Insights

Contemporary research systems are constrained by structural factors that limit where and how scientific knowledge is produced. Academic institutions face metric-driven evaluations, administrative burdens, and funding regimes favoring economic productivity over cultural and epistemic value, with limited and inflexible employment options. Public labs resemble universities, while industry labs prioritize commercial outcomes. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, and those at art-science intersections possess expertise but lack institutional support, prompting a need for “third spaces” that foster curiosity, collaboration, and meaningful public engagement in scientific research outside traditional academia and industry.
ICT, Financial services, Education, Health
Third spaces for science: reimagining research beyond academia and industry
The 2025 Governance and Macrofiscal Pillars (GMaP) assessment of Bangladesh analyzes the country's legal, regulatory, policy, and institutional frameworks at the national level. It identifies key governance risks affecting macrofiscal stability and highlights development opportunities. The assessment offers a comprehensive reform pathway to guide policymakers in prioritizing actions that strengthen governance and macrofiscal outcomes, supporting sustainable economic management and policy effectiveness.
Mongolia | Financial services
Bangladesh at a Crossroads of Reforms: Results of the 2025 Governance and Macrofiscal Pillars Assessment
Heatwaves pose a growing global threat to health, causing thousands of deaths and contributing to environmental damage like glacier melting and wildfires. Despite government heat action plans involving early warnings and public advice, heatwave impacts are socially unequal—older adults, low-income individuals, and outdoor workers face greater risks due to factors like limited air conditioning and inflexible work schedules. Studies show people alter daily behaviors during heatwaves but face structural barriers to staying cool. To reduce harm, governments must implement policies such as setting safe working temperatures, allowing flexible work hours, and ensuring accessible public cooling spaces, especially in vulnerable urban areas.
Health
Heatwaves are now everyday disasters – governments need to do more to protect people
Heatwaves have become a frequent and deadly global hazard, causing thousands of deaths in Europe and nearly half a million worldwide annually. They exacerbate social inequalities, disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups such as the elderly and low-income individuals who lack access to cooling or flexible work conditions. Unlike sudden disasters, heatwaves require people to adapt daily routines amid ongoing responsibilities, but structural barriers often hinder effective coping. Governments need to implement comprehensive heat action plans that include early warnings, flexible work policies, and accessible public cooling spaces to reduce health risks and protect vulnerable populations during extreme heat events.
Heatwaves are now everyday disasters – here’s how the UK government can better protect people
Victims and those challenging convictions face prohibitively high costs accessing UK court transcripts, with some quoted tens of thousands of pounds. Since 2012, courts record cases but rely on private companies for costly transcriptions. The government is now piloting an AI transcription tool, Justice Transcribe, aiming to reduce costs and improve accessibility. While this could aid victims’ recovery and legal transparency, concerns remain about AI accuracy and "hallucinations"—incorrect or misleading outputs—that could distort justice. Experts emphasize the need for human oversight to prevent errors impacting legal outcomes.
Victims can’t access their court transcripts because they’re too expensive – the government says AI might be the answer
The US-Israel war on Iran has severely strained Gulf Cooperation Council economies, with the World Bank cutting the 2026 GDP growth forecast from 4.4% to 1.3%, and potential recessions predicted. Impacts vary: Qatar and Kuwait face major export disruptions due to Strait of Hormuz closures, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE mitigate effects via alternate pipelines, benefiting from high oil prices. Iranian attacks have damaged around 80 energy facilities, inflicting $58 billion in damages, notably hitting Qatar’s LNG industry. Diversification efforts in tourism, aviation, and logistics suffer as hotel occupancy plummets and airlines face cost surges. Port traffic and air freight routes decline due to security concerns. The Gulf’s fiscal outlook weakens amid rising debt and government spending challenges, with long-term effects dependent on war duration and resolution.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
How severe has the economic impact of the Iran war been for the Gulf states?
The UN warns millions will face hunger if the Middle East conflict persists, as energy and fertilizer prices surge due to disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz. To build a more resilient food system, four strategies are key: transitioning to green ammonia fertilizer produced from renewables; enhancing national stockpiles of food and farm inputs; promoting diets with more plant proteins that require less fertilizer and reduce emissions; and accelerating transport electrification to free agricultural land currently used for biofuel crops. Though challenging, these shifts are essential to reduce vulnerability to supply shocks from geopolitical tensions and climate change.
How the world can avoid millions going hungry when supply chains collapse
Entrepreneurs in India are launching faith-tech ventures that integrate ancient Hindu philosophies with modern technologies like AI and virtual reality to make spiritual wisdom accessible and relevant today. These founders aim to reclaim Hindu culture and challenge Western capitalist norms by framing entrepreneurship as a moral duty (Dharma) that balances prosperity, well-being, and cultural preservation. This blending of faith, technology, and heritage reflects a form of “Hindu religious entrepreneurship” that counters colonial-era biases by reintegrating indigenous perspectives into professional life. The sector is rapidly growing, signaling a shift toward decolonising Indian business through culturally rooted innovation.
Education
The rise of Hindu religious entrepreneurship – and what it tells us about decolonising Indian business
AI is transforming work across Asia and the Pacific, disproportionately affecting women who often hold roles vulnerable to automation and face barriers in AI development and leadership. Women are underrepresented in STEM and AI professions, limiting their influence on technology design and exacerbating biases in AI systems. Automation threatens jobs predominantly held by women, such as administrative and retail roles, while new AI-driven occupations require advanced digital skills that women are less likely to possess. Addressing these disparities requires targeted policies to enhance digital skills, promote women’s participation in STEM, ensure fair AI governance, and support women-led AI innovation to create inclusive economic opportunities.
Education
The Future of Jobs for Women in the Age of AI
The UK government's legislative agenda focuses on easing the cost of living by introducing an energy independence bill to decouple electricity prices from global gas prices and requiring landlords to upgrade properties, alongside social housing renewal and leasehold reforms. Improving UK-EU relations is high priority, but public opinion is divided, with most favoring a closer relationship short of rejoining the EU due to complex political constraints. England plans to introduce a tourist tax following Scotland and Wales, aiming to generate modest local revenue for destination management. Additionally, measures to better align UK law with EU agreements are under consideration.
United Kingdom
State opening of parliament 2026: experts on plans for cost of living, EU ties, tourist tax and more
The UK government’s proposed water reform bill expands focus beyond water companies to include pollution from agriculture and industry, aiming for a unified regulatory system by consolidating Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, and environmental agencies. While it promises joined-up, long-term regional planning, key issues like climate change receive minimal attention despite increasing risks such as rising sewage discharges and water scarcity. Critics argue the reforms maintain the privatization model, emphasizing investor returns over public ownership. The success of the reforms hinges on transparency and robust regulation to ensure environmental protection and investment rather than just streamlining existing frameworks.
King’s speech: much‑needed water industry reforms do not go far enough
The resurgence of tariffs in U.S. policy under Donald Trump marks a shift from traditional protectionism to the use of trade as a geopolitical weapon. Since 2025, Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from over 90 countries, raising the average U.S. tariff rate to levels unseen since the Great Depression. Rather than focusing solely on economic issues, these tariffs serve as tools of political coercion, targeting nations over judicial decisions, energy purchases, and diplomatic stances. This approach reflects deepening U.S.-China rivalry and rising anti-globalization sentiment among voters, yet is driven significantly by Trump’s longstanding commitment to tariffs as strategic leverage. The new tariff regime signals a lasting transformation in global trade dynamics, intertwining economic policy with geopolitical objectives.
Latin America
Donald Trump’s tariff wars are not just about trade
Agentic artificial intelligence enables systems to autonomously perform complex, multi-step workflows, fundamentally changing government operations and citizen services. Strategic, evidence-based frameworks are essential for identifying where agentic AI can generate significant public value while managing complexity. Without this approach, governments risk misallocating resources, eroding trust in AI, and failing to scale pilot projects effectively.
Education
Making Agentic AI Work for Government: A Readiness Framework
Hugging Science, an initiative by Hugging Face, addresses the non-technical challenges in advancing AI for scientific discovery, emphasizing the importance of social and organizational coordination alongside algorithms and computation. It unites a global community to foster breakthroughs across disciplines by promoting open collaboration. Key efforts include launching challenges on broad computational bottlenecks, developing standardized toolkits and benchmarks to reduce data fragmentation, supporting cross-disciplinary education, and valuing contributions beyond algorithms, such as data curation and infrastructure. The initiative focuses on sustainable, equitable collaboration as essential for accelerating scientific AI progress.
Hugging Science
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as a highly active external actor fueling African conflicts in countries like Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. It supports various armed groups, including Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Libya's Khalifa Haftar’s LAAF, and others through military, logistical, and financial aid, often supplying advanced weaponry like drones without deploying its own troops. UAE-backed militias frequently challenge state authority, exacerbating instability and humanitarian crises. Its interventions undermine regional peace efforts and European interests in secure trade routes and displacement prevention. The ongoing Iran war and UAE-Saudi tensions present a potential opening for European powers to pressure Abu Dhabi for policy change, possibly through sanctions.
United Arab Emirates
The Destabilising Role of the United Arab Emirates in African Conflicts
The concept of "human-in-the-loop" (HITL) is widely used in AI governance to ensure human oversight, but its psychological impact is often overlooked. Existing frameworks, like the EU AI Act, mandate human intervention to manage risks but fail to address whether these humans have the necessary skills, motivation, or sustained attention to perform this role effectively. Humans in the loop may face contradictory challenges: cognitive overload from excessive verification demands and vigilance decline from under-stimulation. Addressing these issues is crucial for the future of AI oversight and governance.
Who wants to be the human in the loop?
The rapid expansion of data centers worldwide, essential for powering AI infrastructure and cloud services, is raising community concerns over high water usage, energy demands, and environmental impact. While technology companies emphasize economic benefits, local residents often experience limited gains alongside significant resource strain. This situation exemplifies the challenge of securing a "social license to operate," a concept from extractive industries where legal approval is insufficient without community trust and acceptance. Obtaining and maintaining this informal but vital social approval depends on transparency, fairness, and balancing costs with local benefits.
Financial services, Education, ICT
Data Centers Need a Social License to Operate
Municipal leadership plays a crucial role in addressing global challenges like war-related displacement, migration governance, and climate change, reflecting a shift toward polycentric and networked multilateralism. Over the past decade, cities have expanded their international roles by filling governance gaps through pragmatic, people-centered actions. Case studies on European municipal cooperation in Ukraine, city involvement in the Global Compact for Migration, and municipal climate leadership reveal patterns of decentralized humanitarian efforts, norm-setting, and innovative multilevel governance. Cities use transnational networks to amplify influence and share solutions, but their effectiveness hinges on enhanced fiscal autonomy, institutionalized representation, and stronger local leader protections. Integrating municipalities into global governance frameworks can better align international commitments with local implementation, boosting policy legitimacy and resilience.
Latin America | Financial services, Health
From Local Action to Global Influence: How Cities Shape Governance in a Polycentric World
Artificial intelligence is transforming life sciences and medtech by accelerating discovery and reshaping value creation, delivery, and capture. As AI removes traditional research barriers, challenges shift to development, evidence generation, and real-world application. New digital interfaces and data ecosystems are changing patient care access and decision-making. To stay competitive, organizations must make strategic choices and foster public-private alignment, as regulation, reimbursement, and data governance increasingly influence innovation scaling. Practical guidance supports firms in succeeding commercially while improving health outcomes and healthcare sustainability.
Health, ICT, Education
Strategic Choices in the Age of AI: Shaping the Future of Life Sciences
The Greater Mekong Subregion faces heightened climate-sensitive health risks, including dengue and malaria, worsened by climate change through expanded mosquito habitats and extreme weather events. Climate-informed early warning systems—combining climate data with disease surveillance—enable anticipatory public health actions to prevent outbreaks. While technical capabilities are advancing in countries like Cambodia and Lao PDR, the critical challenge lies in translating warnings into timely, coordinated responses. Effective systems require multi-sector governance, integrated data sharing, trigger-action protocols, clear communication, and community engagement focused on equity and trust. Such approaches are essential to shift from reactive outbreak control toward proactive health risk management in line with Sustainable Development Goals.
Africa, Latin America | Financial services, Health
Turning Weather and Climate Data into Early Health Action

Forum Spaces

© 2026 All rights reserved
Privacy Policy & Terms of Service