The history of the advancements in sanitation and hygiene is often viewed through a Western lens, yet some of the most significant contributions came from the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age. Two famous figures of this era, Al-Razi and Ibn Sina, made groundbreaking strides in the understanding and promotion of hygiene. Their works not only influenced their contemporaries but also laid foundational principles that influenced even our modern perception of health and hygiene.

Integrity issues can undermine the work we do in sanitation and make our job harder, leaving behind rampant pollution and millions without dignified sanitation. Yet there’s a lot that we can do to prevent corruption and malpractice. People in the sector are in a good position to do something about it. 

Krishnanagar Union in Satkhira district, Bangladesh, has always been surrounded by water, but water is no longer a friendly neighbor. Satkhira district, located in the southwest of the country, is close to the Bay of Bengal and hosts part of the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Gender equality is a sustainable development goal, a fundamental human right, and often a pillar of international development. Why then, do we see inconsistency in what it means to design and implement programmes that have gendered elements? 

In September 2021, Hurricane Ida dropped more than six inches of rain on New York City in a matter of hours. Roughly half of that rainfall, 3.15 inches, fell within the first hour—nearly twice the rate the city’s infrastructure was designed to handle. 

At 11am that day, I got a call from my daughter’s school in the outskirts of the NYC metropolitan area asking me to collect my daughter ASAP. The school basement was filling with water … fast. By the end of the day, the school was shuttered, and the surrounding community evacuated. Meanwhile, outside my front door in suburban New York, neighbours were piling the contents of their basements onto the sidewalk. ‘The neighbourhood’s shit is in my basement!’ one exclaimed. Social media was filled with discordant images of flooded streets and Teslas floating through them.

Kiritimati Island is a unique place. Situated within the Line Islands group of the Republic of Kiribati, an island country spanning almost 3.5 million km2 of ocean, it isn’t easy to find on a map. The closest international airport (other than its own) is in Honolulu – more than 2,000 km away. The capital of its own country is even farther away. Despite being  the largest coral atoll in the world, as of 2020 only 7,369 people live there.