What We’ve Been Reading: The Latest In Clean Cooking And Renewable Energy Innovation, Clean Water And Sanitation, Sustainable Development And Much More. 

Carbon Offsets are Going Primetime: are they ready?
The market for voluntary carbon offsets is growing fast, but the market still maintains many fundamental flaws. Quartz explores how the market must shift focus to offsets that are more readily verifiable, like those that support clean cookstove programs with economic development co-benefits.
Read more via Quartz

Reducing poverty can actually lower energy demand, finds research
As people around the world escape poverty, you might expect their energy use to increase. But one researcher’s work in Nepal, Vietnam, and Zambia found the opposite: lower levels of deprivation were linked to lower levels of energy demand, and explains what’s behind this counter-intuitive finding.
Read more via The Conversation

World Set to Miss Environment Related Sustainable Development Goals – UN Report
According to the report “Measuring Progress: Environment and the SDGs” countries are still living unsustainably and are on course to miss the environmental dimensions of the 2030 agenda.
Read more via Mirage News

Ministerial Forums Will Consider Five Technical Reports on Achieving SDG7
A global roadmap for sustainable energy is under deliberation by five technical working groups. The results will be launched in June and presented to world leaders at the high level dialogue on energy in September 2021.
Read more via SDG Knowledge Hub

Devex Invested: How Finance is Key to Electrifying the World
Trying to achieve net zero by 2050 will be challenging, especially with the setbacks of universal energy access due to COVID-19. Finance is key to elevating the net zero goals, but tackling access to electricity and clean cooking requires $41 billion annually, while only $16 billion actually comes through.
Read more via Devex

Solar cooperatives give refugees and locals in Ethiopia clean energy and livelihoods
In south-eastern Ethiopia’s arid and remote Somali region, energy is not something that can be taken for granted, either by the more than 168,000 Somali refugees staying in five camps in the Dollo Ado and Bokolmayo areas, or by the communities that surround them.
Read more via UNHCR

Progress on clean cooking is too slow – that must change
The leaders of the Clean Cooking Alliance and Sustainable Energy for All make the case for greater urgency in the adoption of clean cooking, arguing that giving everyone access to clean cooking is one of the most significant levers for meeting global climate and development goals.
Read more via Reuters