This fall, Northwestern Buffett will launch a new podcast featuring stories of research collaborations and other partnerships fueling progress toward addressing complex global challenges ranging from climate change and food insecurity to poverty and inequality. Episodes will spotlight idea catalysts and innovators blazing new trails toward reaching United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

One’s census tract continues to predict one's access to the learning experiences research shows are essential for developing the skills, identity and interests necessary to access and power STEM possible futures. While this reality is not new, the advancement in technology and data science coupled with America’s growing awareness of the embeddedness of systemic racism has created opportunities for communities to reimagine the use of civic places, spaces, and policies to create opportunities for youth to engage in safe and accessible STEAM learning experience across home, school, and community.

In this Northwestern Buffet "Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities" webinar, learning scientist Nichole Pinkard and Chicago Medal of Honor Recipient Natasha Smith-Walker will share examples and frameworks based upon lessons learned in a multi-year collaboration to reimagine partnerships with the community and civic institutions to build pathways and on-roads to STEM in ways that connect to the community. Austin serves as the demonstration community leveraging community value holders (parks, community-based organizations, schools, etc.)

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series. This and other spring 2021 webinars focused on UN SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities are co-sponsored by the Northwestern University Community for Human Rights (NUCHR).

Survey evidence from 16 developing countries shows widespread employment loss and declines in income and food security since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. These patterns are apparent in Ghana. In this Northwestern Buffett "Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities" webinar, Chris Udry, professor of Economics at Northwestern University, and Robert Darko Osei, vice dean for the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Ghana, discuss the effect on workers of the COVID lockdown policies implemented in urban areas, and the organization of a program of mobile money transfers to individuals in poor households.

They will discuss the dynamic effects of lockdowns on employment. They will show how substantial, randomized mobile money transfers affected social distancing, food security, and work patterns. Further, they will discuss how reliance on mobile money restricted the reach of the program to those with access to mobile phones but allowed for useful characterization of excluded populations.

Chris Udry: Robert E. and Emily King Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. He is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research includes directing the first long-term, nationwide socioeconomic panel survey of individuals across Ghana (in collaboration with the University of Ghana); randomized evaluations of a variety of governmental and NGO-led development programs in West Africa; work on household organization, risk, information flows and agriculture in Mali and Ghana; and the role of psychological well-being on economic decision-making.

Robert Darko Osei: Associate Professor in the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, Legon, and also the Vice Dean for the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Ghana. Robert has published widely in edited volumes and top international journals. His main areas of research include evaluative poverty and rural research, macro and micro implications of fiscal policies, aid effectiveness and other economic development policy concerns. He is currently involved in a number of research projects in Ghana, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. 

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series. This and other spring 2021 webinars focused on UN SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities are co-sponsored by the Northwestern University Community for Human Rights (NUCHR).

Mexico and Colombia have been theaters of the war on drugs for half a century, yet both Latin American countries continue to be two of the largest producers of illegal drugs in the world, where many regions are hellscapes of violence, corruption and inequality. Why do governments keep insisting on a strategy that has consistently failed according to its stated aims?

In this Northwestern Buffett "Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities" webinar, historian Lina Britto and journalist Dawn Marie Paley will break down dominant myths around narcotrafficking and the war on drugs to explore how illegal drug economies and regimes of prohibition in Mexico and Colombia have been crucial aspects of statemaking; creating and maintaining multiple forms of injustice over time. 

Dawn Marie Paley is a journalist and author of Drug War Capitalism (2014) and Guerra Neoliberal: desaparición y búsqueda en el norte de México (2020). She regularly collaborates with Pie de Página and La Jornada in Mexico City, and in 2018 completed a PhD in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Puebla, in Puebla, México, where she is based.

Lina Britto is associate professor of History at Northwestern University and the author of Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia’s First Drug Paradise (2020). She obtained her PhD degree in History from New York University, NYU, was a faculty fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, and regularly collaborates with El Espectador (Colombia). She lives in Chicago.

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series. This and other spring 2021 webinars focused on UN SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities are co-sponsored by the Northwestern University Community for Human Rights (NUCHR).

The last few years have seen a shift in the global balance of power due to evolving political and economic interests. What are the implications of these shifts on existing trade relationships between and amongst countries in the Global South, and what role will the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union play? How do we assess the implications of the economic landscape in Africa and the Diaspora against a backdrop of historical extractive and exploitative practices that governed Africa's relationship with countries in the Global North? Is it possible to imagine a new economic framework that moves beyond our historical dichotomies and embodies cultural values and practices that benefit everyone?

In this Northwestern Buffett "Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities" webinar, using the advent of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a backdrop, Dr. Amara Enyia, Managing Director of Diaspora Rising, will explore issues related to historically exploitative trade and economic practices in Africa and the Caribbean. Dr. Amara will examine systems being built around the world—in part due to COVID-19 and in part due to skyrocketing inequality—that highlight how those dynamics are shifting, how new post-COVID trade agreements can evolve, and how countries are leaning in to notions of self-sufficiency and self-determination.

Dr. Amara Enyia is a Strategist, Public Policy Expert and Social Impact professional on city and state policy as well as international affairs with expertise in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia.

She is the Managing Director of Diaspora Rising, a transnational media and advocacy hub that works to strengthen bonds amongst the global Black family. She also serves as the Policy and Research Coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives and as a Strategy Advisor for organizations, companies, political campaigns, and public sector institutions globally. Her work has connected her to the 6th Region of the African Union Commission and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Dr. Enyia is a member of the 2020-2022 cohort at the London School of Economics Executive Program in Cities. Prior to her current roles, she worked in the Mayor’s Office for the City of Chicago, and served as Executive Director of community-based organizations. As a grassroots organizer, she worked on issues of education equity, economic justice, and environmental justice.

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series. This and other spring 2021 webinars focused on UN SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities are co-sponsored by the Northwestern University Community for Human Rights (NUCHR).

Primarily focused on economic inequality, United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #10, “Reduced Inequalities,” also aims to “empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status.” Yet today’s global inequities possess long legacies of systemically generated and sustained efforts to benefit the few to the serious detriment of the many, often the world’s Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. What historical movements created such drastic disparities? Which social structures continue to uphold or even exacerbate them? What myths of progress abound, and to what ends? In this panel, Northwestern University professors Doug Kiel, Simone Ispa-Landa, and Katrina Quisumbing King will discuss the imperialist, white supremacist heritage of - and persisting principles underlying - our existing realities and will highlight the sparks of possibility for future justice.

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series, which focuses on a different United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) each quarter with SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities being the focus of spring 2021.

According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, climate change has disproportionately exacerbated many challenges global Indigenous communities face, including political and economic marginalization, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination, and unemployment. Yet despite these challenges and despite the contributions Indigenous Peoples make towards effective environmental governance, Indigenous voices and perspectives have been historically marginalized in global climate debates and discourse. As climate change continues to threaten the survival of Indigenous communities worldwide, the need to respect and integrate Indigenous contributions to global climate negotiations is critical.

In this Northwestern Buffett "Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities" webinar, Signe Leth, senior advisor at the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Indigenous Women & Land Rights, Asia program, joins Northwestern University assistant professor of political science Kimberly Marion Suiseeya for a conversation drawing distinct connections between land rights, Indigenous rights, and climate governance to demonstrate the centrality of Indigenous rights in addressing both climate change and advancing justice.

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series, which focuses on a different United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) each quarter.

This and other Winter 2021 webinars focused on SDG 13: Climate Action are co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and sustainNU.

How can we "read" or understand policy responses to climate change? We can "read forwards," drawing on scientific evidence and reasoning to project consequences and dictate policy responses. Or we can "read backwards"; we can look to the human beliefs, values, and goals that impute meaning to the world to understand the many lines of evidence and reasoning leading to policy responses. University of Cambridge professor of human geography Michael Hulme will discuss the power of "reading backwards" and the importance of embedding "climate actions" inside human stories, both dominant and marginalized.

Hulme's work illuminates the numerous ways in which the idea of climate-change is deployed in public, political, religious and scientific discourse, exploring both its historical, cultural and scientific origins and its contemporary meanings. He is the author of nine books on climate change, including Why We Disagree About Climate Change (CUP, 2009). From 2000 to 2007, he was the Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series, which focuses on a different United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) each quarter.

This and other Winter 2021 webinars focused on SDG 13: Climate Action are co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and sustainNU.