Gender

Empowering women to participate fully in economic life across all sectors is essential to build stronger economies, achieve internationally agreed goals for development and sustainability, and improve the quality of life for women, men, families and communities.

The private sector is a key partner in efforts to advance gender equality and empower women. Current research demonstrating that gender diversity helps businesses perform better signals that self-interest and common interest can come together. Yet, ensuring the inclusion of women’s talents, skills and energies—from executive offices to the factory floor and the supply chain—requires intentional actions.

Children

Children are the foundation of sustainable development. The early years of life are crucial not only for individual health and physical development, but also for cognitive and social-emotional development. Events in the first years of life are formative and play a vital role in building human capital, breaking the cycle of poverty, promoting economic productivity, and eliminating social disparities and inequities.

Children experience poverty as an environment that is damaging to their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual development. Therefore, expanding the definition of child poverty beyond traditional conceptualizations, such as low household income or low levels of consumption, is particularly important. And yet, child poverty is rarely differentiated from poverty in general and its special dimensions are seldom recognized.

Children experience poverty with their hands, minds and hearts. Material poverty – for example, starting the day without a nutritious meal or engaging in hazardous labour – hinders emotional capacity as well as bodily growth. Living in an environment that provides little stimulation or emotional support to children, on the other hand, can remove many of the positive effects of growing up in a materially rich household. By discriminating against their participation in society and inhibiting their potential, poverty is a measure not only of children’s suffering but also of their disempowerment.

Environment

Our environment is constantly changing. There is no denying that. However, as our environment changes, so does the need to become increasingly aware of the problems that surround it:

Solar energy, which reaches the earth’s surface in the form of light and heat and can be actively utilised in a variety of ways: with the aid of photovoltaic systems for electricity production, through the use of solar collectors for heat production (hot water and auxiliary heating) or through the use of concentrating systems for activating chemical processes and producing electricity.

Women and children are particularly affected by water scarcity, as they are often the ones responsible for fetching it. The farther away the water, the longer it takes to get, which often means less time for school. For girls especially, water scarcity has a detrimental effect on regular school attendance. Carrying water long distances is also a huge physical burden and can expose children to safety risks and exploitation.

Preservation and regeneration of the marine environment ( Blue Economy). This can include a wide range of economic sectors, from the more conventional fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, coastal, marine and maritime tourism or other traditional uses, to more emergent activities such as coastal renewable energy, marine ecosystem services, seabed mining..

When we combine space-based altimetry data of the oceans with more than a century of observations from surface-based sources, the information dramatically improves our understanding of how sea surface height is changing on a global scale.

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