Throughout most of his 55 years, Mohammed Hassen and his family have suffered  during recurring droughts that have ravaged his district of Kalu, South Wollo Zone, in northeastern Ethiopia.

The country, once defined by rural poverty, is developing a strategy to address pockets of extreme poverty in its growing urban areas, and UNDP’s pioneering satellite mapping is helping.

In Hassen’s case, it has meant providing him and his neighbours with high-yielding seeds that are drought-resistant. Hassen’s income has improved, and his large family is now able to enjoy three meals a day; he even has extra cash to buy school supplies for the children and to start saving for the future.

By Yann Louvel,

This week, Bloomberg published the results of its third annual ranking of the “world’s greenest banks”: Citi was ranked first, followed by Santander and JPMorgan. The study assesses banks based on their lending to clean-energy projects and reduction in their own power consumption and carbon footprints. However, banks’ support for dirty energy, such as fossil fuel and nuclear power, is notably absent from Bloomberg’s methodology. When the value of banks’ finance for fossil fuels so often dwarfs their investments in renewables, Bloomberg’s data does not even tell half of the story.