Insights

Poverty extends beyond household income, encompassing individual access to healthcare, work, property, digital services, and decision-making power. Traditional household-based poverty measures overlook intra-household disparities, missing individuals—often women and rural residents—who face deprivation despite living in non-poor households. A dual lens approach combining household and individual data reveals that 42% of adults aged 25–49 in 23 Asia-Pacific economies experience deprivation, with 31% individually deprived within non-poor households. Key gaps include lack of health insurance, internet access, and property ownership. Addressing poverty effectively requires policies recognizing individual deprivation alongside household needs, focusing especially on vulnerable groups left behind.
Africa, Latin America | Health
Asian Development Blog: Beyond Households: Counting Every Deprived Person
Maps do not merely reflect reality but actively shape perceptions and behavior by embodying the biases and choices of their creators. Recently, three developments underscore this ongoing contest over who controls world representation: the African-led “Correct the Map” campaign challenging the Mercator projection; politically motivated geographical renaming, such as changing Lake Ontario to “Lake America”; and the integration of generative AI into geospatial tools like Google Earth. These shifts highlight how projection, naming, and computational layers encode power and purpose, with AI representing the newest and most transformative front in the struggle over geographic representation.
Africa
Who Gets to Represent the World?
Businesses are increasingly responding to climate change by adopting cleaner technologies and supporting net zero goals, as it is now economically viable to invest in non-emitting energy sources and carbon removal. Countries like China have driven down costs of solar panels and electric vehicles by building export industries, aiding global emission reductions. While political opposition exists, especially in countries like the UK and the US, public support for climate action remains strong. Crises such as the Ukraine war and energy shocks have accelerated shifts toward renewables and electric vehicles to reduce fossil fuel dependency. However, near-term economic priorities often limit faster adoption of renewable energy opportunities.
How are businesses responding to the challenge of climate change?
AI-powered virtual try-ons via chatbots with integrated avatars can enhance clothing rental experiences by allowing consumers to visualize fit and style before renting. This technology addresses common rental concerns like sizing, hidden costs, and item condition, while also promoting sustainability by informing users about environmental benefits. Rental clothing extends garment lifespans, potentially reducing carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20-30%. Despite barriers like hygiene worries and mainstream acceptance, AI tools with "green nudges" could encourage more sustainable fashion choices, helping shift consumers away from fast fashion’s environmental harms.
Virtually trying on clothes using AI can help cut fast-fashion waste, study reveals
The Anthropocene concept, introduced in 2000 to describe a new geological epoch marked by significant human impact on Earth, was rejected in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy for formal recognition, primarily due to its recent onset. Nevertheless, evidence from global locations shows a clear planetary shift around 1952, coinciding with widespread plutonium from thermonuclear tests, marking a new geological boundary. The idea remains influential, bridging natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and law to understand and address rapid human-driven changes, known as the "great acceleration," affecting climate, ecosystems, and geopolitics. Adapting laws and education for this changing Earth underscores its continuing relevance beyond formal geological status.
Antarctica | Health
The Anthropocene was rejected as a geological epoch – but the idea is still changing how we see the world
Sweden, known for its peaceful image and over two centuries without war, actively pursued nuclear weapons from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Motivated by deterrence against the Soviet Union, Sweden developed a latent nuclear capability but ultimately abandoned the program due to domestic opposition, international arms control efforts, U.S. security guarantees, and signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. However, Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Sweden’s subsequent NATO membership in 2024 have shifted defense policies to embrace NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy, including increasing knowledge of nuclear weapons' roles. Although Sweden currently has no plans to develop nuclear arms, historical tensions around deterrence and the potential stationing of nuclear weapons on its territory remain salient in defense planning.
‘Peaceful’ Sweden once sought nuclear weapons. That legacy still shapes defence planning
Europe faces a structural innovation deficit, lagging behind the US and China in breakthrough technologies such as AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology. This deficit stems from Europe's concentration in legacy industries and the absence of firms investing at frontier R&D scales. Institutional weaknesses—smaller metropolitan innovation hubs, limited venture capital compared to the US, and EU policies that favor incremental innovation—reinforce this stagnation. Overcoming the challenge requires forming a coalition of willing European countries to jointly commit to pioneering innovation through coordinated political and economic strategies, breaking free from national vetoes and institutional traps hindering transformative growth.
Education
Europe needs a coalition of the willing to overcome its first mover innovation deficit
Europe combines industrial expertise, a large consumer market, abundant savings, a strong STEM talent base, and stable institutions, positioning it to build critical infrastructure like renewable energy and AI systems rapidly. The Leaders for European Growth and Competitiveness platform, developed with Accenture, McKinsey, and Oliver Wyman, aims to accelerate structural reforms focusing on clean energy and industry, technology and innovation, financial markets, and external partnerships. Leveraging proven models and resources, coordinated leadership can drive rapid implementation and strategic partnerships to meet the scale of current challenges and foster sustained growth and competitiveness across the continent.
Africa
Leaders for European Growth and Competitiveness First Edition
The concept of mimesis, or copying from nature, has been fundamental to art since ancient Greece, emphasizing creative recreation rather than mechanical reproduction. The rise of mechanical reproduction, such as Gutenberg’s printing press, threatened traditional arts by displacing human creators. An example is the resistance of scribes who defended manuscript copying as superior to printed books, claiming their labor enhanced the quality and longevity of works. This historical tension highlights concerns about which human arts are vulnerable to mechanization, a question increasingly relevant with the advent of AI technologies disrupting creative fields like writing, acting, and design.
The Art of Copying
AI coding tools significantly boost developer productivity, with advances raising coding activity by up to 180%. However, this surge in coding does not proportionally translate into finished software, as bottlenecks persist in code review, integration, and distribution. Studies of over 100,000 GitHub developers reveal that while software releases increased by 30%, user adoption of new applications remained flat despite a surge in new software on major platforms. The main constraints have shifted from writing code to downstream processes, and current AI tools are yet unable to fully automate high-quality code review. Moreover, the flood of new apps makes discovery and iterative user engagement challenging, indicating that improving post-coding stages is essential for realizing AI’s full impact on software development.
AI Is Producing More Software. Why Isn’t It Being Used?
Extreme heat and climate shocks during pregnancy and early childhood reduce birthweight, impair development, delay school starting, lower enrollment rates, and decrease educational attainment, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Research links exposure to floods, droughts, and high temperatures with poorer cognitive outcomes and fewer years of schooling. These effects deepen inequalities, disproportionately impacting vulnerable families in countries contributing least to greenhouse emissions. Social protection programs like cash transfers can mitigate educational losses by supporting affected families, but sustained investment and broader climate action are crucial to protect children’s lifelong learning opportunities.
Africa | Health
Too hot to learn: how climate change hurts children’s chances from birth
Humanoid robots have achieved impressive feats like sprinting faster than human world records and competing in sports, but everyday tasks such as doing laundry remain a greater challenge. Folding clothes requires robots to handle unpredictable shapes, shifting positions, and delicate materials, demanding advanced perception, adaptability, and fine motor control. Unlike industrial settings with predictable environments, homes are dynamic, requiring robots to notice errors and adjust autonomously. Moreover, skills learned on one robot cannot be directly transferred to another due to differences in body design and sensors, necessitating research on shared learning across platforms. Reliable handling of complex, variable household tasks will better indicate progress toward truly useful general-purpose humanoid robots.
Humanoid robots can sprint and box – but the real test is doing the laundry
Scientists and practitioners are deploying digital twins—large language model-based replicas of individuals—for social science and policy research. A study comparing human responses to those of digital twins across 19 preregistered studies and 164 outcomes found that digital twins correlate weakly with human responses (average correlation 0.20) and only modestly outperform base LLMs. Five systematic distortions were identified in digital twins: insufficient individuation, stereotyping, representation bias, ideological biases, and hyper-rationality. These findings highlight risks of premature deployment and emphasize the need for transparent, replicable research before widespread use.
ICT
Digital twins are funhouse mirrors: Five systematic distortions
Nearly 1 million UK youths aged 16-24 are outside education, employment, or training, reflecting systemic failures across health, education, and social services. Labeling them as NEET stigmatizes rather than empowers them. Strengths-based mentoring offers a solution by building trusting relationships that focus on young people's interests and goals, providing emotional and practical support. Research shows mentors help youths explore ambitions, boost confidence, and re-engage with education or work on their own terms. Expanding and coordinating mentoring programs, integrating relationship-building skills in youth-facing professions, and establishing a central quality-assurance body could create scalable support that effectively addresses this crisis.
Education
Mentoring based on young peoples’ strengths can alleviate the crisis in education, training and employment
Astronauts experience rapid health declines during long-duration spaceflight, resembling age-related conditions on Earth, with some effects reversing after return. Spaceflight's low gravity reduces mechanical stress on muscles and bones, causing muscle loss akin to sarcopenia, but over weeks instead of decades. The UK’s MicroAge mission uses lab-grown human muscle tissues on the ISS to study muscle aging mechanisms, focusing on mitochondrial function in follow-up research. Understanding these accelerated changes in space can accelerate identification and testing of treatments for age-related muscle decline on Earth, potentially speeding drug development for frailty and mobility loss in the elderly.
How studying astronauts could help tackle ageing on Earth
Cycling rates in Denmark, a leading cycling nation, have declined from 27.6% in 2020 to 25.6% in 2025 for commuting to work or education. The drop is more pronounced among young people aged 15-19. Despite substantial investment in cycling infrastructure, factors like time pressure, concerns about appearance, comfort, road safety, and a preference for driving limit cycling uptake. Increased car ownership and policy shifts favoring cars also contribute. These findings suggest that infrastructure alone is insufficient; cultural, social, and practical barriers must be addressed to sustain and grow cycling as everyday transport.
Africa
Denmark is a cycling nation, but our research shows rates are declining – here’s why
AI advances have rapidly transformed intellectual tasks within computers, yet progress in physical robotics remains limited to controlled demos without practical, widely accessible humanoid robots. Despite ambitious goals for robots to perform diverse physical labor and self-replication, current demonstrations often mask significant technical challenges through selective scenarios and editing. Overcoming these hurdles is essential for developing broadly capable artificial workers beyond isolated successes seen in test environments.
Education
14 Reasons Robotics is Hard
In 2019, the World Food Programme partnered with Palantir to create a logistics platform, drawing criticism yet continuing despite objections. This partnership exemplifies the humanitarian sector's heavy dependence on private technology firms, raising concerns about digital dependency and the erosion of humanitarian agency. The increasing use of data-intensive technologies introduces significant risks, highlighted by a 2026 data breach affecting over 2 million beneficiaries in Gaza. These trends foster a surveillance-humanitarian complex and platform humanitarianism, where corporate-owned technologies shape humanitarian operations amid funding cuts and geopolitical shifts.
Health, ICT
Undoing Platform Humanitarianism
Open geospatial standards enable interoperable sharing and reuse of geospatial data, but their public-good character depends on the governance of the standards-setting organizations that produce them. Effective internal governance—defined by purpose, principles, people, processes, and policies—ensures standards function as digital public goods and infrastructure rather than becoming proprietary or enclosed by platformization. The increasing dominance of platform-based location services and cloud platforms shifts standard-setting power away from these bodies, weakening open interoperability and FAIR data principles. While standards organizations have limited influence over implementation layers, strong internal governance remains crucial to maintaining their authority and the openness of geospatial standards.
ICT, Health
From Open Standards to Openly Governed: Standards-Setting Organizations as Stewards of Openness amid Platformization and Digital Sovereignty
The Industrial Revolution spurred the development of social sciences to address societal challenges, but current disciplines are ill-equipped to guide responses to the AI revolution. Federal funding cuts for social and behavioral sciences, combined with increased private AI funding, have drawn many social scientists into AI firms. These firms often prioritize the goals of AI creators over public interests. To effectively manage AI’s societal impact, social science research must be revitalized with a focus on the public good.
Education
The Research We Need to Understand A.I. Is Falling Apart

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