Poverty: Norwegian Development Cooperation's weak urban efforts over 60 years – an average of five per cent of the annual aid budget – is difficult to understand. Because it is in the cities that the "billion at the bottom" live. Many are calling for measures in areas such as forests and climate, plastic and marine litter, transport, energy, food safety and regional planning.
COPENHAGEN: Have you been so busy turning the city of the unemployed into a well-paid taxpayer town that you overlooked that those with ordinary jobs could not afford to live in the new neighborhoods?
ENVIRONMENT: As a political project, the nations of Europe have failed to find common ground. Can the local and regional based on several "pacts" form the framework for a perspective – which will contribute to the development of a new paradigm?
COVID-19: In a newly published interview anthology about the pandemic, Roger Waters says that war and climate change are killing us faster than anything else, but the breathing pause that began in March 2020 may still open up other alternatives. At the same time, the entire anthology presupposes digital technology – for which we can all be grateful.
CHRONICLE: The Storting election must be a climate election. How about allocating one extra percent of the national budget to climate measures in developing countries?
SCENARIO: Imagine, this is the year 2050, and we look back at the origin and evolution of the coronavirus pandemic over the past three decades: both the plagues of pandemics, flooded cities, burned forests, drought and other rising violent climate disasters. We offer the following scenario for such a prospect from the future.