Global GoalsCast

The world really is too much with us. After years of peace, prosperity and progress toward the Global Goals, challenges and setbacks are following one after another now. Mark Malloch Brown, one of the world's experts on development, calls it a Tsunami of Crises. Covid-19 set this wave of trouble in motion. But now as the World Health Organization sees the end of the pandemic in sight, economic disruptions are deepening and inflation is rampant.We visit with an aide worker in Pakistan, Samya K. Paracha, who reports that the price has doubled for a package of basic food and fuel for families dislocated by the historic flooding.Malloch Brown notes that the rich world's ability to help is deeply hindered by what he describes as a crisis of democracy that has distracted many developed countries. “Our global house is on fire but they've not heard the alarm because its not ringing in the north, “ Brown said. “There just isn't the bandwidth to understand that this is part of a wider breakdown."Co-hosts Claudia Romo Edelman and Lush end the episode on an upbeat note with a look at the decision by Patagonia's owner to dedicate all the company's future profits to protecting the planet.

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 Filby explained. “They have a sense of what's possible because they have access to information.” Which also means their hopefulness is built on a clear-eyed view, says co-host Edie Lush. “It's not all rainbows and chocolate chip cookies,” she observed. “They do also see the challenges.” But they believe they have access to the education, skills and support to tackle those challenges, from climate to mental health to healthy food. "I think technology helps us learn alot more effeciently and faster," said Eden van Wyngaardt, a student in South Africa.  While many people in the developed world feel their expectations thwarted and worry that young people won't do as well as their parents, in the developing world there is a strong sense of possibility and agency.  “The world that we would want to have depends on each and everyone's personal actions,” said Ibrahim Kondeh, whose story of survival as a refugee from west Africa was featured on earlier episodes of Global GoalsCast. Eden and Ibrahim were two of the young people interviewed for this episode. We asked them several of the questions from a UNICEF survey of 21,000 people, young and older, all around the world. This intergenerational survey identified the optimism of the young. “Young people are 50% more likely than older generations to believe the world is becoming a better place,” reported Unicef, a Global GoalsCast partner. This episode was sponsored by Mastercard and features Payal Dalal of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. Thanks to our partners at One Young World and iamthecode.org for introductions to some of the young people we interviewed.

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 public health workers from around the world. “Unless we do this together this virus is going to beat us,” Nabarro warned, saying he and others were planning to focus next year on lobbying governments to improve cooperation against this pandemic, not just future ones. Vaccines need to be more equitably distributed, Nabarro said, yet at the same time the world needs to recognize that vaccines save lives but do not end transmission of the virus, especially with the more transmissible Delta and Omicron variants. Stopping them requires better adherence to non pharmaceutical measures like masking and social distancing. “There is no excuse for not wearing face masks,” Nabarro said. “We cannot fight the virus if we are fighting each other,” said Co-Host Edie Lush. “Amen,” replied Co-Host Claudia Romo Edelman. This episode of Global GoalsCast is brought to you by Universal Production Music, one of the world's leading production music companies and features an interview with Jane Carter, Managing Director, Universal Production Music UK & VP Global Repertoire.

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 for themselves, are now trying to block this variant by blocking travel from countries who first identified it, Botswana, South Africa and neighboring countries in southern Africa. “People are truly livid,” Professor Magen Mhaka Mutepfa of the University of Botswana reports. Africans feel they are being ostracized by the rich world for doing the right thing: reporting the new variant the moment they identified it. Jane Badham, a health consultant, offers a heart rending report of sorrow from Johannesburg. “African governments and people will need all the solidarity of everybody,” says Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy of the World Health Organization, “The last thing we want is people saying, ‘oh, we'll cancel flights.' What's it do? What does it do?... I am so fixated on the importance of solidarity and so fixated on the unfairness of single-handed, high-handed responses. And particularly high handed responses from rich countries who've been hoovering up the vaccine and who've been making it difficult for poor countries to cope. No, we actually need to be able to count on each other in dealing with this pandemic. It's got months, and years to run. So let's just be civil to each other.” Travel lockdowns may buy some time. But the crucial defenses are, as they have been from the beginning, masks, distancing, testing and isolating of those potentially infected. Peter Hebard, a systems engineer, offers advice on selecting effective masks. You can also learn more from the WHO here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks Edie Lush says empathy is crucial to an effective and appropriate global response. “We have to hold the consequences of what we do in mind,” she said, urging the developed world to increase vaccine and medical supplies to southern Africa as well as economic aid to ease the impact of travel bans.

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” of coal. But this language may have reflected the need to manage domestic politics while actually making progress. “I don't think coal is safe at all after Glasgow,” Hilton told co-host Edie Lush. More generally, Edie and co-host Claudia Romo Edelman explore a fascinating reversal. Where in the past political leaders overpromised and under delivered on climate action, Glasgow may mark a moment when what is actually happening exceeds what politicians feel able to talk about as they worry about nationalist and anti-climate forces. Not everyone, of course, shares this hopeful outlook. Edie describes conversations she had with several experts who expand on the widely held view that action on climate simply is moving too slowly to cap rising temperatures at 1.5 centigrade. The mayor of Dhaka North, Atiqul Islam, described how 1500 climate migrants were arriving in Dhaka every day as sea level rises in Bangladesh. Walter Roban, deputy premier and Home Minister of Bermuda, explained his vision to create a blue economy in the island nation and why help would be needed from the rich world.   Anne Cairns, from our sponsor Mastercard, and Jude Kelly, from the Women of the World Foundation, describe the importance of gender equity in solving the climate emergency. “Climate change is a man-made problem and needs a female solution,” Kelly says.

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 not had. Edie and Claudia explore the chaotic response with Dr. David Nabarro and other health experts at his regular briefing. Rebecca Kanter, a nutrition expert based in Chile, described how travel had become a crazy patch work of rules that could only be met by taking extra doses of vaccine. “I have a PhD and I can't even figure out now what the new travel restrictions are,” she said. “I have friends who say, ‘I don't want to get 5 vaccines.' But if the only way they can move around is to get five vaccines they're in a weird ethical dilemma.” John Atkinson, an expert on how systems work, and why sometimes they don't, said: “systems like this are almost inevitably not designed to be that way. They're the unintended consequences of really caring often and smart people trying to do the right thing. Each time layer upon layer upon layer. And the whole thing ends up in a complete mess. We have to surface these contradictions and make them visible. So people just see how crazy it is.” David Nabarro, special envoy on Covid-19, said the tangled rules disadvantaged the poor and helped those who knew how to play the system. He also described how vaccination distribution remained wildly inequitable. Rich countries should pay for vaccine supply to go directly from manufacturers to COVAX, the global system for distributing vaccine, rather than donating surplus supplies they have been holding. These surpluses are often near their expiry date, he said, and giving them away was like donating stale bread to the hungry.

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, and inclusion and gender violence etc. etc. around the world,” reports Gillian Tett, co-founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times. “The reality is that grappling with these challenges and trying to uphold the SDGs now is harder than it was say two years ago in terms of where we are starting.” Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman shares data from the Gates Foundation Goal Keepers report that shows the start of recovery on everything from vaccination rates to total numbers of people caught in extreme poverty. Ivan Weissman, journalist and entrepreneur in South America, said that the pandemic crisis was accelerating the empowerment of women and thus economic recovery from the downturn. He cited, for example, the decision by Argentina to credit the domestic work women do at home when setting their pensions. Anthony Kefalas, Vice chair of the Democracy and Culture Foundation, offered a simple summary of the current challenge: “At the bottom of everything it is the question of inequality.” Rising inequality, compounded by the pandemic, is undermining support for democratic government. “The main problem is to reduce inequality. The corollary to this is that if you don't reduce inequality then you will not be able to operate in a system that you could call liberal capitalism. You can easily go into a system you where you have authoritarian capitalism.” Kefalas, author of the new Athens Charter for Business, said that the end goal of all corporate responsibility efforts must be to reduce inequality.

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 deeper into poverty,” explained one of the leading experts on the goals, Vishal Gujadhur, an economist at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “And that's something that's really disappointing and that's really a setback to the SDGs.” But here is the good news. Or at least what co host Edie Lush calls “the better news.” “Due to really strong action from individuals from governments, from communities we've averted the worst-case scenario,” Gujadhur reports, based on the Gates foundations latest Goalkeepers report on the SDGs. The “apocalyptic” numbers being reported at this time last year are already beginning to turn around, Gujadhur said. The recovery is uneven. The poor have suffered the worst and are recovering more slowly, both between countries and within countries. The world needs to redouble efforts to get back on track toward the global goals. Every effort counts and local, small-scale efforts can add up to big change. We visit a hotel in Rwanda, empty during lockdowns, that stepped up by using its kitchen and staff to deliver meals to hungry kids at the local primary school. “They were happy,” one of the hotel trainees, Jesca Rusaro, said of the school children. “And that makes me happy, too.” Edie and Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman urge every listener to find ways to help their communities. That can include supporting the food program at the Mirama primary school in Rwanda through the Community Conservation Fund/Africa. They promised to include the link in these show notes and here it is: https://www.ccfa.africa/support/#get Featured Guests  Vishal Gujadhur is an economist and deputy director of policy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He leads a group that addresses how countries raise, spend, and allocate resources—and how they deal with debt, national planning and budgeting, and digital public finance. Ian Williams is General Manager of the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites in Rwanda's Nyagatare District, an eco-hotel near the northern entrance of Akagera National Park. When lockdowns cut off most travel, Williams worked with members of his staff to use the hotel's kitchen and resources to help feed kids at the local primary school. Jesca Rusaro is a trainee in food and beverage at the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites, Nyagatare District, Rwanda.  Nyesiga Charles Kabujangari is a receptionist at the Mantis EPIC Hotel and Suites, Nyagatare District, Rwanda.  This episode of Global GoalsCast is brought to you by The Royal Academy of Engineering's Leaders in Innovation Fellowships, supporting innovators developing creative solutions to further the Global Goals. In this episode we heard Dr. Nusrat Sanghamitra on the impact her innovation is having in the global fight against cancer. In case you were looking for the link to help the school food program here at the end of the show notes, where Claudia kept saying it would be, here it is. Again: https://www.ccfa.africa/support/#get

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 United States and unprecedented rain and flooding in China and Europe. Global GoalsCast visits Mayschoß, one of the German towns ruined by flooding and hears about the physical destruction and the jarring realizations brought on by the flooding. “It has shown as a community and I think also as a country that we are really vulnerable,” says Anja Menzel, a political science professor whose street was turned into a raging river. “That is something we did not experience before. Because, oh, its those third world countries that are affected by climate change. It isn't us. we are well equipped.” This has increased the urgency for both mitigation, such as the European Unions proposal to reduce carbon emissions, and measures to adapt to handle extreme weather events that can no longer be averted. Will the shock of this year of extreme weather be enough to motivate these needed changes? Featured Guests Dr. Anja Bierwirth, Head of Research Unit Urban Transitions, at Wuppertal Institute, an international think tank for sustainability research focused on impact and practical application. Dr. Anja Menzel, Research fellow at the Chair for International Politics, FernUniversität in Hagen David Ryfisch, team lead for international climate policy at Germanwatch, where he manages the portfolio on sustainable and climate finance. Harvey Scherer, event organizer & safety expert who is part of the rescue of Mayschoß, one of the German villages destroyed by the recent floods.

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. Vaccines alone cannot stop the pandemic. There is not enough supply and, in any case, the vaccines are better at preventing severe illness than at stopping transmission of the virus. He warns that measures of hospitalization and death miss the serious “Long Covid” afflicting many younger patients. Dr. Nabarro discusses effective public health measures with public health experts in Botswana and Canada.  This episode is sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering's Leaders in Innovation Fellowships. Dr. Jo-Ann Passmore of the University of Capetown Medical School describes her innovation, GIFT, which measures inflammation as a simple test for sexually transmitted diseases.

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 presence of the virus now before it mutates further to evade vaccines. Colleagues have told him that the Delta Variant could be within two mutations of being able to do that, Nabarro reports.  The Delta Variant is spreading rapidly in Africa, where very few people have yet to be vaccinated, as well as among the unvaccinated even in rich countries with relatively high levels of vaccination.  Dr. Lucky Aziken, an optometrist in Nigeria, is one of many health providers working to hold back the spread. He describes how he organized safety measures for one of Nigeria's most vulnerable populations, inmates in the country's 240 prisons. Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman talks with Dr. Nabarro about how she lost her own mother to Covid-19 and how each of us has a role to play in stopping the spread of the virus. While we cannot vaccinate our way out of the crisis, greater vaccine supply must be part of the long term solution. Co-host Edie Lush speaks with the CEO of the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, Adar C. Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India during the India Global Forum. He urges a global plan to have vaccine manufacturing capacity standing by in the next pandemic.   Also appearing in this episode are South African nutritionist Jane Badham and Holly Wheeler, a global health advocate. 

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 vaccines, vaccines, vaccines,” she said, “and while vaccines, vaccinations are an incredibly powerful tool, we've completely forgotten about everything else that works. And I feel that frustration.”  In this episode, Public health experts in Botswana and Chile describe the continuing rampage of Covid-19 in their countries and Dr. David Nabarro, special Covid-19 Envoy of the WHO, criticizes leaders of the world's most developed countries, the G7, for offering vaccines but not much else to the rest of the world at their just concluded summit. “It was a pretty bad outcome,” Dr.Nabarro said. “It was a lot of banging chests -- “we're good” -- but not enough responsibility.”  Co-host Edie Lush noted that a very similar criticism of the G7 could be made around their tepid response to climate change. Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman says she understands the desire to get back to living, but that this must happen in a globally conscious way. Fact and Actions in this episode are presented by Regina Larko, founder and co-hot of the podcast, Hashtag Impact.

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 controlling the virus and supporting those struck down by it in their local community. These include a nurse-run campaign to isolate and vaccinate in Nepal to a program in the United Kingdom to assist long-Covid sufferers.  “The sort of leadership that's needed is leadership that connects,” John Atkinson, a specialist in systems change, tells Dr. Nabarro. “Leadership that doesn't seek credit for itself. Leadership that knows there's no limit to what you can achieve if you don't give a damn who takes the credit.” Invisible leadership, Dr. Nabarro calls this. Globally, Nabarro calls for a new approach from rich countries. “it's ok to lead for the world,” he tells the leaders of the G7 countries, explaining that protecting just their own constituents won't work. He argues that rich countries should stop holding vaccines for booster doses when poor countries still need first doses. Protecting the vulnerable everywhere is the only sensible strategy while vaccine is scare. “You are actually serving your constituents better if you lead for the world.” Global GoalsCast is co-hosted by Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman. Other guests on this episode include: Durga Sapkota, a nurse in Katmandu who continues to organize a community public health response to combat Covid-19 in Nepal. She is an ambassador for Women Deliver, a Global GoalsCast partner. Clare Rayner, a specialist occupational health physician and honorary lecturer at the University of Manchester Medical School Iman Ahmed, a Global Public Health expert currently working vaccinating the Sudanese diaspora in Canada. Nazeem, a singer-songwriter from The Gambia. This episode is brought to you by our listeners. Thanks also to CBS News Digital and Universal Production Music.

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?” Or, Dr. Nabarro adds, will the rich world take up the responsibility for manufacturing and distributing enough vaccine to protect everyone?  Inventing the vaccine was a triumph for science, says the Director General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.  But inequitable distribution is a “failure for humanity.” In this episode, Global GoalsCast attends a high level briefing lead by Dr. Nabarro, with updates on the spread of Covid-19 in India (Dr. NK Sethi), Nepal (Dr. Rojan Dahal), Chile (Rebecca Kanter) and Argentina. Co-host Edie Lush also speaks with her old boss, Ivan Weissman, a journalist in Argentina, about a creative approach to lockdowns in one of that countries poorest communities. 

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 countries are trying to vaccinate their way out of the pandemic, even planning for the vaccination of children. But there is not yet enough vaccine to protect the world. So the right thing to do is use vaccine to protect the most vulnerable first, wherever they are and rely on non-pharmaceutical tools, like distancing, masks and washing, to curb the spread. Also featured in this episode is Dr. Jonathan Fitzsimon, a family physician in Ontario, Canada and the inspiring music of Nazeem, whose ballad, Respect, honors frontline workers and encourages everyone to abide by public health measures. You can support Nazeem’s music at GoFundMe.com, One World Covid Ready Response.  Dr. David Nabarro is a Special Envoy of the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General on COVID-19 and Co-Director of the Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation at the Imperial College London. As Strategic Director of 4SD, a social enterprise based in Geneva, Switzerland, he and his team have been offering Open Online Briefings since the beginning of the pandemic. More at: https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-open-online-briefings/ and https://covid19.who.int/.  This episode of Global GoalsCast was made possible by listeners like you, who care about the future. We survive on your support, so like us, subscribe and give us all the stars you can.

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 coverage of a hundred percent in one rich country and then, in the following day, you have importation of new variants so all your efforts become useless,” warned Eduardo Samo Gudo, Scientific Director at Mozambique’s National Institute of Health. “From where we are in Africa,” said Emma Ingaiza who manages a clinic in the legendary Mathare slums of Nairobi, “we would want the world out there to understand that we are equally important. That our lives also matter. We're just on the front line as much as everyone else is.” Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman, who worked on the challenge of supply of treatment and vaccine for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the world saw this crisis coming. But the solution created by the World Health Organization and other groups, called COVAX, has been slow to raise the money from high income countries and then buy the vaccine supply it is committed to delivering to low income countries. Roz Scourse of Doctors Without Borders says COVAX has failed and that the solution is plan offered by South Africa, India and many countries in the global south to waive Intellectual Property rights on the new vaccines so poor and middle countries can make their own. Others, however, worry this might undermine manufacturing quality while doing nothing to solve the problem that high income countries have bought most of the current supply. Kristina Kloberdanz, Chief Sustainability Officer for Mastercard, sponsor of Global GoalsCast, discusses Mastercard’s work on global gender equity – for example by conducting annual salary reviews, closing the gender pay gap, instituted gender neutral parental leave and establishing mentorship for leadership growth.

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 address.“And really this is our opportunity right now to focus in on who is being left behind, who is not getting the access and be able to find those supercharged solutions,” said Annemarie Hou, head of partnerships at the United Nations. “The SDGs are our way out of this, if we work together,” added Rajesh Mirchandani of the UN Foundation. Recorded live at the end of Global Goals week, this is part two of our special on the setbacks and solutions if the world is to build back better. Also featured in this episode are Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever; David Nabarro of the World Health Organization; Gillian Tett of the Financial Times and Kate Garvey of Project Everyone, who noted her organization's proposal to rebrand the SDGs as the Sustainable Development Solutions. Rose Beaumont, from our sponsor, Mastercard, shares more on Mastercard’s index on Women Entrepreneurs.

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, inventor and editor of the FT’s Moral Money newsletter and coverage. “The key question is how do we go forward and build back better and not merely survive but thrive in the future.” Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York City Health Commissioner, says that “an equity lens” is essential to recognize that risk of disease weighs heavier on communities of color and lower incomes. Repairing this requires not only improved access to health care, but also to better housing, jobs and education. “We are only as healthy as our most challenged resident,” she said. Jack Hidary, the Artificial Intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur and leader of Alphabet’s X project in quantum computing, says that we have sixty days to use the crisis to convince leaders to adopt immediate innovation. He suggests, for example, that big companies decentralize and create satellite offices so no employee has to commute more than ten minutes to a desk. He says he has discussed this with WeWork. He also offers ideas for on-line learning and telemedicine. David Milliband of the International Rescue Committee speaks with Edie about how innovations spurred by the fight against coronavirus may have long-term benefits. Improved sanitary conditions, for example, curb other diseases in poor countries. Milliband notes that the simple instruction to wash your hands regularly is a major challenge for the three billion people who don’t have clean running water at home. Their conversation was part of a ‘ThinkIn’ that our colleagues at Tortoise run for their members and is included in Global GoalsCast with their blessing. Facts about the crisis and Actions to build back better are presented by Alice McDonald of Project Everyone. From our sponsor, Mastercard, Senior Vice President Amy Neale describes how Startpath, Mastercard’s startup network, solved a Covid-19 fundraising challenge for the City of Los Angeles in eight days.

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 world's leading public health physicians, describes how to keep coronavirus in its box so we can carefully resume at least some parts of life and work. From two parts of Africa, Kenya and Cameroon, we hear about the fight to keep the pandemic from running rampant over Africa.   Facts and Actions are offered by Jonathan Rivers, the Head of WFP's Hunger Monitoring Unit of the World Food Program, which warns that the economic disruptions of Covid-19 are increasing serious hunger in several parts of the globe.   Amy Neale, Senior Vice President Start Path & Fintech at our sponsor, Mastercard, highlights two start-up companies that pivoted quickly to apply their abilities to challenges of the pandemic.   Our partner, One Young World, played a special role in this episode. They introduced us to three of our guests. The Israeli comic, Noam Shuster, who first appeared on Global GoalsCast last year in our episode on how comedy can demolish stereotypes. When we heard about her Covid-19 experience we invited her back. She was a One Young World Ambassador. So are both of this week's guests from Africa, Achaleke Christian Leke of Cameroon and Emma Ingaiza of Kenya.

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 this special episode, Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush share the How To Academy podcast in which journalist Hannah MacInnes interviews Melinda Gates in front of a live audience in London. For the last twenty years Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. One lesson she has learned is that to lift society up you have to stop keeping women down. The How to Academy hosts leading artists and thinkers in London for public talks, debates and conferences. Selected talks are featured in the How to Academy's podcast series, available wherever you get your podcasts.

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 to China and is working to share those findings in Italy and other countries. Dr. Aywalrd says leader’s in the West were slow to listen to the lessons. “We are all human at a certain level and we tend to cherry pick that part of the information, which we find most reassuring,” he observed. Dr.David Nabarro, TITLE, said that quick action will contain the virus. “If when a case arrives, you prevaricate, you're half-hearted, you pretend it's not real and you wait perhaps two, three, four weeks before you start to implement measures of any kind,” he warned, “what happens is that it basically doubles in scale every two to three days.” Following the lead of Drs. Nabarro and Aylward, Co hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman share their plan to offer regular episodes of the podcast that detail success in attacking the pandemic and share them widely while the lessons can make a difference. Listen on Apple Podcasts https://bit.ly/globalgoalscast or the Global GoalsCast website https://globalgoalscast.org/s4e3 or wherever you listen.

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 is growing and urbanizing at the same time, says Renata Rubian, Adviser on Inclusive Sustainable Growth at the United Nations Development Program. Which is why the Global Goals include a goal explicitly focused on creating Sustainable Cities, SDG # 11.  Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman notes that other goals, like eradicating poverty or hunger, are easier to understand even if they are challenging to achieve. But given how much of the world will be living in cities we can not hope to achieve the global goals – from climate to equity, from good health to decent jobs and living standards – without creating sustainable cities.     So what is a sustainable city and how do we create them, Edie Lush asks.   She seeks out two well-know experts on sustainability and urban design, William McDonough and Samir Bantal. McDonough, author and architect, explains his concept of cradle to cradle production, designing products so there components can be reused and there is in a perfect case no waste. This concept can apply not only to products but to cities, which can imitate the organic patterns of the natural world. The architect Samir Bantal emphasizes the importance of countryside. Countryside, The Future is the name of a new exhibition he and his famous colleague, Rem Koolhaas, the architect and urban designer, have just opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The exhibition calls it  “absurd” that most of the world’s people are being concentrated in a tiny corner of the planet’s space. “Cities only represent 2% of the Earth's surface, which means that the other 98%, perhaps, is ignored,” Bantal says. “There's a kind of single focus on urbanism and on cities while actually the countryside is perhaps, the most interesting area to investigate right now, not only as architects, but as humanity.”   Facts and Actions are presented by Stan Stalnaker, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Hub Culture, the social network which operates the digital currency Ven. He invited listeners to join Hub Culture’s Emerald City project, which is building a virtual city and generating revenue to sustain Amazon Rain Forests.   Music in this episode includes tracks from a new album ‘100% HER’ which is now live on the Universal Production Music website and Spotify. One of the artists - Kate Lloyd shares what it's like to be featured on an album where every track was composed, mixed and mastered by women. The sponsor of this episode is Brevet Capital Management, which identifies 100% responsible investment opportunities that do well and do good.

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 too suddenly, the global economy would shudder. That, in turn, would push other important goals out of reach and cause worldwide disruption and potential political upheaval.  Claudia and co-host Edie Lush frame this challenge in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals: How do we achieve Goal 13, Climate Action, while also moving toward Goal 1, eradicating extreme poverty or Goal 8, decent work and economic growth? To find answers, they speak with experts who are working on the transition from fossil fuels.  Adam Matthews, Director of Ethics and Engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, describes the Transition Pathway Initiative (https://www.transitionpathwayinitiative.org), which assesses corporations on how effectively they are moving away from Fossil Fuels. Investors like the Pensions Board can then increase their investment in companies that are part of the transition while withdrawing from those that are not, Matthews explained. For example, Royal Dutch Shell makes the list of recommended investments while ExxonMobil does not, Matthews said.  Izabella Kaminska shares an interview with the iconoclastic environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger, who says that Nuclear power will be an essential component of any plan that maintains adequate power supplies while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Claudia says it is important to have open conversations with all options on the table. Facts and Actions are presented in this episode by the United Nations Development Programs Senior Climate Advisor, Cassie Flynn. The UNDP has just launched Mission1point5 (https://mission1point5.org/us), a mobile game that educates people about climate policy and provides a platform for them to vote on the solutions they want to see. Flynn said these results will be presented to world leaders later in 2020.

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 future. we only have to take warming levels of the planet to about three degrees Celsius, which we're not far off… We're a third of the way to that warming…(and) the summer we've just had will be basically a normal summer event.”   In fact, 2019 was the warmest driest year ever recorded in Australia, with temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average in the late twentieth century. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman speak with Australians to understand the impact of these fires. Catriona Wallace, the founder and director of Flamingo Ai, a machine learning company, describes the flaming hell that consumed both her family farm and the neighborhood around her family summer home. “It's like driving through something from a Mad Max movie or through an apocalypse,” she reports. “It's something quite terrifying and extraordinary to experience.” The frightening experience has prompted her to focus her skills in Artificial Intelligence on creating tools to prevent or alleviate fires. She notes, too, that with men in charge things aren’t going well in Australian climate policy. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and had a major hand in derailing the 2019 climate talks in Madrid.   Wallace says a new approach is needed, to balance the influence of the coal industry with the needs of other Australians. Wallace, one of the first women to have a company listed in the Australian stock exchange, points out that women are skilled at this broader, multi-stakeholder approach.   Empowering women to steward the planet is the goal of Pollyanna Darling, founder of the Australian chapter of TreeSisters, a global organization that raises funds to reforest the tropics and encourages women to seek leadership roles in protecting trees, forests and the overall environment. “We have a political environment that's not particularly favorable to environmental protection and care of the earth, which, because a lot of our economy's based on resource extraction,” Darling says of Australia.   “From a TreeSisters perspective, one of the things that we have made it our mission to do is to help human beings to remember who and what they really are. And a part of that is remembering that we ARE nature and that without a healthy, thriving earth, we actually have nothing.”   Claudia points out that the United Nations has put Sustainable Development Goal 13, climate action, at the top of the Global Agenda. All three of our guests say they hope, and even sense, that the wildfires will encourage stronger action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.   Actions you can take are proposed in this episode by Rob Galuzzo, from the Lion’s Share, a project co-founded by UNDP to encourage corporations to pay into a fund for conservation and environmental protection every time they use an image of an animal in their advertising. Mars Corp., the candy-maker, is a founding partner.   In addition, Pollyanna Darling urges everyone to plant trees in their community and support TreeSisters (treesisters.org) in its work restoring tropical forests.

It is that end-of-the-year time to take stock. Global GoalsCast doesn’t judge whether you’ve been naughty or nice. But co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman do take a look at the world in 2019 and ask whether it is still getting better, or going to hell in a handbasket, as Edie so delicately framed it. She cites the failure of the climate talks and the rise of nationalism everywhere from the UK to Brazil. Things are not as bad as they seem, Claudia replies. In fact, the replenishment of the Global Fund to fight Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Aids shows that collective multilateral action is still possible. The world seems to be going in two directions at once, Edie and Claudia agree.   To help sort things out Gillian Tett, founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times, joins the conversation. Some governments are dragging their feet, including the United States, Tett says. But Tett adds, “this was the year that business really stepped up.” The SDGs are a valuable checklist for business, she explains, and virtually every CEO she talks to wants to discuss the environment, corporate governance, and sustainability. This episode also features a special look back on some of the top Global GoalsCast conversations of the year, on everything from curbing global warming and eradicating poverty, to educating girls and aiding migrants.   There is also a special Facts and Actions this episode, drawn from some of the best recommendations throughout the year.   Laurie MacKenzie from our sponsor, Mastercard, describes how women and their families benefit from Mastercard’s digital pay project. “by educating and enabling these women they pass it on to their children and therefore that next generation grows up with a greater set of rights and education and aspirations.”

“Imagine all the people, living life in peace…. no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.” Those lyrics are surely familiar to you. They are from one of the most successful songs of all time, Imagine, by John Winston Lennon. Lennon, singing of his better world, voiced certainty that he “was not the only one” with this dream. Now, prominent corporate leaders have begun a new firm with the express purpose of making business and industry better global citizens. They have named the firm, Imagine, after the song.  In this episode, Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman discuss Imagine and talk with two of the founders, Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, and Valerie Keller, a well-known CEO whisperer, coach and expert in transformational business leadership. With governments acting too slowly or in many crucial places gridlocked, more focus has fallen on the role of business in curbing climate change and achieving the other Sustainable Development Goals.  Keller and Polman argue that much can be accomplished by creating “collective courageous behavior” by corporations working together to achieve what no one of them might take on alone.  Their first effort is underway in the Fashion industry and they talk about future plans for travel, tourism and, perhaps, even energy. Claudia observes that Imagine, the song, which was written in 1981, seems to call for the Sustainable Development Goals long before they were created in 2015. But Lennon also sang of “no possessions,” which might be a step further down a socialist road than Imagine, the company, envisions. Edie and Claudia discuss Imagine, the company’s place in what they describe as a movement to create a “better capitalism,” not replace it. “What we are really seeing in this world is that many people are dreaming of a better world than we have currently,” Polman says.   Facts and Actions “to help meet the moment…the decisive decade of the 2020s” are from a leading expert in sustainable business, Aron Cramer, President and CEO of BSR, a not-for-profit which advises companies on sustainability. You can read Cramer’s 2019 CEO letter, “A New Climate for Business”.   Laura MacKenzie, Senior Vice President of our sponsor, Mastercard, describes Mastercard’s work creating digital systems to pay garment workers, predominantly women, around the world. This protects their earnings and increases their access to the formal financial system. “many of the women,” MacKenzie says, “also have ambitions of their own. They would like to own land they would like to start a business. That’s what’s so exciting about this work.”

More than 30,000 African migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean. Ibrahim Kondeh narrowly escapes becoming one of them. But through luck and courage he makes it across to Italy, although he pays a terrible price on the way. Claudia Romo Edelman and Edie Lush complete the story of this one migrant. “The story of migrants should be told more,” Ibrahim says in this episode.  “People tend to follow what the media tells about migrants and refugees -- seen as people who come in to steal jobs, criminals.  So as a result no one knows what our actual stories are. Positive stories can change the mindset of people.”  Ibrahim encounters frustration and racism in Italy. But he also is helped along the way, particularly by an innovative use of text messaging called U-report. Tanya Accone of Unicef explains that U-report connects Ibrahim and other migrants and refugees with experts who can advise them when they are at their most vulnerable, alone in a new land without language our resources. With the help of U-report Ibrahim navigates the Italian immigration rules and enrolls in high school. “A simple SMS,” says Tanya Accone, “can it change your life? I think Ibrahim would say, yes, it has.”  Fact and actions are offered by one of the creators of U-report, Mathias Devi Nielsen of Unicef. “U report is a tool for all youth to raise their voices battle stereotypes connecting youth to service on a global scale. “ U report currently operates in 65 countries with 8.5 million uses. It is growing rapidly. Mathias invited companies, agencies, NGOs and youth groups to partner with u report to help provide migrants and refugees with answers to their questions

His name is Ibrahim Adnan Kondeh. He is one of thousands of young African’s who have crossed the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea in search of opportunity. Thousands more have died trying. We usually hear the tragedy and the controversy about migration, as cohost Edie Lush notes. So in this episode, Global GoalsCast wants you to meet one migrant and to hear his story, from him. Ibrahim is a remarkable young man. Courageous, resourceful and, it turns out, poetic.       "In plastic boats, we are choked up as much as they can    just like fishes in a sardine can.    Irrespective of our religions, we pray for God's mercy.   For it was only by his grace that we made it through that great sea.  A true hero is what we are..." Ibrahim retraces his journey from his village in Sierra Leone to the Libyan seashore. A trip that took him a harrowing nine months. He started as a teenager running away from tribal initiation. But by the time he was done he had joined an extraordinary stream of humanity flowing north.  A report by the United Nations Development Program shows that Ibrahim is representative of a large group of young migrants from West Africa. They are by no means the poorest or the least educated from their countries, explains Mohamed Yahya, lead author of the report. Indeed, they are prompted to risk the dangerous journey as their rising aspirations outstrip their sense of opportunity at home. Yahya urges both African and European officials to address this opportunity gap.    This episode also features Ann Cairns, from our sponsor Mastercard. She discusses Mastercard's Digital Food initiative in partnership with the World Food Programme to provide money to refugees to buy food themselves, along with other basic necessities.

Is it possible to eradicate extreme poverty? Here is the remarkable thing. For the first time in history, the answer is yes. Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk about the new thinking about how to end the worst poverty. Macro solutions like growth, trade and migration still matter, a lot, they agree. But so do local solutions. Tanya Accone of Unicef explains how a failed effort to involve Silicon Valley in anti-poverty efforts produced a different approach in which solutions are developed with local communities not just for them. A good example from Uganda is Spouts of Water, which has invented clay pot filters that cost no more to use than the previous system of burning wood or coal to boil the water. Plus, Ugandans like the flavor! One of the basic lessons is that to help very poor people, often at the end of long dirt paths or isolated in slums, solutions must be designed for their situations, Accone explains. Context is crucial. Edie and Claudia also discuss the meaning of two Nobel prizes that connect directly to eradicating poverty – the prize in economics for the new field of research-based solutions and the peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, for his efforts to create stability in the Horn of Africa, one of the world's poorest regions. Ending extreme poverty is the first of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Edie points out that the idea we can even talk about ending poverty as a serious goal captures how far the world has come. Both proportionally and numerically, the number of poor people has been shrinking for decades. Much of this has been the result of broad economic growth, particularly in China. But that's left us with some of the most difficult situations, for example in rural India and sub-Saharan Africa. It will require sustained effort on multiple fronts to address these areas.  Facts and Actions are offered in this episode by Saskia Bruysten, co-founder of Yunus Social Business, which invests in sustainable businesses such as Spouts of Water. Ann Cairns, Executive Vice Chairman of our sponsor, Mastercard, describes their Hundred Million Meals program to keep children in school by making sure they are fed. The effort is run jointly with the World Food Program, a Global GoalsCast partner.

Is the zeitgeist shifting toward action to curb global warming and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals? Veteran Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett joins Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman to consider that question in the aftermath of the United Nation’s climate summit and General Assembly. While the actions of governments were disappointing, they see a new attitude among many businesses, who were far more engaged in UN activity this year. “The balance of risks in the eyes of many business executives have shifted,” says Tett. Many executives now think it is “riskier to stand on the sidelines and do nothing than to actually be involved in some of these social and climate change movements,” Tett reports. The challenge now is not whether to act but how. Edie completes her visit with Professor John Sterman at MIT, whose En-Roads computer model of the climate lets Edie identify policy actions that will hold contain heating of the atmosphere. “The conclusion here is it is, technically, still possible to limit expected warming to 1.5” degrees Celsius, Sterman concludes.  Facts and Actions come this week from Bradley Tusk, venture capitalist, political strategist, writer and host of the podcast, Firewall, which looks at the intersection of tech, politics and culture. This episode is sponsored by BSR, a non-profit working with member companies to support corporate social responsibility. Check out their upcoming event here: https://bsr19.org/Podcast

The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordinarily complex. It is too much for any individual to hold all of it in their head. That knowledge void has become a major political obstacle to effective climate action (SDG 13) as we fill it in paralyzing ways, from denial to apocalyptic fear.     The best way to learn that we can curb climate change is to do it. So Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush sat down with John Sterman, professor of Management at MIT, to solve the climate crisis on his ClimateInteractiv model of the world’s climate and economy. Edie tried everything from energy efficient homes to a steep tax on carbon in a search for solutions that would hold global temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). How did she do? Listen to this special two-part episode of Global GoalsCast, timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Summit and the global journalism effort to increase awareness of the climate challenge, #CoveringClimateNow.

Sustainable Development Goal 12 calls for responsible production and consumption. As co-host Claudia Romo Edelman points out in this episode, that does not sound as dramatic as ending poverty or educating everyone, but it may be just as important.  There is a disparity of consumption between the Global North and South. SDG 12 is the only goal that specifically calls on rich nations to lead.  In our interview with Jared Diamond, he says that one American consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. Diamond, UCLA professor and author of the new book,  Upheaval: Turning Points for Nation’s in Crisis,  says this inequality is unsustainable as citizens of poorer countries demand better lives. The only sustainable world, he says, is a more equal world. Our most dangerous overconsumption is energy from fossil fuels.  Co-host Edie Lush reports on a Financial Times chart which shows only a small percentage of the worlds largest corporations on track to reduce their carbon emissions enough to meet the goals of the Paris Climate accord. Fuel consumption continues to increase and therefore carbon emissions increase. According to the oil major, BP, renewables and natural gas are the fastest growing energy sources , yet in 2018 carbon emissions grew at their highest rate for 7 years at 2.0%.  “We use more resources and we are having a heavy footprint which is affecting the biosphere and affecting the climate” says Author and Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Rees, author of On The Future and other books. We need to invest now to protect our children and grandchildren from climate risk, Lord Martin explains, and spending decisions can’t be judged with the same financial tools, such as the discount rate, used to measure the value of traditional investments. Once again we describe the interconnections of the SDGs. Achieving goal 12, Claudia explains, is connected to achieving goal 13, action to control climate change and The Ceo of our partner, APolitical, Robyn Scott, points out that educating women and girls is on the list of important actions to curb climate change. She offers Facts and Actions. Claudia and Edie give a shout out to a listener from Pittsburgh, Jason Hallmark. He is on a journey of a lifetime to learn about sustainability in the Arctic and we are very proud to have helped inspire him in a new chapter of his life.  Two executives from our sponsor, MasterCard, describe financial tools that can improve lives. 

The single largest cause of acute hunger in the world is not a lack of food, it is war and conflict. The World Food Program says conflict has pushed 74 million people to the edge of starvation. One of the most severe situations is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where militias and marauding gangs have driven millions of farmers off their land. GGC discusses the crisis with the director of the World Food Program in the DRC, Claude Jibidar, Rosette Kasereka, a farmer and Zachary, a former child soldier. The fertile DRC could easily grow enough food for all its people and all of Africa, for that matter, if the fighting would only stop, Jibidar tells co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman. Humanitarian groups and governments have adopted a new approach focused on ending need rather than merely delivering aid. In the DRC, that need is an end to violence. So WFP and other groups have focused on peacemaking. Kasereka credits a WFP program for uniting farmers. “Through union is power,” she says, ”we have become one. It has brought us together in this in this conflict situation that we lived before.“ This episode also features an interview with Tara Nathan, Executive Vice President of Humanitarian Development at our sponsor, Mastercard. She describes the digital aid network  Mastercard has built to help humanitarian groups, corporations and governments to get out of their silos and work together.

No child should die of measles in 2019. Or any disease that can be prevented by Vaccine or basic preventive care. That’s the view of Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaking to Edie lush on this Episode. Yet children still do die needlessly. Which shows the world still has work to do to continue to grow healthier. Progress over the last decades has been remarkable. The near abolition of measles is just one example.  A good part of the credit goes to two organizations, The Global Fund and Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Their work has helped people live longer healthier lives, particularly in the poorest places on earth. But now governments must decide whether to replenish their funds. Sue Desmond Hellman argues that it is the best investment in the future.

How will Artificial Intelligence shape the next decade? Will thisrevolution be a positive force, spurring global growth and improving lives around the world? Or will the benefits flow heavily to those who already have the knowledge and wealth to use these revolutionary technologies?  Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman pursue those questionsaround the world. They speak to an author of a major United Nation’s report who says that AI will spur global growth more than earlier innovations like steam power. But who benefits from that growth will be shaped by how well Africa, Latin America and the rest of the Global South absorb and adapt these powerful tools and manage the inevitable disruptions to work. “In some ways, the Luddites weren’t wrong,” says the co author of the report, Michael Chui of McKinsey.  In other words, AI can either help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals or move them out of reach.  To understand what is already being done in Africa, Edie and Claudia speak with two African experts, Nathalie Munyampendaof the Next Einstein Foundation and Abdigani Diriye from IBM Research in Nairobi. They stress the importance of Africans developing African solutions to solve Africa’s challenges. “The conversation really needs to be around how we can effectively use artificial intelligence to improve the human condition and how we can prepare ourselves and the next generation,” says Diriye. Two special guests cite one basic challenge: inclusion. Christopher Fabian, innovation expert from UNICEF, and Rosemary Leith of the World Wide Web Foundation, note that half the world is not yet on the internet. Those who are not connected do not and will not have access to the powers of AI. This episode also features a conversation about the gig economy with Jennifer Rademaker, Executive Vice President of Global Customer Delivery at Mastercard, the sponsor of Season Two of the Global GoalsCast.

Annie Lennox is the special guest on this episode of Global GoalsCast. The rock star talks about why she moved away from music and into an activist role fighting HIV / AIDS and working to improve the lives of girls and women around the world. She urges women -- and men -- to embrace the term Global Feminism. “If you use the term Global Feminism to describe what you represent and what you stand for,” Lennox says, “you understand feminism all around the world. It is not only from a western perspective.” At its heart, Global Feminism recognizes that there are millions of girls and women around the world that “don't have a voice and by using the term you're making them present and known.”  Facts and Actions are offered by Sioned Jones, Executive Director of The Circle, the organization founded by Annie Lennox. You will also hear about the Index of Women Entrepreneurs created by our sponsor MasterCard.

Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman meet three female comics who challenge bias through their jokes and their lives. “I like to play with stereotypes,” says Irish comic Catherine Bohart. “I like to upend them. I like to use them.” Noam Shuster, an Israeli, took up comedy after she failed in more traditional approaches to peacemaking. “Through comedy and performance you can reach more audiences and diverse audiences and audiences maybe I would have never met.” Sindhu Vee (her real name is Venkatanarayanan. Guess how funny she makes that!) explains that her comedy is powered by the “outsiders gaze” of being a bit different all her life. She was born and raised in South India, became a banker, moved to London and married a Dane (they have 3 kids).  “I think the biggest stereotype is a mother in comedy,” She says. Co-Host Edie Lush notes how similar these three modern female comics seem to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, who fought to break into a man’s world of comedy sixty years ago. That’s a fictional TV show but this is real life, now. Special Guest Julia Streets, a comic in London and host of the DiverCity Podcast, recommends facts and actions for this episode. You will also hear from Ann Cairns, the executive vice chair of MasterCard, sponsor of this season of The Global GoalsCast. A research engineer, she was the first woman to work an oil rig in the North Sea. Edie and Claudia also try their hand at comedy, which is why they are sticking to podcasting.

The Global GoalsCast regularly highlights the importance of educating girls. This episode Co-hosts Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk with two remarkable women whose lives dramatize how much difference a woman can make when she is trained in technology. Marieme Jamme, founder of #Iamthecode, tells her story: Sold into prostitution as a teenager in Senegal, she escaped the traffickers, taught herself to read, write and code and ultimately founded the program that intends to teach a million girls to code by 2030.  Victoria Alonso Perez grew up in Uruguay dreaming of Mars. Uruguay has no space program but Victoria persisted and became a trained engineer working with small satellites. Now she is using that training to help her country’s ranchers solve their biggest problems -- tracking their cattle herds, preventing theft and reducing the carbon footprint of raising beef. Also, Shamina Singh, President of the Center for Inclusive Growth and EVP for Sustainability at our new sponsor, MasterCard, describes Girls4Tech, a program started in 2014 to teach the foundations of STEM to 10 to 13 year olds. Photo Credit: IamtheCODE

Food is powerful in ways you may not often think about. Farmers in Zambia couldn’t get a market for their crops until a mobile phone application connected  them to buyers. Now, their income is up and their community is growing. They’ve gone from being subsistence farmers to agricultural entrepreneurs, reports cohost Edie Lush. The same technology that others use to find cabs on Uber or dates on Tinder has now created “eBay for farmers” who otherwise would remain isolated at the end of a long dirt road.

This bonus episode features an episode of Business Extra by The National AE where Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush and Business Extra co-hosts Mustafa Alrawi discuss the Sustainable Development Goals which are large-scale, ambitious and inspiring. They are also changing the way we seek out investment opportunities as we move to meet this defined future with over $12 trillion up for grabs for the private sector according to the UNDP.  The podcast was produced as part of The National’s Future Forum initiative which will examine how advancements in technology and societal developments will impact our future, and also coincides with The National’s tenth anniversary.

The fight to end extreme poverty is one of the great success stories in the modern world as more than a billion people have risen out of extreme poverty since 1990. SDG #1 is to eliminate all extreme poverty by 2030, yet as the date gets closer the work gets harder. The Gates Foundation Goalkeepers annual report states the worst poverty is increasingly concentrated in the places least able to fight it, especially countries south of the Sahara. In this episode, Bill Gates shares his surprising projection numbers and Dr Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi, President Emmanuel Macron, and other guests, share their ideas for how we can take increased action in the fight to end extreme poverty. Finally, hear how our sponsor, Cisco, uses their technology and expertise to accelerate global problem solving to benefit people, society, and the planet and to create an inclusive digital economy.

In this episode, we share the newly-launched results of the Hispanic Sentiment Survey, showing how Hispanics are the main driver for the middle class in America, and yet underestimate their own contributions.  Latinos are launching more new businesses, achieving higher levels of education, and reaching the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies in greater numbers than ever, but more than three-quarters of Latinos recently surveyed were surprised by at least one of these and other well-documented facts, as reported by the We Are All Human Foundation. Listen and understand how the time is now for perceptions to catch up with the many significant contributions being made by the Hispanic community in the U.S. 

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will make the world a better place for all, but the world cannot reach these goals without the active energy and new thinking of young people. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman explore that idea in this episode about youth and political activism. Speaking to young people on every continent, they find a strong desire to team up with friends to solve social problems, though, they also hear concerns about “clicktivism,” a tendency to confuse expressing a desire for action on social media with real action. This episode touches on the increasing role of young women as leaders and the shapers of agendas, including more attention to issues of concern to women, such as menstrual health, as well as efforts to bring more women into politics and governing. Also, hear how our sponsor, Cisco, introduces you to a valuable resource for youth, Global Problem Solvers: The Series.

Even here in the 21stCentury human beings are still enslaved by other human beings. Hard to believe? Listen to HRH Princess Eugenie of York and her friend and colleague, Julia de Boinville, describe their campaign to stem the scourge of Modern slavery. An estimated 40 million people, many of them women and children, are sold into bondage for sex or labor. The ISIS slave market described by Princess Eugenie may sound much like slave markets of old, but modern slavery can look very different from what you imagine from history. Modern slaves often work in domestic labor or even cleaning offices. They walk among us, explains Ms de Boinville. Edie Lush points out that Sustainable Development Goal eight calls for ending slavery by 2030, as part of creating proper working conditions for all. Princess Eugenie urges every one to play a role by asking how your food and services are brought to you, especially if they seem surprisingly inexpensive. Unquestioning consumers help make Slave labor hugely profitable for businesses who get away with it.

On this episode of Global GoalsCast, UN Foundation is taking over to discuss SDG progress, specifically in regards the High Level Political Forum, or HLPF, an event where country representatives come from all over the world to share the progress they are making on the Sustainable Development Goals.  From Rajesh Mirchandani, Chief Communications Officer of the UN Foundation, on this episode, he states: 'where I hope we are in 2020 is that we have not only identified what are the key blockers, the key transformative issues, and the key questions that we need to solve by that time to really accelerate SDG progress, But we're well on the way to solving. Because we want to kind of make sure that people keep on track. Now we've made it three years in [to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change]. There is progress. We need to do more. But you know what? As a Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed said 'we can do this and we have to do this.'

In the developed world, refugees are often viewed as a menace or a burden. That is just one of the myths busted in this episode of the Global Goalscast. For one thing, nine out of ten refugees don’t come to the developed world. They flee from one poor country to another. For another, in many of those countries, innovative thinking has turned refugees into an opportunity to develop the economy and make life better for both newcomers and their hosts. Uganda gives out land to refugees. Kakuma Camp in Kenya creates business and agriculture zones where hosts and refugees can work together. Edie Lush and Claudia Romo Edelman talk to the International Rescue Committee, UNHCR, Western Union and others about this urgent topic. Urgent because in the years to come the number of displaced persons will climb as climate change adds to the disruption.

The Sustainable Development Goals have excited the creative industry - fierce rivals in marketing and communications have found common ground to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.  In its June 2018 Episode, Global GoalsCast will explore the stories behind the partnerships that have resulted in some surprising changes in consumer behaviour.  We’ll also examine how the new Sustainable Development Goals Lion with Cannes Lions and initiatives by creative forces such as SAWA are increasing attention on the Global Goals. Partnerships forged for good are partnerships that create positive change. 

Continue the Green Miniseries with a disheartened Robert Swan on the South Pole. After a sunken boat, $1.2M debt, and a questionable promise, discover the friendship that restores his vigor to become the first man to walk to both the North and South Poles. Meet his son Barney and hear how their bond grows as they develop a mission to protect the planet. Joined by British Antarctic Survey’s Jon Shanklin and NASA IceBridge’s Nathan Kurtz, our hosts dig into the realities that fueled Robert’s crusade.

Look into the career of explorer, Robert Swan to hear how human vulnerability reflects the Earth's fragility through his previous expeditions to the North and South poles and the inspiration they had on his passion towards climate action and the preservation of Antarctica. Robert then reflects on the experiences of great historical explorer Robert Falcon Scott who attempted a journey to the South Pole in the early 20th century.  Also, hear how climate change affects Antarctica and the whole planet, from sea levels rising in Fiji to commercial extinction threatening the global shrimp population.

This episode examines trust, which is, "the dark matter" of society, invisible yet essential to accomplishing great progress e.g. the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From good health & well-being to reducing inequality, the SDGs require massive cooperation between all people and governments.  But how is this possible in an era of uncertainty and mistrust? Our hosts, Claudia and Edie, explore how mistrust has stalled progress on health and other goals and share methods for rebuilding trust.