Readings
What Is Economic Inequality?
Explore how severe inequalities and disparities in wealth and income can harm individuals, countries, and the global economy, and how some governments implement policies to reduce inequality.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Explore free resources that align with your activity on the SDGs.
CFR Education offers a range of free resources that can help you to teach about the SDGs. Browse readings, timelines, videos, assessments, and simulations that align with the individual goals.
1. No Poverty
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What Are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund?
What’s the difference between the World Bank and the IMF? Understand two institutions that undergird global development and the international monetary system.
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Understanding the Last Fifty Years of Global Development
Has life gotten better for people around the world? Learn how improvements in health, education, and income are measured and explore three countries’ opportunities and challenges with development.
10. Reduced Inequalities
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How Climate Change Worsens Inequality
Climate Change is bad for everyone, but it’s worse for some.
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How to Make the Green Transition Just and Equitable
Learn how efforts to slow emissions raise concerns over inequity and justice, and what we can do to ensure a more equitable and greener future.
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What Is Development?
What are the terms, trends, and debates that define international development? Learn about the evolution of efforts to improve the world—including global infrastructure, education, and health.
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What Is Economic Inequality?
Explore how severe inequalities and disparities in wealth and income can harm individuals, countries, and the global economy, and how some governments implement policies to reduce inequality.
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Climate Change Inequality
In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality.
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
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What are Critical Minerals?
From clean energy technology, to satellites, to everyday devices, critical minerals are vital to the world’s economies. But taking them out of the earth can come with a cost.
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Climate Change Threatens to Displace Many People
Extreme weather and climate change effects could drive millions of people to migrate. Government leaders can take steps to address those flows of people and prepare the communities at their destinations.
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How to Lower Buildings-Sector Emissions
The buildings we live in cause emissions. Changing our edifices can set up a more sustainable future.
12. Responsible Consumption and Prodcution
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How to Lower Agriculture and Land-Use Emissions
Agriculture is warming the planet. Changing how we farm and manage land can decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
13. Climate Action
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How State and Local Governments Can Fight Climate Change
When it comes to climate action, the federal government can coordinate and fund many measures. But state and local governments also play a critical role in helping—or hindering—the fight against climate change.
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How Electrification Can Reduce Emissions
Electrifying the economy may play a crucial role in the fight against climate change.
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How Climate Change Worsens Inequality
Climate Change is bad for everyone, but it’s worse for some.
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How to Make the Green Transition Just and Equitable
Learn how efforts to slow emissions raise concerns over inequity and justice, and what we can do to ensure a more equitable and greener future.
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How Regulations Help Fight Climate Change
Standards and regulations can help countries achieve climate goals, but they pose some drawbacks and challenges.
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What Is Climate Finance?
Learn how the public and private sectors can collaborate to fund climate solutions.
- Videos
How the Paris Agreement Helps Stop Climate Change
The Paris Agreement offers the world a pathway for addressing climate change, but challenges persist.
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Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges.
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What Is Geoengineering?
Learn more about the promises and perils of artificially manipulating the environment to combat climate change.
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How Are International Agreements Helping Fight Global Warming?
Explore the challenges facing international cooperation and the major treaties where the world has agreed to work together.
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What Is a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism?
Learn how governments can prevent international carbon leakage from their climate mitigation policies.
- Mini Simulations
U.S. Arctic Policy
Should the United States launch a new Arctic policy in response to climate change and investments from countries like China and Russia in the region? Explore this simulation.
- Mini Simulations
Stopping Deforestation in the Amazon
Should the United States take action to stop deforestation in the Amazon to combat climate change? Explore this simulation.
- Mini Simulations
Solar Geoengineering
Should the United States consider the use of solar geoengineering to combat climate change? Explore this simulation.
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The Inflation Reduction Act
What is the IRA? In this free resource, learn what the United States’ largest-ever climate change legislation does.
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How Can AI Combat Climate Change?
In this free climate change resource, learn how AI is helping countries reduce carbon emissions, but some innovations could ultimately contribute to a warming planet.
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How Do Governments Combat Climate Change?
In this free resource, explore seven ways countries are responding to a changing environment, from cap and trade policies to clean energy standards.
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Climate Change Inequality
In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality.
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The Paris Agreement
What is the Paris Agreement? In this free resource, learn what actions countries are taking to address the global threat of climate change.
- Videos
What Is Climate Change?
In this educational video, learn why the climate is changing, how it affects us, and what we can do about it.
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Climate Change Adaptations
Explore how eleven countries are adapting to the effects of climate change in this free resource.
14. Life Below Water
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How Climate Change Reduces Biodiversity
Climate change is straining the earth’s ecosystems. Learn how humans can adapt to protect them.
15. Life on Land
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How Climate Change Reduces Biodiversity
Climate change is straining the earth’s ecosystems. Learn how humans can adapt to protect them.
16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
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How Climate Change Threatens National Security
The effects of global warming are creating various security threats. Governments can take certain measures to adapt to those increasing risks.
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What Is International Law?
Explore the history of international law, important international agreements and the courts that aim to hold countries accountable, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
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What Is the UN Security Council?
In this free resource, learn more about the United Nations’ most powerful body working to maintain international peace and security. Explore the security council’s failures and successes, and why the UN Security Council’s veto power is so controversial.
- Videos
What Is the Liberal World Order?
Explore the organizations and agreements that have promoted global peace and prosperity since the end of World War II, as well as the challenges that the liberal world order now faces in this video.
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Laws, Norms, and Democratic Backsliding
Are countries less democratic than they used to be? Learn how democratic principles like checks and balances, free elections, and freedom of the press are under threat around the world.
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Six Essential International Organizations You Need to Know
Learn about the most prominent international organizations tackling the world’s biggest issues in this free resource.
2. Zero Hunger
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Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges.
- Videos
Climate Change and the Coffee Industry
In this educational video, learn how climate change’s effects on agriculture can have serious economic consequences for the world.
3. Good Health and Well-Being
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How Climate Change Affects Our Health
A warmer world threatens more extreme weather and infectious disease, but policymakers can counter climate change’s damages to global health.
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What Is the World Health Organization?
What is the WHO? Learn how the UN agency in charge of international public health responds to crises that threaten global health coordination, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
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How Health Care Works Around the World
Experts agree that access to quality health care is the best way to improve global health. But health-care options vary greatly depending on where you are in the world.
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What Is Global Health?
We have made advances in global health, but we face challenges from new disease trends—and need funding to treat them.
5. Gender Equality
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Human Trafficking in the Global Era
Understand the various forms of human trafficking, including forced labor, forced marriage, and forced organ removal.
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The Lasting Effects of Emigration
When migrants seek work abroad, what does their home country gain and lose? Explore one example of a country shaped by emigration, the Philippines.
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
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How Climate Change Affects Our Health
A warmer world threatens more extreme weather and infectious disease, but policymakers can counter climate change’s damages to global health.
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Protecting Global Food and Water Supplies in a Warming World
Discover how climate change is diminishing global food and water security, and how the world can adapt to those vital resource challenges.
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Resource Conflicts, Explained
How do water, oil, and gold cause wars? Learn how competition over natural resources fuels and finances fighting and how climate change intensifies those conflicts.
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What Is Water Scarcity?
Is there a global water crisis? In this free resource, learn how climate change is causing water scarcity to worsen worldwide.
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Climate Change Inequality
In this free resource, explore how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities and could drastically increase global inequality.
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How Did Humans Come to Live Longer and Healthier Lives?
From the history of vaccines and medical quarantines to the origin of the World Health Organization, explore how innovations in global health increased human longevity and prepared the world for COVID-19.
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
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How Energy Conservation Can Help Fight Climate Change
Conserving energy and maximizing efficiency means less strain on electricity grids and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. But is it working—and fast enough?
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Why Energy Storage is Essential for a Green Transition
Learn how energy storage can provide reliable renewable energy.
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Why Electric Grids Need to Be More Resilient
Severe weather is causing costly disruptions. To protect the energy grid, countries need a smarter plan.
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How Electrification Can Reduce Emissions
Electrifying the economy may play a crucial role in the fight against climate change.
- Videos
How Renewables Can Boost a Country's Energy Security
Climate change poses energy security challenges, but building more renewable sources and taking other steps can help strengthen supply and lower risks.
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How to Address the Economic Costs of Climate Change
Climate change–related weather events will destroy bridges, roads, homes, and even power plants—unless those structures become more resilient.
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How to Lower Energy-Sector Emissions
Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy can help mitigate climate change.
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The Inflation Reduction Act
What is the IRA? In this free resource, learn what the United States’ largest-ever climate change legislation does.
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Sources of Energy: A Comparison
Learn how turning toward cleaner energy sources means factoring in economic and energy needs alongside environmental ones.
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
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What Is Development?
What are the terms, trends, and debates that define international development? Learn about the evolution of efforts to improve the world—including global infrastructure, education, and health.
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Global Population Growth Is Slowing Down
Is the global population declining? Learn how changes in birth, death, and migration rates affect society, economics, and politics around the world
9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
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How to Address the Economic Costs of Climate Change
Climate change–related weather events will destroy bridges, roads, homes, and even power plants—unless those structures become more resilient.
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How to Lower Industry-Sector Emissions
Industrial emissions pose big challenges for the climate. Innovative industrial solutions can make a difference.
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How to Lower Transportation-Sector Emissions
The ways we move around the world are making it hotter. Electric vehicles and other innovations offer climate change solutions.
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What Are the Causes and Consequences of Industrialization?
Learn about the Industrial Revolution and how technological innovations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continue to shape society today.
- Videos
Technology and Development
As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution and India’s Green Revolution have shown, technological innovation can drive extraordinary development. Explore how digital advancements are further driving progress today.
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Trains, Planes, and Shipping Containers
Three innovations shaped how people and goods move around the world today.
