Documents social change 209 results

"Pensamos que vivimos en una edad de oro de la historia y que el progreso va a continuar. Si bien la pandemia del coronavirus de 2020 ha supuesto un terrible contratiempo, y la crisis económica global subsiguiente será muy difícil de superar, seremos capaces de resolverlo. El capitalismo ha generado sin duda progresos materiales enormes. Sin embargo, no ha solucionado, sino que ha agravado, las necesidades básicas de tipo material, sociocultural y espiritual de gran parte de la humanidad. Y es que una concepción ingenua del progreso humano o una visión tecnocientífica demasiado simple no permite valorar adecuadamente el conjunto de la realidad del planeta ni de todos los seres vivos que en él habitan.
Ante un escenario tan difícil y complejo como peligroso, este libro quiere aportar algunas respuestas a temas tan cruciales para la salud y la equidad como la política y la desigualdad, la crisis ecológica y el sistema capitalista, el desempleo y la precarización laboral, la mercantilización sanitaria y la reciente pandemia del coronavirus. Y hace una apuesta decidida por la salud pública, entendida de una manera integral. El futuro de la vida y de la salud están en nuestras mentes y en nuestras manos. La elección es nuestra."

"The next era of the internet is coming. The metaverse is an immersive, interoperable and synchronous digital world that will change how we interact, work and play.

In May 2022, the World Economic Forum launched the Defining and Building the Metaverse Initiative, whose goal is to bring together major stakeholders from academia, civil society, government and business to advance consensus and create a metaverse that is economically viable, interoperable, safe, equitable and inclusive. The initiative is divided into two workstreams: governance and economic and social value creation.

The governance track has produced its first report in the series titled Interoperability in the Metaverse, with key messages on the opportunities and challenges of metaverse interoperability. This paper, written by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture, will concentrate on providing topical guidance that will empower stakeholders to lead responsibly within the metaverse while mitigating potential socioeconomic harms.

The World Economic Forum has assembled a global, multi-sector working group of over 150 experts to co-design and guide this initiative. The hope is that this will lead to cross-sector global cooperation and the creation of a human-first metaverse. The metaverse has the potential to be a game-changer, but it must be developed in a way that is inclusive, equitable and safe for everyone."

"Rules to Win By: Participation and Power in Union Negotiations is a book for anyone who wants to understand how to build the power required to effectively challenge and reverse income inequality and attacks on democracy. Drawing insights from recent hard-won unionization and contract negotiation fights, Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor use lessons from some of the toughest fights today--preparing a durable, all-out strike in a union-hostile environment--to provide a masterclass in participatory social change, indispensable both within and beyond the workplaces where we spend half of our waking lives.
In an era of polarization, big lies, and massive legislative setbacks, changemakers in every arena need to learn the skills and lessons honed in pitched battles against experienced and ruthless union busters. Rules to Win By is a book for workers, unionists, racial justice and climate campaigners, academics, policymakers and everyone who wants a more fair and democratic society."

"This paper explores the economics of Artificial Intelligence (AI), focusing on its potential as a new General-Purpose Technology that can significantly influence economic productivity and societal wellbeing. It examines AI's unique capacity for autonomy and self-improvement, which could accelerate innovation and potentially revive sluggish productivity growth across various industries, while also acknowledging the uncertainties surrounding AI's long-term productivity impacts. The paper discusses the concentration of AI development in big tech firms, uneven adoption rates, and broader societal challenges such as inequality, discrimination, and security risks. It calls for a comprehensive policy approach to ensure AI's beneficial development and diffusion, including measures to promote competition, enhance accessibility, and address job displacement and inequality."

"Urgent calls to transform societies toward more sustainability make the practice of anticipation more and more necessary. The progressive development of computational technologies has opened room for a growing use of quantitative methods to explore the future of social-ecological systems, in addition to qualitative methods. This warrants investigating issues of power relationships and discontinuities and unknowns that arise when mingling quantitative and qualitative anticipatory methods. We first reflected on the semantics attached to these methods. We then conducted a comparative analysis on the way the articulation of quantitative and qualitative methods was conducted, based on an in-depth analysis of a set of eleven anticipatory projects completed by several external case studies. We propose insights to classify projects according to the timing (successive, iterative or convergent) and the purpose of the articulation (imagination, refinement, assessment and awareness raising). We use these insights to explore methodological implications and power relationships and then discuss the ways to inform or frame anticipatory projects that seek to combine these methods."

"Generative AI has the potential to transform industries and society, but responsible design and collaboration among stakeholders are crucial.

The "Responsible AI Leadership: A Global Summit on Generative AI" was held in April 2023 to guide experts and policymakers in developing and governing generative AI systems responsibly. Over 100 thought leaders and practitioners participated, discussing key recommendations for responsible development, open innovation, and social progress. These 30 action-oriented recommendations aim to navigate AI complexities and harness its potential ethically. By implementing them, we can shape a more innovative, equitable, and prosperous future while mitigating risks."

""Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Development", the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), finds that at this critical juncture, midway to 2030, incremental and fragmented change is insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the remaining seven years. Implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires the active mobilization of political leadership and ambition for science-based transformations. This must be achieved globally - leaving no country, society or person behind. The report is an invitation to embrace transformations with the urgency needed to accelerate progress towards the SDGs.

The GSDR 2023 highlights key transformations needed in different sectors and provides key findings from the literature, practical examples and tools for progress towards the SDGs. It provides a stylized model to help unpack and understand the transformation process over time and outline the roles of different levers in facilitating various stages of transformation through a systematic and structured approach. As history has shown, transformations are inevitable, and this report emphasizes that deliberate and desirable transformations are possible - and, indeed, necessary.
Background
The Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) originated in “The Future We Want,” the outcome of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development, when Member States were laying the groundwork for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The negotiators knew that the 2030 Agenda would be complex, and unprecedented in ambition, and that a siloed approach to development would not be adequate. They recognized the power of science to understand and navigate relationships among social, environmental and economic development objectives, and so they called for a report to strengthen the science-policy interface.

In 2016, Member States decided that the report should be produced once every four years, to inform the quadrennial SDG review deliberations (SDG Summit) at the General Assembly, and that it should be written by an Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General. They mandated that the Group would consist of 15 experts representing a variety of backgrounds, scientific disciplines and institutions, ensuring geographical and gender balance.

The 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, was the first report prepared by an Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General. The 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report, "Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Development", is the second."

"Social movement theory, with its Euro-American focus, struggles to capture the radically divergent imaginaries and claims that accompany current waves of protest. The Special Feature titled “The Many Faces of Protest: Rethinking Collective Action in a World of Dissent” examines select progressive protests and their transformative potential in times of deep uncertainty. In so doing, it helps sociologists and others make sense of how the repertoires, domains of action, and prefigurative capacities of collective action are changing around the world today."

"The impacts of climate change are increasing in frequency and intensity. Nearly half of the world's population lives in regions that are vulnerable to these impacts. Virtually every sector of the global economy is exposed to some degree of climate-related risk.


Climate adaptation is the process of adjusting ecological, social and economic systems to alleviate the impacts of climate change. This includes preparedness and crisis response for extreme events such as flooding and wildfires. It also encompasses multi-faceted, agile approaches for navigating a world where reliable climate and weather conditions can no longer be taken for granted.


A set of data-driven and digital technologies – all synergistic with artificial intelligence – are emerging as mission-critical tools for climate adaptation. They provide leaders with new forms of intelligence to adapt and build resilience into their communities and businesses. Along the way, first-movers will find that harnessing technology for adaptation is not only a risk mitigation strategy but a source of competitive advantage."

"WFH (working from home) has been crucial to the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic and is expected to continue to grow in importance even after the pandemic. WFH is becoming more popular among employees due to benefits such as flexible work schedules and no or less frequent commuting. Given the prevalence of WFH, a large literature has studied various aspects of WFH, and this paper reviews the literature. As WFH is a work mode, the literature has mainly considered labor-economics related issues, including the feasibility of WFH across jobs and the effects of WFH on workers' productivity and well-being. However, this paper views WFH as an economic and social change not just as a new work mode, as WFH has far-reaching effects on our society and economy. As such, this paper emphasizes the topics that have received relatively less attention such as WFH as a job amenity and the effects of WFH on the environment."