Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani human rights activist, especially for women’s and girls’ education, and the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate (the second Pakistani to receive the prize). Born in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan in 1997, she started writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu, detailing her life during […]

Marie Curie was a pioneer of modern science. Despite a career that was physically demanding and ultimately fatal, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in medicine and fundamentally changed the understanding of radioactivity. Marie Curie was born Marie Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, to a family of teachers who believed […]

Olena Zelenska, a former architecture student who is a screenwriter by profession, is credited with initiating Ukraine’s accession to the G7 international initiative on gender equality – the Biarritz Partnership – in December 2019 during a speech at the third Ukrainian Women’s Congress (a permanent public platform that defines the gender policy agenda for the […]

Companies have produced more than 7 billion tons of plastic since production first started to ramp up in the 1950s. Unfortunately, all manner of plastics, such as helmets, single-use bottles, bottle caps, windsurf boards and even Christmas trees, have been finding their way into waterways and, from there, into the ocean, since the beginning. Up […]

It is possible, today, to have a world entirely free of fossil fuels. What was once an abstract concept is possible because, technically speaking, electricity can power everything we do every day – heat homes, drive a car, watch TV or charge a computer. And this electricity can come simply from wind turbines, solar panels […]

More than 2 billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. And even in developed countries, many people do not think water from the tap is safe. Over half of households in the United States are concerned about the quality of their water supply and only 55% of Europeans drink […]

Great Barrier Reef, Australia ©dcarsprungli

According to the WWF’s Living Blue Planet Report, more than half of the world’s coral reefs have died in the past 30 years due to climate change, overfishing and pollution. “Over 25 per cent of all marine species live in coral reefs, yet they cover an area about half the size of France.” Increasing pressure […]

Sustainable food for all Source: Oxfam East Africa, licensed with CC BY 2.0

Each of the richest people on earth has a carbon footprint some 175 times greater than that of someone in the poorest 10% on the planet, according to estimates by Oxfam, thereby driving climate change and its devastating effects worldwide. Yet it is not the rich who are suffering the most from the effects, or […]

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, USA ©dcarsprungli

Protecting 30% of the Earth by 2030 is the goal of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People. This intergovernmental group of more than 50 countries co-chaired by Costa Rica and France, with the United Kingdom as Ocean co-chair, aims to secure a global deal for nature and people that can halt the accelerating […]

Dekonstruktive Mjøstårnet 02-07-19.jpg by Øyvind Holmstad; licensed with CC BY-SA 4.0

The world’s tallest building made from wood is called Mjøstårnet and is located in the Norwegian town of Brumunddal. Built in 2019 and measuring 85.4 meters tall, it dominates neighboring Mjøsa lake, more than 100 kilometers north of Oslo. It is a mixed use building containing apartments, offices and a hotel (with the apt name […]