The Programme for International Student Assessment, or “PISA,” is an international study that made its first run in 2000. The purpose of the test is to compare results of 15 year old students around the world and to rank each country by how successful the students score. The test is distributed and analyzed every three …
Category: International Economic Development
Mar 02
The Missing Piece: Where Are Women in the Rio+20 Development Puzzle?
The Rio+20 Summit has been generating lots of buzz lately, although the international meeting is not until this summer. Fellow bloggers Julia and Katherine have discussed, at different lengths, the history and preparation of this year’s summit. There are seven key categories up for discussion during the three-day event: Jobs, energy, cities, food, water, oceans, …
Mar 02
Pipeline Politics
It’s no surprise that over the past few months, gasoline prices have been skyrocketing. Today’s national average price for a gallon of gasoline is $3.73, quickly approaching the highest recorded average price of $4.11. One issue that seems to be a recurring topic in this discussion is the decision to postpone the construction of the …
Mar 01
Millennium Development Goal Achieved: Now What?
Quite a few posts have been written here at NotEnoughGood about the UN millennium development goals (MDGs), but this post is a bit different. I’m not going to describe the goals or how they came to be or the latest UN meeting—you can click through the archives or do a quick Google search for that. …
Feb 23
World Tourism Day 2012
UN World Tourism Day occurs every September 27th, the start of the tourism season in the southern hemisphere and the end of the tourist season in the northern hemisphere, and this year the theme is “Tourism and Sustainable Energy: Powering Sustainable Development.” Now, September 27th is a long ways away, so it might seem a …
Feb 20
Let’s Get WWOOFing
Do you have any regrets? I have one. A few years ago a couple of friends were looking for a summer adventure. When they stumbled upon an opportunity to live for free in Hawaii for two months, I was more than intrigued. When they explained they would be conducting manual labor for six hours a …
Feb 14
MDG’S and the development of the new SDG’s
20 years ago, the Rio Earth Summit took place down in Brazil. Coming up on its anniversary in June, there will be another meting of nations where commitments will be renewed and progress will be evaluated. Two new focuses will be addressed: developing a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, …
Feb 13
Achieving Global Sustainability: Women’s Rights
The UN Secretary General chose a 22 member panel in 2010 to create a new blueprint for global sustainable development. At the end of last month the report, “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing,” was released to the public. Focus areas of the panel include the conservation of our planet, global equity, lessening …
Feb 08
What Happened to Education in Cambodia?
The education system in Cambodia used to be the envy of most other Asian countries. Going as far back as the thirteenth century, Cambodians have valued knowledge and schooling and the power that they bring with them. In pre-revolutionary times, six levels of grade school existed, followed by four years of what would be the …
Jan 27
Doing Business at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Colombia for school to work on a consulting project (see my previous post about Colombia here). We were focusing our work on the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), which typically means the poorest sectors of society. In business schools today, growing attention is being paid to …