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Britain’s transition to net zero will disproportionately impact communities already economically vulnerable due to historic industrial decline, particularly in older industrial towns like Kirklees, Sandwell, Wakefield, and Rotherham. These areas typically have low economic complexity and heavy reliance on carbon-intensive manufacturing, limiting workers’ ability to shift to green jobs. Additionally, some rural and coastal regions with economies dependent on low-paid, less diverse sectors also face significant risks. In contrast, regions like Aberdeen fare better due to diversification efforts. A new net-zero vulnerability index identifies 32 local authorities, mainly in the Midlands and North, requiring targeted support to manage potential job losses and economic disruption amid the green transition.
Net zero will transform Britain’s economy – our map reveals the most vulnerable places
Prediction markets, operated by platforms like Polymarket, PredictIt, and Kalshi, now handle over $13 billion monthly, allowing anonymous users to gamble on outcomes from politics to popular culture using blockchain and cryptocurrencies. These markets blur lines between gambling and investing, facing legal challenges worldwide due to insider trading risks and regulatory ambiguity. Incidents involving election bets and classified information highlight ethical and legal concerns. Despite bans in some countries, prediction markets are influential, even impacting news coverage and political discourse. Their rise prompts urgent calls for stronger regulations to protect democratic integrity as these platforms become globally significant financial and geopolitical players.
Everything can be a bet now – the rise and risks of prediction markets
In 2025, significant setbacks occurred in gender equality and development funding, highlighted by major USAID cuts that deeply impacted UN agencies supporting women's rights and health services globally. Multilateralism weakened as the US reduced its UN funding, intensifying geopolitical polarization and contentious debates over sexual, reproductive, and LGBTQI+ rights. Democratic decline continued, with authoritarian regimes increasing and rising tech-facilitated gender-based violence undermining women’s political participation. Additionally, politicized religious conservatism gained influence, challenging progress on gender norms and comprehensive sexuality education, posing lasting obstacles to gender justice worldwide.
Africa, Latin America | Education, Health
What were the big wins and losses of 2025? | Align Platform
Lebanon, despite early women's voting rights and positive gender views, has very low female political representation (6% MPs). Political culture remains male-dominated with exclusionary norms, limiting women’s access to networks and resources. Traditional programs focus on training women, but deeper barriers include social norms and male-led power structures. The Winning With Women project innovatively developed male ally networks alongside mentoring women candidates. Influential men helped persuade families to support women nominees, opened exclusive spaces, built candidates’ confidence, and aided campaigns. Effective allies were often older men with less direct power stakes or younger men seeking political change. Tailored, locally designed learning and municipal study visits fostered ally engagement. Male allies proved crucial in shifting attitudes and enabling women’s political participation in Lebanon.
Lessons from Lebanon: what works to develop men’s allyship for women political candidates | Align Platform
This literature review synthesizes findings from 161 rigorous evaluations of climate actions in high-income countries since 2000, focusing on five key areas: Energy, Transportation, Solid Waste, Water, and Agriculture/Conservation. It serves as a comprehensive resource for local and state governments in the U.S., identifying proven strategies to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate change while highlighting critical evidence gaps needing further research to guide effective policy development.
Reviewing the Impact and Cost-Effectiveness for Local Climate Action within the United States: A Literature Review
State and local governments in the U.S. play a critical role in climate action through Climate Action Plans (CAPs) targeting sectors like energy, transportation, waste, water, and agriculture. Evidence shows energy efficiency programs often yield smaller savings than predicted, while renewable energy incentives effectively boost adoption. Transportation policies that economically discourage high-emission options and combine multiple measures have the strongest impacts. Solid waste interventions show mixed results, and water conservation is most successful using neighbor comparison information. Agriculture conservation research is limited but indicates payments to farmers can improve outcomes with variable cost-effectiveness. More rigorous research is needed to identify cost-effective, equitable climate strategies.
Reviewing the Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Local Climate Action within the United States
The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda highlights the need to include women in peace processes, yet women remain significantly underrepresented in negotiations and mediations. Traditional views frame men primarily as perpetrators of violence and obstacles to peace, which reinforces gender stereotypes and limits effective collaboration. Engaging men as complex individuals affected by violence and exclusion, rather than solely as threats, can foster their participation as allies in feminist peacebuilding. Evidence from conflict-affected regions like the DRC shows that recognizing men’s own suffering encourages constructive involvement in transforming harmful norms and advancing inclusive, lasting peace.
Africa
Are men the key to advancing Women, Peace, and Security? Unpacking norms of masculinity to support feminist peace | Align Platform
The Olympic Games have achieved gender parity for the first time, with women now representing 50% of athletes and an increase in mixed-gender events. Beyond the Games, progress includes narrowing the gender pay gap and increased media coverage of women's sports. However, significant disparities persist, such as unequal pay at club levels and persistent gender norms that undermine women athletes. Issues like sexual harassment and the presence of convicted offenders in sports highlight ongoing challenges. Sport can challenge gender stereotypes by promoting strength and skill in women and supporting broader social initiatives to empower girls and women globally.
Gender equality at the Olympic Games: more than just a number | Align Platform
Women in local politics across Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, and Zimbabwe face persistent gender norms that undermine their credibility and participation, such as being labeled "too young," "too emotional," or "untrustworthy." While laws and quotas exist to support female political involvement, their weak enforcement, limited resources, and lack of awareness hinder effectiveness. Men in power often obstruct women’s political careers by reinforcing patriarchal norms and sidelining female leaders. Additionally, intersecting social factors like age, caste, religion, and disability further restrict women’s political empowerment. Advancing women’s representation requires transforming these entrenched norms and engaging both women and men in the process.
‘Too young’, ‘Too old’, ‘Too emotional’: how gender norms hold women back in local politics | Align Platform
Europe faces a dilemma in balancing its relations with China and the US amid growing tensions and strategic competition. To navigate this, Europe should embrace its role as a middle power with agency rather than a great power equal to the US or China. This involves accepting that US volatility under Trump is not easily managed and requires a strategic repositioning. Europe can engage China pragmatically, leveraging Beijing’s current interest in repairing ties and its influence over Russia amid the Ukraine conflict. Pursuing a multi-alignment strategy and coordinated, “team Europe” diplomacy can help preserve European flexibility and unity, avoiding bilateral deals that could weaken the EU’s collective stance.
How Europe can resolve its Trump-China dilemma
New technologies and AI acceleration have shifted economic resilience from large megacities to smaller regions and mid-sized cities globally. These smaller jurisdictions—such as Estonia, Uruguay, Kansas, and Singapore—possess structural advantages like interconnected physical and digital systems, governance agility, and integrated infrastructure that enable rapid experimentation in digital governance, energy autonomy, and bio-industrial innovation. They serve as agile laboratories for developing new models, including AI-driven governance, renewable energy microgrids, and biotech agriculture, often pioneering solutions later adopted by larger economies. This emergent resilience ecosystem is reshaping global competitiveness in the post-pandemic era.
Estonia, New Zealand | Financial services, ICT, Health, Education
Peripheral regions are overtaking big cities as laboratories of economic resilience
Mark Cabaj, Brent Wellsch, and Keren Perla present a framework differentiating types of portfolios used by changemakers, emphasizing that these approaches are not interchangeable. Each portfolio type reflects distinct purposes, theories of change, management methods, and evaluation criteria. Practitioners are urged to be deliberate and clear about the portfolio design they choose, as different types enable varied pathways and possibilities for transformational change.
Education
There is no such thing as a “fish”
The rapid growth and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) require robust global standardization to ensure reliability, fairness, and safety. Key to this standardization are accurate data labeling and rigorous testing frameworks, which underpin high-quality, unbiased AI models and validate their performance and ethical compliance. Addressing challenges in harmonizing these practices across industries, international collaboration fosters trust, interoperability, and innovation in AI. Standardized data labeling and testing reduce biases and support the ethical, scalable global deployment of AI systems.
Education
Global Standardizing AI: The Impact of Data Labeling and Testing on Global AI Deployment
A federal judge ruled that conversations with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot lack attorney-client privilege, even if used for legal preparation. Ring, Amazon’s doorbell camera maker, faced backlash after a Super Bowl ad showcased AI’s ability to find lost dogs, raising privacy concerns about neighborhood surveillance. Additionally, OpenAI knew months in advance about a British Columbia woman's troubling ChatGPT interactions before she committed a mass shooting, sparking debate over AI companies' responsibilities to report private chats to authorities. These cases highlight increasing privacy risks and legal challenges tied to AI technologies.
A.I. Complicates Old Internet Privacy Risks
Streaming digital content and routine online activities significantly contribute to global energy consumption, with ICT responsible for around 3.4% of greenhouse gas emissions. Singapore faces unique challenges as a small island nation densely packed with data centers, intensifying pressure on energy and land resources. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has led efforts to enhance energy efficiency through regulations and innovative standards, especially for tropical data centers. Recognizing that hardware optimization alone is insufficient, IMDA promotes a holistic digital sustainability framework focused on green software development—designing applications that minimize energy use through efficient coding, reduced data movement, and appropriate AI model selection. These strategies yield substantial energy savings and business benefits, underscoring digital sustainability as a critical national priority for Singapore.
Singapore | ICT, Education
Every click has a cost: Singapore’s push to make digital use more sustainable
South Korea's ESG finance market surpassed KRW2,000 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) by the end of 2024, more than doubling since 2019, but growth slowed sharply to 8.9% from previous 20-30% rates. Private-sector ESG finance declined due to high borrowing costs and weak profitability. Social finance dominates (72.3%) due to policy-driven, low-risk lending like housing loans, while environmental finance accounts for 17.1%, with stagnation linked to regulatory uncertainty and limited renewable-energy products. Sustainability-linked loans fell 20.6%, and LNG financing classified as ESG raises greenwashing concerns. The report calls for clear ESG disclosures and expanded transition finance for carbon-intensive industries.
Republic of Korea | Financial services
South Korea’s ESG finance hits record $1.5 trillion but momentum fades
Women, Peace and Security (WPS) National Action Plans (NAPs) are established policy tools whose impact on women’s meaningful participation in security institutions remains uneven. The Methodology for the Women in Peace Operations (MOWIP) is widely recognized as a valuable analytical tool but remains underutilized in strengthening WPS-NAP commitments related to women’s participation in security sectors and peacekeeping. MOWIP identifies barriers and opportunities across institutional, cultural, operational, and normative dimensions within deploying security institutions. When deliberately aligned with WPS-NAPs, MOWIP enhances participation commitments, boosts accountability, and reinforces institutional ownership.
From assessment tool to strategic lever – Using the MOWIP assessment to strengthen WPS-NAPs
Cambodia’s agriculture, employing one-third of the workforce, must transform to achieve high-income status by 2050. Key barriers include low mechanization, inadequate irrigation, and limited processing facilities. Dominated by low-value rice cultivation, only a third of the rice is milled domestically, limiting value addition. Diversifying crops and enhancing agro-processing, particularly for cashews—which generate $1.5 billion but are mostly exported raw—can unlock significant revenue. Expanding into dried fruits and dairy with modern technologies and training can further boost productivity. Strengthening private sector involvement, government leadership, and donor support are critical to fostering agro-processing enterprises, raising standards, and integrating Cambodia into global value chains.
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Viet Nam
Innovation in Agricultural Processing Will Put Cambodia’s Economic Aspirations in Reach
Export restrictions, including quantitative restrictions and export tariffs, are increasingly used by countries despite their potential to harm economic efficiency. While export restrictions can benefit consumers through lower prices and improved availability, they generally cause market distortions, harm producers, and can provoke retaliatory trade measures, especially when large economies exercise market power. Existing WTO rules, such as GATT Articles XI, XX, and XXI, generally prohibit quantitative export restrictions with some exceptions, but there is limited multilateral discipline on export tariffs. Closing this regulatory gap is critical to prevent trade distortions and reduce the risk of trade conflicts, suggesting a need for enhanced multilateral rules to balance trade competitiveness with economic security.
Morocco
Protecting and Enhancing Multilateral Rules on Export Restrictions
AI is transforming the skills essential for professional success, necessitating changes in K-12 education. The Burning Glass Institute’s report analyzes AI's impact on 1,000 workforce skills and aligns this with 140 high school learning objectives, offering a framework for curriculum adjustment. Key findings include a rising cognitive bar requiring deeper conceptual understanding, the need for new instructional approaches within disciplines rather than across them, and challenges in traditional assessment focusing more on student reasoning than output quality. The report proposes a four-quadrant framework—Deepen, Transform, Streamline, Anchor—to guide educators in updating curricula effectively.
Education
Which Skills Matter Now?

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