The pursuit of happiness, human development and the environment are intertwined in two profound ways. First, we developed from hunters and gatherers into urbanites during a period of remarkable and ...

Recently I’ve been enjoying dirty thoughts. I spend my days in a sterile 8×10 room practicing family medicine and yet my mind is in the soil. This is because I’m discovering just how much this rich, ...

The world’s oceans these days face a growing number of serious threats like overexploitation of living marine resources, habitat degradation/destruction, pollution ...

Walking the busy paths crossing the lush lawns of Krupp Park, it can be hard to believe this green lung of Essen once was an industrial wasteland. But in just a decade, Essen has turned the site of an ...

Remote lands are often treasure boxes full of local lore. Along the far-flung peninsulas of the Japanese archipelago, local legend claims that the ama-san, women free divers, were once seafaring ...

Globally today, we are witnessing an “inexorable intensification of violence” in the world’s armed conflicts. The result is that there are currently 59.5 million refugees worldwide. And among that ...

May 2023 — With the launch of the new United Nations University (UNU) global website platform, Our World has been integrated into the UNU website and will shift to become a curated collection of UNU's ...

Jared Diamond famously stated that “the biggest problems facing the world today are not at all beyond our control, rather they are all of our own making, and entirely in our power to deal with” when ...

The video brief accompanying this article, produced by the UNU Media Studio’s Kaori Brand, introduces two entrepreneurs who employ both traditional knowledge and scientific advancement to support the ...

Caring for the Earth and for our environment seems to have been a notion dear to humankind since the dawn of time. Even to this day, many of those societies that are deemed “primitive” for having ...

Millions of mobile phones, laptops, tablets, toys, digital cameras and other electronic devices bought this Christmas are destined to create a flood of dangerous “e-waste” that is being dumped ...

The world’s food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, finds a study by a small international non-profit organization, ...