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CCTV cameras and spyware are proliferating in the continent without checks and balances. Governments must legislate locally to prevent civil-rights abuses.
Faced with the challenge of advising the World Health Organization on who should be the first to receive COVID-19 vaccines, an advisory group used an approach it hadn’t tried before.
Laws to stamp out deforestation, pollution and child labour in global supply chains might have unintended consequences. Researchers need to investigate these effects.
Better data and new statistical techniques could enable researchers to measure the form of inequality that seems most harmful to society — inequality of opportunity.
Artisanal fishing can improve livelihoods, boost nutrition and strengthen food systems, but fishers’ input is needed at local, national and global levels.
Global dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal can be cut by 20–60% and greenhouse-gas emissions by 2.9% within one year, with the right policy support.
Covering 10% of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with ‘floatovoltaics’ would install as much electrical capacity as is currently available for fossil-fuel power plants. But the environmental and social impacts must be assessed.
The patent system assumes that inventors are human. Inventions devised by machines require their own intellectual property law and an international treaty.
Decision-makers discussing landmark agreements on health and biodiversity must include four actions to reduce the risk of animals and people exchanging viruses.
The sixth and latest IPCC assessment weights climate models according to how well they reproduce other evidence. Now the rest of the community should do the same.
Governments, donors and others must step up to protect current and future generations from the devastating effects of malnutrition, as well as to prevent acute food insecurity.