatachalam and Professor Dan Banik.

Published in African Arguments.

Over the 75 years that has passed since India’s independence in 1947, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has gradually developed research and manufacturing hubs that offer a steady supply of affordable drugs to large parts of the world.

Read the latest op-ed on India-Africa cooperation by Prof. Ranga Reddy Burri, Prof. Dan Banik and PhD candidate Lise Bjerke. 

Sindre Brennhagen is one of the winners of UiO's sustainability prize for best master's thesis. 

Read Vivek N.Ds reflections from the recent Hyderabad roundtable discussion on sustainable healthcare and pharmaceutical trade between India and Africa. 

Published in International Health Policies.

Attend the digital launch of the book India's Development Diplomacy & Soft Power in Africa edited by Kenneth King and Meera Venkatachalam 30 March.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the River Nile has begun producing electricity for the first time. While supporters claim that the dam will make an important contribution to economic development in the country, the project has been at the centre of a 11-year-long dispute between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan.

The COP26 conference marks a breakthrough in the discourse on climate change by addressing fossil fuel subsidies for the first time. Yet, environmental justice continues to be in the forefront of the climate debate.   

Urgent and ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation policies are needed to strengthen responses to climate change. What are the trade-offs between social and ecological objectives and outcomes of a green transformation for (dis)abled people?

India has made considerable progress in recent years towards bringing energy services to its citizens and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two recent IEA reports shed light on the challenges ahead.

The Government of Norway recently launched a new action plan for climate adaptation and food security, building on the key principles of the 2030 Agenda.

Recent reports by V-Dem and Freedom House indicate that democracy is backsliding across the world. What does this tell us about democracy and sustainable development in 2021?

In this blog, Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Ingunn Ikdahl argue that a framing of remote learning, connectivity, and access to hardware as the solutions to lockdown unduly privileges certain understandings of how children’s right to education are violated.

There are five key reasons why a small country like Norway would not do better on its own in the global vaccine race, write Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée and Katerini Storeng.

As much of climate change research in psychology is focused on individuals, we found the youth movement’s collective approach interesting. What motivated thousands of young people to strike for policy change and structural measures rather than individual measures?

A recent OECD report explores how the SDGs can be operationalised in a prosperous world. Norway's most populous county, Viken, recently implemented the SDGs in regional planning with good results. 

On 26 October, UNU-WIDER hosted their 24th Annual Lecture delivered by Mark Malloch-Brown. Recording now available!

What does literature have to do with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This question can be answered in many ways, and literary scholars can provide a wide range of different responses. Literary fiction often addresses the most pressing and current issues, and so, literature can, and does, tell a great variety of stories mirroring the problems that we face today. However, literature is not only about what it tells, but also about how it tells it. As is clear from debates on climate change or the range of topics discussed in the current US presidential campaign, how we communicate to the rest of the world certainly affects what we do. In this blog, I would like to focus on one specific way that literary fiction can contribute to achieving the SDGs, namely through exploring the workings of our minds.