The potential to achieve Sustainable Development Goal water targets will depend on a hybrid of technologies that improve water measurements and data underpinning indicators of progress.

World Water Day 2018 is a reminder that global water security will not be achieved through business-as-usual approaches, and will depend on efforts to use and expand nature-based solutions.

The 2017 hurricane season was a strong reminder that governments, businesses and individuals must boost their preventative risk management activities, while also designing climate insurance approaches for protection when nature’s harm cannot be avoided.

To address environmental degradation, including climate change, it is essential to account for human rights and migration using an approach based in hybrid international law and regional thinking.

New UNU research is challenging the traditional thinking which asserts that children who join armed groups are motivated by anti-social tendencies, ideology and negative emotions.

The Olympic Games offer an enormous opportunity to showcase how global events can promote sustainable practices. But how can Japan ensure that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics hit the sustainability mark on consumer waste and recycling?

As we strive to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the experience of Brazil could offer guidance on how to improve access to antiretroviral drugs in developing countries.

For decades, China has successfully implemented afforestation programmes to counter desertification. But, while planting more trees will reduce erosion, it is also worsening China’s water crisis.

At the two-year mark of the Sustainable Development Goals, a new policy support system provides authoritative evidence to help governments set clear paths to achieving water-related targets.

Efforts to end open defecation through rapid installation of low-cost pit latrines must be cautious of the potential impacts on groundwater and human health.

Despite the immense scale of freshwater systems at the centre of SDG 6, ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all will require an approach that scales up from communities to better understand how water is used in daily life.

As the world faces growing water scarcity, food production will increasingly rely on the use of recycled wastewater, and technologies that make its use safer.

In a world where vital resources are increasingly scarce, the water we have already used can be properly managed to become an affordable and sustainable source of energy, nutrients, and other recoverable materials.

A recent spate of natural disasters serves as a reminder that communities must be better prepared for disruptions of critical infrastructure such as electricity and water service, which can go off-line in a matter of minutes and impact millions of lives.

While government mandates for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals are expected to eventually “trickle down” to cities, a group of frontrunner cities is creating progress on the ground ahead of national instructions.

Habitat III is an opportunity to pave the way for culturally and contextually sensitive solutions to the challenges of rapid urbanisation in small island developing states.

The Sendai Framework, while falling short of expectations on many fronts, took some important steps towards integrating lessons from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Experiences from Fukushima show that providing channels for public participation and dialogue is a crucial first step towards ensuring a sustainable recovery for communities impacted by complex disasters.

Knowing how key resilience is following a disaster, small-scale fishers of Japan’s Tohoku region offer support to Chile’s artisanal fishers impacted by a recent tsunami.

The Ministry of the Environment of Japan and UNU collaborate to produce a video documentary about the decontamination efforts in areas affected by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Documentary filmmaker Kaori Brand reflects on the experience of producing this 30-minute video on the recovery efforts of the fishing communities hit by the March 2011 tsunami.

The resilience demonstrated by communities in Japan’s Tohoku region may be one of the best modern-day lessons on what the rest of the world can do to prepare for disasters and the consequences of climate change.