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Idea Lab

Stay up to date with the latest ideas shaping how we respond to the problems of the 21st century. Your one-stop shop for the latest solutions-driven innovation.

Featured Media Review

Book

We have made much progress in understanding how ecosystems (forests, oceans, the atmosphere, and so on) function and provide the services upon which human communities depend—air and water purification, waste disposal, climate stabilization, pollination, photosynthesis, and soil generation. These and other ecosystem services are priceless. Even if it were physically possible to replace them (highly unlikely, since they...

Blog

Misuse of European Union subsidies aimed at tackling overfishing has put increased pressure on dwindling fish stocks. Taxpayer subsidies to the tune of 1 billion euros are paid each year to owners of fishing vessels and others working in the fishing industry under the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy. While ostensibly intended to address overfishing, many say the subsidies are just a handout to the corporate...

Noteworthy

A clever, albeit brutal, goat eradication program on the Galápagos Islands is credited for successfully saving a...

In an effort to fill the gaps left by our financial institutions, many are searching for local alternatives to...

More than almost any other recent technology, the mobile phone has penetrated the developing world and sparked...

In Andavadoaka, a Vezo village on the western coast of Madagascar, marine ecosystems are a precious resource. Over...

At a time when we need visionary leaders more than ever, the loss of Ray Anderson last August was a body blow....

Green capitalism is thriving in India and nowhere more so than in the renewable-energy sector. Take the...

More than almost any other nation, Bangladesh is on the front lines of climate change. It’s one of the world’s...

Germany has committed to shutting down all of its nuclear reactors by 2022, making it the biggest industrial power...

In an effort to legitimize Liberia’s timber industry, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is putting barcodes on her...

Other Media Reviews

Book
In The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters (Princeton University Press, 2011), economist Diane Coyle gives us a thoughtful, thorough, and somber account of the West’s...
Blog
The year is 2020. Climate change has been ignored, resources are running low, and the world is faced with environmental and financial crisis. Can you solve the world’s problems? This is the...
Book
Readers of Solutions do not need to be told that we are faced with monumental problems. At the center of our many challenges is the fact that the poorest billion of the earth’s inhabitants live on...
Documentary
Before 1970, the land around the village of Qiugang, in Anhui Province, China, was green, with date orchards and wildlife, and the nearby Huai River was full of fish. “It can only exist as memory now...
Blog
On March 6, 2011, a satellite captured images of a burning village, Tajalei, in Sudan’s Abyei region. Earlier that month, two other villages in the area, on the border between northern and southern...
Blog
The workings of Congress are often mired in controversy, with only the legislation that polarizes the left and the right gaining public attention. Now you can find out for yourself what exactly the...
Blog
For the past eight years, Yafit Gamila Bison, a Syrian-born Israeli citizen, has driven Palestinian children past the checkpoints into Israel to be treated at Israeli hospitals. When their parents...
Book
Would you be better off, in financial and lifestyle terms, if you lived in Europe? This is the basic rhetorical question that Thomas Geoghegan raises in his book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent...