Insights

The rollout of open government data platforms across 218 Chinese cities has increased employment through dynamic firm growth but simultaneously widened wage inequality. Using data from 70 million enterprises, listed companies, and labor disputes, the study reveals that public data governance drives organizational changes benefiting firms while provoking varied worker responses, highlighting tensions between adaptation and resistance in the digital economy.
ICT, Health
More Jobs or Widening Inequality? Public Data Governance and Low-Skilled Labor in the People’s Republic of China
Tourism in Asia and the Pacific contributes over $3 trillion to the region's annual GDP. Enhancing regional cooperation, transport infrastructure, and institutional connectivity is essential to increase the sector’s resilience. Strengthening these areas supports sustainable, inclusive, and resilient growth, enabling the tourism industry to better withstand challenges and promote economic development across the region.
Africa, ASEAN, Latin America | Health, Financial services
Transport and Policy Connectivity for International Tourism in Asia and the Pacific: Guidance for Regional Cooperation
Up to 40% of the world’s land is degraded, impacting over 3.2 billion people and threatening economies reliant on healthy soil. Unsustainable land use, short-term economic incentives, and climate change drive this decline. Healthy soil is a critical economic asset that supports productivity, resilience, and long-term value, yet it is often overlooked in financial and risk assessments. Investing in soil health is urgent and essential for sustaining business operations and ensuring economic stability.
Africa | Health
The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils
Up to 40% of the world’s land is degraded, impacting over 3.2 billion people and threatening economies reliant on healthy land. Unsustainable land use and climate change drive this degradation by favoring short-term gains over long-term soil health. Healthy soil is a vital economic asset that supports productivity, resilience, and sustainable value, yet it is often overlooked in business and government risk assessments. Investing in soil health is crucial and feasible to mitigate growing risks and ensure economic stability.
Africa | Health
The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils
Digital Self-Determination (DSD) establishes a governance foundation that enables individuals and communities to express preferences and influence data governance and reuse, turning data spaces into trusted social institutions. Despite growing recognition of DSD, practical implementation remains limited. The Roadmap for Digital Self-Determination in Data Spaces, supported by the Swiss Federal Administration, addresses this gap through four phases and six tools: establishing governance foundations; enabling community engagement; translating preferences into governance instruments; and assessing ongoing effectiveness. Key tools include governance readiness assessments, guidance on public engagement, legal and technical governance instruments, and stress-testing methods to ensure fairness, transparency, and control as conditions evolve.
ICT, Health
From Principles to Practice: A Roadmap for Digital Self-Determination in Data Spaces
Humanoid robots have recently achieved remarkable feats, such as running 100 meters faster than Usain Bolt and surpassing high jump records. However, comparing robots to human athletes is misleading because robots lack the human experience of emotion, pressure, and resilience that define sport. These robotic performances represent technological progress rather than athletic achievement. While robotics could enhance training and performance analysis, they also raise concerns about access inequality and the potential impact on the traditional, accessible nature of sport. Despite glitches and accidents during competitions, humanoid robotics is advancing rapidly, prompting future debates on their role and regulation in sports.
Robots can run faster than elite human sprinters, but are they really athletes?
Smartphone and digital technology use cannot be simply framed as addiction akin to substances; they have become essential infrastructure for work, education, and social life, making abstinence unrealistic. Managing digital use effectively requires a nuanced approach similar to public health strategies for sugar consumption, involving regulation of design and transparency about data and engagement techniques. Recognizing different types of digital engagement and their diverse social and emotional impacts is crucial, as is reflecting on the role technology plays in one's life. Sustainable digital habits emerge from integrating individual reflection with broader industry governance, policy, and social practices rather than relying solely on personal self-control.
Education, Health, ICT
We can’t quit smartphones, but we can manage digital junk food better
Climate change intensifies extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, disrupting various transport modes differently. Roads suffer from flooding, heat damage, landslides, and reduced visibility, while railways face track buckling, flooding, and power line damage that cause delays and safety issues. Airports experience runway damage and flight cancellations due to heat and storms. Water transport is challenged by fluctuating river levels that hinder navigation and cargo shipments, impacting global supply chains. These disruptions have cascading effects across transport networks, economic losses, and altered travel behavior. Adaptation strategies include using heat-resistant materials, improving drainage, designing infrastructure to withstand climate impacts, and implementing operational changes to enhance resilience amid increasing climate risks.
Africa
How climate change affects different modes of transport – from roads to railways
Cyprus remains divided since 1974, with the Republic of Cyprus internationally recognized and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus recognized only by Turkey. The recent election of moderate, pro-reunification leaders—Tufan Erhürman in the North and Nikos Christodoulides in the South—has opened a rare opportunity for renewed peace talks. Despite strong international support and new negotiation approaches, progress is constrained by deep societal divisions, right-leaning parliamentary shifts in the South, and Turkey’s significant influence over Northern Cyprus, including its military presence and political stance. Emerging security dynamics and innovative frameworks may offer hope for breaking the long-standing deadlock.
Cyprus at the crossroads – can fresh talks break half a century of deadlock?
Latin America possesses some of the world’s largest reserves of critical minerals like copper and lithium, presenting a strategic opportunity amid rising global demand and concentrated supply. While the region excels in upstream mining, processing and downstream manufacturing remain underdeveloped. Key barriers include water and energy constraints, financing difficulties, fragmented innovation, skill shortages, and divergent policies. Addressing six priority areas—infrastructure, technology and innovation, financing, policy, social impact, and talent—and fostering greater regional collaboration can build competitive critical mineral ecosystems, enhancing value creation, job growth, and economic development.
Africa, Latin America
Advancing Latin America’s Critical Minerals Potential
Rising global demand for critical minerals presents a strategic opportunity for Latin America, which holds large reserves of copper, lithium, and other key minerals along with strong mining expertise. While the region leads in upstream mining, its processing and downstream manufacturing capacities are limited. Key challenges include water and energy constraints, financing issues, fragmented innovation, skills shortages, and policy disparities. Addressing these through prioritized actions in infrastructure, technology, financing, policy, social impact, and talent—coupled with enhanced regional collaboration—can unlock competitive critical minerals ecosystems, fostering new skills, jobs, and sustained economic growth.
Africa, Latin America
Advancing Latin America’s Critical Minerals Potential
Governments increasingly use incubators and accelerators to help public institutions experiment safely, act swiftly, and adopt adaptive, forward-looking approaches amid societal and technological change. An analysis of 128 public sector cases shows these initiatives enable innovation by addressing institutional bottlenecks and improving responses to transformation. The report outlines a blueprint for effective design based on strategic purpose, ecosystem engagement, organizational context, performance mechanisms, and value creation, and offers a step-by-step guide for tailoring such programs to specific government contexts.
Education, Health
Incubators and accelerators for public sector innovation
Americans face a significant disconnect from elected officials, prompting exploration of citizens' assemblies and participatory decision-making to rebuild trust in democracy. Case studies in California, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Fort Collins, Colorado, demonstrate that Americans are eager to engage in thoughtfully designed deliberative processes and generally accept their outcomes. However, ensuring representativeness and accountability in these processes remains challenging. The potential for scaling these democratic innovations to the national level is a critical question for strengthening democracy.
Democracy in Practice: A Report on Innovations in Participatory Governance
Periods of major political transformation, such as democratic reconstruction after backsliding or systemic change, require governments to undertake multiple large-scale reforms involving constitutions, electoral systems, public administration, and social services. These moments present dual challenges: designing sustainable reforms within complex institutions and meaningfully involving citizens to generate democratic legitimacy and ownership. Democratic renewal goes beyond institutional repair, necessitating rebuilding citizen engagement in public decision-making to restore trust and democratic agency. Hungary exemplifies this, facing the question of how to rebuild democracy after prolonged erosion under Viktor Orbán’s regime.
Africa | Health
Rebuilding Democracy: Why Large-Scale Reform Requires a New Institutional Model
Political life in Britain has become increasingly stressful, hostile, and dangerous for MPs. Former MPs like Paula Sheriff and Gloria de Piero highlight persistent threats and growing public hostility, reflecting a broader decline in trust and rise of aggressive anti-political sentiment. Pressures akin to those faced by doctors—such as high accountability and public distrust—intensify MPs' challenges, compounded by personal demands and media scrutiny. This toxic environment has led to increased harassment, abuse, and violence, exemplified by the murders of Jo Cox and David Amess and other threats against politicians, signaling a troubling shift in political and social attitudes in the UK.
How political life in Britain became so dangerous
Plans to develop a 3MW data centre on the historic Truman Brewery site in Brick Lane, east London, sparked local protests due to heritage, housing, and environmental concerns. The brewery closed in 1989 and the site later became a creative hub. Despite opposition and a public inquiry, the secretary of state approved the project, emphasizing its economic benefits for London’s financial sector, which relies on low-latency data services. The scheme includes limited housing, with some affordable units aimed at local Bangladeshi families. The data centre’s location close to major financial institutions and existing infrastructure justifies its urban placement despite concerns.
Financial services
How Brick Lane became the latest neighbourhood to battle against a data centre
Over the past 25 years in the UK, property and violent crime have dramatically declined, largely due to enhanced security measures like engine immobilisers and better home protections. Violence against women and girls has also decreased by about two-thirds, though still remains a serious issue. New crimes, particularly cybercrimes, have emerged but have remained relatively stable over the last decade. Phone theft has increased because phones are ideal theft targets. Knife crime, however, rose in the 2010s, linked to the easy availability of pointed kitchen knives. Experts recommend banning pointed kitchen knives to reduce knife crime by 50%, aligning with government goals.
Education
Britain’s quarter century: crime falls, sea-levels rise and education yet to recover from COVID
Effective global networking requires leaders to build authentic, trust-based relationships while respecting cultural differences in values and social norms. Two key dimensions shape ethical networking: relational depth (moving beyond transactional contacts to genuine connections) and ethical commitment (creating mutual value rather than exploiting relationships). Successful leaders, termed Ethical Bridge Builders, invest in trust, cultural sensitivity, and reciprocal influence that benefits broader networks. In contrast, approaches focused on self-interest—Instrumental or Relational Opportunists—may yield short-term gains but undermine lasting trust and effectiveness across cultures.
Global networking the ethical way: how to build trust and influence across cultures
Large-scale human mobility datasets are critical for various applications but suffer from significant biases in data representation and production. Analyzing GPS mobility data from anonymized smartphones across ten major US cities reveals that data contributions are unevenly distributed among users, exceeding disparities like wealth inequality. Factors such as wealth, ethnicity, and education strongly influence the amount of data produced by different demographic groups. Although bias is pervasive across all cities studied, each city exhibits unique bias patterns, necessitating location-specific models to accurately address these disparities. This highlights the complexity of debiasing human mobility data and calls for more targeted research.
Health, ICT
A tale of ten cities: data bias in human mobility is pervasive and highly location specific
Language reflects identity, psychological state, and social context, offering valuable insights across multiple fields. Studies analyzing over 880,000 texts reveal that the widespread use of large language models (LLMs) as writing assistants reduces linguistic diversity by homogenizing writing styles and decreasing variance in complexity by 21–50%. LLMs tend to amplify dominant language patterns while suppressing individuality, potentially impacting diagnostics, personalization, hiring, and cultural preservation. These effects persist across various models, prompts, and domains.
Education
The shrinking landscape of linguistic diversity in the age of large language models

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