A LA LATINA

Feeling distraught about the state of the world? This episode is for you. It turns out your pessimism is not evenly shared. Younger people, particularly younger people in the developing world, have a bright view of the future and expect their lives to be better than their parents. “This is the optimism of the tech generation that can see a way forward,” an expert on generational change, Dr. Eliza...

As we enter year three of the pandemic, the virus is winning. That sober assessment comes from a Special Envoy of the World Health Organization, Dr. David Nabarro. “Its winning because we have not presented a united front against it,” Nabarro explains. “and that can only be possible if world leaders work properly together.” Global GoalsCast sits in on one of Nabarro’s Covid-19 briefings with publi...

The rich world placed a big bet on vaccines. But the flaw in that gamble became clear as a new variant spreads. The vaccine was never enough to stop the pandemic, Edie Lush points out in this episode, even if the world had enough vaccine. Most of the world did not have enough vaccine and the new variant, Omicron, mutated and began to spread. Wealthy countries, which had kept most of the vaccine fo...

Everyone seemed disappointed with the Glasgow climate summit. But maybe it was not as bad as it looked? That is the provocative insight of Isabel Hilton, an expert on both climate action and on one of the pivotal countries, China. Yes, it was “unhelpful,” as she put it, that India, with China’s backing, changed the wording of the final communique to promise a “phase down” rather than a “phase out”...

The World Health Organization’s emergency committee on Covid-19 says that “analysis of the present situation and forecasting models indicate that the pandemic is far from finished.” To curtail it, a “coordinated international response” is needed, reports Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman. “Where have I heard that before?” replied co-host Edie Lush. A coordinated response is exactly what the world has n...

In this episode, taped live at the end of the United Nation’s General Assembly meeting, three experts face the challenge of making up ground lost to the pandemic. Measures of wealth, health, education and equity have all been set back. “The world has a lot of work to do,” said co-host Edie Lush. “The pandemic has really set back the cause of human progress in terms of all the metrics around health...

The pandemic and economic collapse dealt a severe blow to the progress that was being made toward eradicating extreme poverty, improving health and education, and reducing hunger and inequity. Those are the Sustainable Development Goals, aka the Global Goals, the World’s ‘to-do list’ for a better, fairer world by 2030. “A lot of of the people who were in precarious situations ended up falling deep...

Season 6 trailer

Do you think Climate Change is something that will happen in the future? Or something that will happen somewhere else? Well, as Co-hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush, say: think again. The climate is warming and one of the predicted effects, extreme weather, is happening faster and more severely than climate scientists had forecast. This has produced record heat in western Canada and the Uni...

The world has had it with lockdowns at just the wrong moment. Covid is spreading faster than ever even as political leaders back off restrictions designed to curb it.  Dr. David Nabarro, Special Envoy of the World Health Organization on Covid-19, warns that the next six months will be rough. “We are in the middle of a really difficult pandemic and we are nowhere near the end of it,” he said. Vacci...

The world is exhausted with this pandemic. Yet, the virus perseveres, mutating in ways that have made it far more contagious. This has created a dangerous situation. Many communities want restrictions lifted, even as the need to curb the virus has never been greater. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization for Covid-19, explains in this episode that it is vital to reduce the...

In New York they are shooting off fireworks to celebrate reopening. But in other parts of the world the coronavirus is continuing to spread, with lethal results. Public health workers are angry and frustrated. A senior official of the World Health Organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, says the world needs to pull together to use all available tools to curb the virus. “Right now the narrative is vaccin...

Covid-19 is moving from a pandemic to an endemic disease. The virus will be with us for a long time to come, maybe forever. Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, says we need to prepare for this with strong leadership - both local and global. Global GoalsCast attends Dr. Nabarro’s latest briefing where he introduces us to health workers who have made a real difference...

The world’s fight against Covid-19 is at a crossroads. Four out of five doses of vaccine have gone to a few rich countries.  “What are we all working for,’ asks Dr. David Nabarro, a special envoy of the World Health Organization. “Are we working for a small number of groups of people in well endowed countries to be able to be protected? People like me? Is this all about us being able to be okay?” ...

Global GoalsCast is invited to an exclusive briefing on Covid-19 for global health leaders. The Covid-19 situation is more sobering today than at any time in the pandemic, Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, informs the group. India is the challenge now, he reports. But where will the problem be tomorrow? “I don’t know,” he warns.  Nabarro notes that some wealthy cou...

The fight to curb Covid-19 has created a new divide between those who have had the vaccine and those who have not. The United States, The United Kingdom and other well off countries are on their way to immunizing their entire adult population. Yet dozens of less wealthy countries have yet to receive their first dose. This inequity is both a moral challenge and a public health crisis. “You have cov...

Putting the world back on track after the pandemic will require a level of cooperation and partnership unlike anything we have seen. That is the conclusion of experts convened by Global GoalsCast to assess the crisis of the Sustainable Development Goals and the road forward.   The world before the pandemic proved dangerously vulnerable because of the very challenges the SDGs are designed to addres...

The pandemic has set the world back in so many ways. In this special, two-part episode, Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman look at the damage inflicted on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The worldhad been making real progress toward the goals, which include eradicating poverty, educating everyone, providing health care for all and equity for women and girls. But in the space of...

Returning to work and curbing coronavirus are not competing ideas. That is a false choice. We can have jobs and health by building back in new ways that improve workplaces, education and medical care while deterring the infection.  Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman seek out provocative ideas for immediate change. They are joined in this search by Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, inve...

Not since World War II has so much of the world been so shattered by a single global event.  How do we recover?  We look at recovery from multiple perspectives. An Israeli peace-maker turned comic shares her frightening tale of Covid-19 diagnoses and survival. She was quarantined in a Jerusalem hotel with Arabs and Jews, an education in the true meaning of coexistence. Dr. Tom Frieden, one of the...

Global Goal 5, gender equity, is both a purpose in itself and a vital accelerant to achieving all of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. “We’re trying to move past the gravitational forces, the barriers that hold women back,” explains Melinda Gates, philanthropist, author and mother of three. “Because if you can remove those barriers and help lift women up, they will lift up the world.” In...

The pandemic can be stopped. We already know how, explain two of the world’s top public health doctors in this episode on lessons from the pandemic. The solution involves truly understanding how the disease was stopped in the early countries that confronted it. “We’re going back and relearning a lot of the lessons from China,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led the World Health Organization’s mission...

Measured against history the change has come swiftly. After living in the countryside for thousands of years, humanity is in the midst of an epic move to the city. Co-host Edie Lush points out in this episode that as recently as 200 years ago little more than one person in ten lived in a city. Today, the UN estimates just over half of us live in cities. By 2050 that will be two thirds. Population...

We must end our dependence on Fossil Fuels. “There is no choice,” Claudia Romo Edelman says. But it is not as simple as just stopping, experts explain in this episode, produced in cooperation with the Alphaville blog of the Financial Times. Eighty percent of our energy today comes from Fossil Fuels, explains Izabella Kaminska, editor of Alphaville. If we just go cold turkey, or even transitioned t...

Wildfire season in Australia has brought human and environmental tragedy. It also has sent a warning to us all. “There's a huge, really very important message for everybody in the world looking at these fires,” Matthew England, a professor of oceanography and climate at the University of New South Wales, explains in the final episode of Global GoalsCast’s Season Three. “This is a glimpse into our...