What the least socially progressive countries all have in common.
A girl looks on among Afghan women lining up to receive relief assistance, during the holy month of Ramadan in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
But certain countries are lagging well behind the average.
This year’s ranking, the fourth annual list put out by SPI, finds Yemen, Guinea, Niger, Angola, Chad, Afghanistan, and Central African Republic all fall in the lowest-performing category, "Very Low Social Progress."
In SPI’s ranking, the countries fall toward the bottom in basic criteria, such as water and sanitation, medical care, personal safety, and personal freedom and choice.
A country’s place in the ranking isn’t determined just by its income level.
The US and France place 18th and 19th, respectively, but both countries are far wealthier than a number of countries further up in the list, such as Austria and New Zealand.
Likewise, Costa Rica’s GDP is low, but Green says its scores in health and wellness, mobile communications, and personal freedom allow it to sit just 10 spots shy of the US, in 28th.
Green says countries need to address basic human needs first, such as access to healthcare and clean drinking water.
Increasing mobile communications has allowed countries like Myanmar to make a big jump forward, Green said.

Four political errors to avoid in achieving water and sanitation for all.
Eliminating inequality is integral to the Sustainable Development Goals , from ‘universal access’ to water, to ending poverty ‘everywhere’.
Every city, country or district has its own political rules, most of which aren’t written down.
Yet despite all this complexity, experts working on essential services like water, sanitation, health or education can avoid some common political missteps, wherever they work.
Softer ideas and values can be important drivers in the narrative of reform.
In other research for WaterAid we found that sanitation is being sold to India and Indonesia’s political classes as a matter of collective pride and modernity.
In water and sanitation, we have a tendency to focus on water and health ministries.
For anyone dedicated to a particular issue like water, health or education, facing the truths behind political priorities can be hard.
*The views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone.
Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Bank.

The ongoing campaign provides safe drinking water to a school child in a developing country for an entire school year for every LifeStraw water filter or purifier purchased in North America or Europe.
Since LifeStraw and Managing Director Alison Hill (pictured above) launched the program in 2014, Follow the Liters has provided more than 1,000 schools with high-volume LifeStraw water purifiers, delivering safe water to over 629,000 school children in Kenya and India.
We spoke to Hill about the program’s success, and what’s next for LifeStraw’s corporate social responsibility program.
Since 2008, Vestergaard has been conducting health campaigns in western Kenya, including a household safe water program covering over 800,000 households with the LifeStraw Family purifiers, implemented in 2011.
So, the Follow the Liters Program was born, linking every retail sale with a measurable impact for a child in developing communities.
It is not just about how many LifeStraw Community Water purifiers are provided to schools, it is about how much education and training is done, how easily maintenance is accessible, how many children are drinking the safe water and how many illnesses are prevented.
How has Follow the Liters impacted the development of LifeStraw’s consumer products?
LifeStraw Play, a smaller bottle designed with kids in mind, in particular was inspired by Follow the Liters as we sought to provide safe water to school children in developed communities and then connect them with the children within the Follow the Liters Program.
We currently have 34 staff in Kenya dedicated to implementing the Follow the Liters program.
So the challenge is maintaining that quality and oversite as we continue to scale – forging new relationships with key leaders in new regions and finding quality local staff that uphold our programmatic standards.

As the filtration and purification company’s Follow the Liters program nears its goal of providing safe drinking water for one million children, Hill reflects on the experience and what’s next for LifeStraw’s CSR efforts.
The ongoing campaign provides safe drinking water to a school child in a developing country for an entire school year for every LifeStraw water filter or purifier purchased in North America or Europe.
Since LifeStraw and Managing Director Alison Hill (pictured above) launched the program in 2014, Follow the Liters has provided more than 1,000 schools with high-volume LifeStraw water purifiers, delivering safe water to over 629,000 school children in Kenya and India.
We spoke to Hill about the program’s success, and what’s next for LifeStraw’s corporate social responsibility program.
Since 2008, Vestergaard has been conducting health campaigns in western Kenya, including a household safe water program covering over 800,000 households with the LifeStraw Family purifiers, implemented in 2011.
So, the Follow the Liters Program was born, linking every retail sale with a measurable impact for a child in developing communities.
It is not just about how many LifeStraw Community Water purifiers are provided to schools, it is about how much education and training is done, how easily maintenance is accessible, how many children are drinking the safe water and how many illnesses are prevented.
How has Follow the Liters impacted the development of LifeStraw’s consumer products?
LifeStraw Play, a smaller bottle designed with kids in mind, in particular was inspired by Follow the Liters as we sought to provide safe water to school children in developed communities and then connect them with the children within the Follow the Liters Program.
So the challenge is maintaining that quality and oversite as we continue to scale – forging new relationships with key leaders in new regions and finding quality local staff that uphold our programmatic standards.

Official ground-breaking ceremony for upgrades to Shawinigan’s drinking water infrastructure.
Julie Boulet, Quebec Minister of Tourism, Minister Responsible for the Mauricie Region and Member of the National Assembly for Laviolette, Pierre Giguère, Member of the National Assembly for Saint-Maurice, and Michel Angers, Mayor of Shawinigan, participated in the official ground-breaking ceremony marking the continuation of work to upgrade the City’s drinking water infrastructure.
This investment in water infrastructure will allow the City of Shawinigan to ensure better water management, a healthier environment and improved public services for residents."
Julie Boulet, Quebec Minister of Tourism, Minister Responsible for the Mauricie Region and Member of the National Assembly for Laviolette, on behalf of Martin Coiteux, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Land Occupancy, Minister of Public Security and Minister Responsible for the Montréal Region "The Government of Quebec is proud to support water projects, such as the one starting today, that improve public services at the municipal level.
Michel Angers, Mayor of Shawinigan Quick Facts To meet the requirements of the Quebec Department of Sustainable Development, Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change, the City of Shawinigan is starting the construction of two new water treatment plants this year, one for water drawn from Lac des Piles and the other for water from Lac à la Pêche.
The project to upgrade the drinking water infrastructure also includes modifying the water supply system to connect the Saint-Georges and Lac-à-la-Tortue sectors to the Lac à la Pêche water supply system.
The Government of Canada will provide more than $180 billion in infrastructure funding over 12 years for public transit, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, transportation that supports trade, and Canada’s rural and northern communities.
Under the 2017‒2027 Quebec Infrastructure Plan, the Quebec Department of Municipal Affairs and Land Occupancy will invest a total of $15 billion in infrastructure thanks to $7 billion in government financial support.
Related links For more information on City of Shawinigan’s drinking water infrastructure upgrades: www.shawinigan.ca/miseauxnormes.
For more information on the Government of Canada’s $180 billion-plus infrastructure plan in Budget 2017: http://www.budget.gc.ca/2017/docs/plan/chap-02-en.html Federal investments in Quebec infrastructure projects: http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/map-carte/index-eng.html Major Infrastructure Component of the Building Canada Fund http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/prog/programs-infc-summary-eng.html#bcf-mic Building Canada Fund‒Quebec: http://www.mamot.gouv.qc.ca/infrastructures/programmes-daide-financiere/fonds-chantiers-canada-quebec-fccq/ 2017‒2027 Quebec Infrastructure Plan: https://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/PDF/budget_depenses/17-18/infrastructuresPubliquesQuebec.pdf SOURCE Infrastructure Canada For further information: Contacts: Brook Simpson, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, 613-219-0149; Marie-Ève Pelletier, Director of Communications and Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Land Occupancy, Minister of Public Security and Minister Responsible for the Montreal Region, 418-691-2050; Patrick Soucy, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Tourism and Minister Responsible for the Mauricie Region and MNA for Laviolette, 418-528-8063; François St-Onge, Director, Communications Unit, City of Shawinigan, 819-536-7200; For information: Infrastructure Canada, 613-960-9251, Toll free: 1-877-250-7154, E-mail: infc.media.infc@canada.ca, Twitter: @INFC_eng, Website: Infrastructure Canada; Pierre-Luc Lévesque, Communications Branch, Department of Municipal Affairs and Land Occupancy and Department of Public Security, 418-691-2015, ext.

What the least socially progressive countries all have in common.
A girl looks on among Afghan women lining up to receive relief assistance, during the holy month of Ramadan in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
But certain countries are lagging well behind the average.
This year’s ranking, the fourth annual list put out by SPI, finds Yemen, Guinea, Niger, Angola, Chad, Afghanistan, and Central African Republic all fall in the lowest-performing category, "Very Low Social Progress."
In SPI’s ranking, the countries fall toward the bottom in basic criteria, such as water and sanitation, medical care, personal safety, and personal freedom and choice.
A country’s place in the ranking isn’t determined just by its income level.
The US and France place 18th and 19th, respectively, but both countries are far wealthier than a number of countries further up in the list, such as Austria and New Zealand.
Likewise, Costa Rica’s GDP is low, but Green says its scores in health and wellness, mobile communications, and personal freedom allow it to sit just 10 spots shy of the US, in 28th.
Green says countries need to address basic human needs first, such as access to healthcare and clean drinking water.
Increasing mobile communications has allowed countries like Myanmar to make a big jump forward, Green said.

Harvesting Clean Water from Air.
But existing technologies generally require high moisture and a lot of electricity, which is expensive and often unavailable.
The team intends for its technology to overcome a notable problem with most materials capable of absorbing water from the atmosphere (such as the zeolites in humidifiers): aside from needing high humidity, they give up the trapped water only when heated substantially, which takes energy.
Berkeley group.
Beyond their versatility, MOFs’ great promise lies with their phenomenally large pores: the surface area inside is almost 10 times that of porous zeolites.
Taking a different tack, a start-up called Zero Mass Water in Scottsdale, Ariz., has begun selling a solar-based system that does not have to be hooked up to an electric grid or an existing water system.
A solar panel provides energy that both drives air through a proprietary water-absorbing material and powers condensation of the extracted moisture into fluid.
Cody Friesen, founder of Zero Mass Water and a materials scientist at Arizona State University, developed the system with the aim of having it work sustainably and easily anywhere in the world.
When most people think about solar, he adds, “they think about electricity.
Carbeck serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Materials.

Harvesting Clean Water from Air.
But existing technologies generally require high moisture and a lot of electricity, which is expensive and often unavailable.
The team intends for its technology to overcome a notable problem with most materials capable of absorbing water from the atmosphere (such as the zeolites in humidifiers): aside from needing high humidity, they give up the trapped water only when heated substantially, which takes energy.
Berkeley group.
Beyond their versatility, MOFs’ great promise lies with their phenomenally large pores: the surface area inside is almost 10 times that of porous zeolites.
Taking a different tack, a start-up called Zero Mass Water in Scottsdale, Ariz., has begun selling a solar-based system that does not have to be hooked up to an electric grid or an existing water system.
A solar panel provides energy that both drives air through a proprietary water-absorbing material and powers condensation of the extracted moisture into fluid.
Cody Friesen, founder of Zero Mass Water and a materials scientist at Arizona State University, developed the system with the aim of having it work sustainably and easily anywhere in the world.
When most people think about solar, he adds, “they think about electricity.
Carbeck serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Materials.

Businesses are not listening to Trump: Sustainabilty is still top of CEOs’ Agendas.
The SDGS present a radical shift in the traditional partnership between business and society.
All at the same time.
Because of this new approach, companies the world over have embraced the SDGS framework with Carlsberg, Novo Nordisk, Grundfos and Danish Institutional investors taking the lead.
Compared to previous “global good” campaigns, these companies no longer have to hide their intentions to profit from their sustainable actions or wrap their activities in the so called “Corporate Social Responsibilities” (CSR), or be accused of green washing like many of their peers.
For them, investing in say healthcare for low income earners, sustainable infrastructure or smart buildings, providing access to clean and safe drinking water, technologies to combat climate change or clean energy is not just the right thing to do, but the “profitable thing” to do.
On the back of these investments, new products get launched, new patents filed, better technologies invented, new markets discovered or old ones reinvented, keeping the companies ahead of the game while fending off competitors.
Where the world sees problems, these businesses see new opportunities.
Innovating for success and society The Morning Email Wake up to the day’s most important news.
Future-proof growth equals Long-term gains.

Uganda: Providing Safe Drinking Water Solutions At Scale.
As operations at Impact Carbon progressed, there was a realisation of the need to simultaneously introduce water purification systems.
"We found that we could also look into introducing water purification systems as a channel to reduce consumption of wood based fuel so instead of having to boil water and use lots of wood which has a negative impact on the environment, households and institutions could use purification systems," Mark Turgesen, Director of Impact Carbon and Impact Water in Uganda explains.
This was the case for Mr Adam Kakembo, a teacher and sanitary master at Kawempe Muslim Secondary School in Kampala.
Kakembo explains that before the installation of the purification systems, "We would boil 300 litres for the boys and about 200 litres of water for the girls in the students’ kitchens.
We would consume about three to four lorries of firewood per week."
This is possible because when business commenced, Impact Water sought a new way to make the water system affordable for schools.
Since Impact Water’s inception, 650,000 students in 1300 schools have been able to access safe drinking water thanks to its systems.
"Down the road five to ten years from now, I hope that with these meaningful engagements – with school associations for example – that safe drinking water will be expected in the school and that when a parent takes their child to school they know safe drinking water will be available just like food," Turgesen says.
The water is then filtered to remove dirt and large pathogens.