"Don't teach us what is sanitation and hygiene."This quote from Maqbul, a middle-aged male resident in Modher Bosti, a slum in Dhaka city, summed up the frustration of many people living in urban poverty to ongoing sanitation and hygiene programmes. In the light of their experiences, such programmes provide "inappropriate sanitation", or demand personal investments in situations of highly insecure tenure, and/or teach "hygiene practices" that relate neither to local beliefs nor to the ground realities of a complex urban poverty. A three-year ethnographic study in Chittagong, Dhaka, Nairobi and Hyderabad illustrated that excreta disposal systems, packaged and delivered as low-cost "safe sanitation", do not match the sanitation needs of a very diverse group of urban men, women and children. It is of little surprise that the delivered systems are neither appropriate nor used, and are not sustained beyond the life of the projects. This mismatch, far more than an assumed lack of user demand for sanitation, contributes to the elusiveness of the goal of sanitation and health for all. The analysis indicates that unless and until the technical, financial and ethical discrepancies relating to sanitation for the urban poor are resolved, there is little reason to celebrate the recent global declaration on the human right to water and sanitation and health for all.KEYWORDS gendered identities / mismatch / sanitation and hygiene priorities / spatial heterogeneity I. SANITATION FOR THE URBAN POOR: WHOSE AGENDA, WHOSE PRIORITIES?One would assume that at a minimum, planning initiatives relating to sanitation services for the urban poor would take into account the realities of urban poverty. Yet, as Verhagen and Ryan(1) point out, sanitation agendas are often not well informed of the complex realities of urban poverty. The common practice is to "…force the urban poor to accept, and even expect…limited support" and/or to leave out those who do not fit in. Among the multiple distinctions that differentiate the urban poor, the two most critical aspects related to sanitation are first spatial, where one lives, and second gender, or the complexities of gendered identities and related sanitation needs and responsibilities in these diverse settings. However, sanitation policies and strategies for the urban poor rarely analyze the diverse heterogeneity of the urban poor: who they are; where and how they live -as illegal, quasi-legal or, in rarer instances, as legal residents of the city; and what they perceive, need and mostly lack as sanitation. In

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked unprecedented public health and social measures (PHSM) by national and local governments, including border restrictions, school closures, mandatory facemask use and stay at home orders. Quantifying the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing disease transmission is key to rational policy making in response to the current and future pandemics. In order to estimate the effectiveness of these interventions, detailed descriptions of their timelines, scale and scope are needed. The Health Intervention Tracking for COVID-19 (HIT-COVID) is a curated and standardized global database that catalogues the implementation and relaxation of COVID-19 related PHSM. With a team of over 200 volunteer contributors, we assembled policy timelines for a range of key PHSM aimed at reducing COVID-19 risk for the national and first administrative levels (e.g. provinces and states) globally, including details such as the degree of implementation and targeted populations. We continue to maintain and adapt this database to the changing COVID-19 landscape so it can serve as a resource for researchers and policymakers alike.

Abstract. The culturally and ecologically diverse region of the Eastern Himalayas is the target of ambitious hydropower development plans. Policy discourses at national and international levels position this development as synergistically positive: it combines the production of clean energy to fuel economic growth at regional and national levels with initiatives to lift poor mountain communities out of poverty. Different from hydropower development in the 20th century in which development agencies and banks were important players, contemporary initiatives importantly rely on the involvement of private actors, with a prominent role of the private finance sector. This implies that hydropower development is not only financially viable but also understood as highly profitable. This paper examines the new development of hydropower in the Eastern Himalayas of Nepal and India. It questions its framing as green energy, interrogates its links with climate change, and examines its potential for investment and capital accumulation. To do this, we also review the evidence on the extent to which its construction and operation may modify existing hydrogeological processes and ecosystems, as well as its impacts on the livelihoods of diverse groups of people that depend on these. The paper concludes that hydropower development in the region is characterized by inherent contentions and uncertainties, refuting the idea that dams constitute development projects whose impacts can be simply predicted, controlled and mitigated. Indeed, in a highly complex geological, ecological, cultural and political context that is widely regarded to be especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, hydropower as a development strategy makes for a toxic cocktail.

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This is a repository copy of Ten people-centered rules for socially sustainable ecosystem restoration.

Our sincere thanks to Frank van Laerhoven for his support to get this special issue published and help throughout the editorial process. We are indebted to all the contributing authors for embarking on this exciting journey with us and to the reviewers who contributed on the way with critical and constructive comments.

Shade Tree Clinic provides the basic components of prenatal care and assists women with other medical needs. Women also receive help when applying for and accessing public maternity insurance, and the clinic facilitates entry to any necessary specialist care while that insurance is processed. In many cases, necessary and time-sensitive care would be delayed if Shade Tree Clinic's prenatal services were not available. In addition, the clinic presents a valuable opportunity for interprofessional socialization, increased respect, and improved collaboration between students in different but complementary professions, which is an important experience while we move to meet national goals for interprofessional care among health professionals. This article is part of a special series of articles that address midwifery innovations in clinical practice, education, interprofessional collaboration, health policy, and global health.

The culturally and ecologically diverse region of the Eastern Himalayas is the target of ambitious hydropower development plans. Policy discourses at national and international levels position this development as synergistically positive: it combines the production of clean energy to fuel economic growth at regional and national levels with initiatives to lift poor mountain communities out of poverty. Different from hydropower development in the 20th century in which development agencies and banks were important players, contemporary initiatives importantly rely on the involvement of private actors, with a prominent role of the private finance sector. This implies that hydropower development is not only financially viable but also understood as highly profitable. This paper examines the new development of hydropower in the Eastern Himalayas of Nepal and India. It questions its framing as green energy, interrogates its links with climate change, and examines its potential for investment and capital accumulation. To do this, we also review the evidence on the extent to which its construction and operation may modify existing hydrogeological processes and ecosystems, as well as its impacts on the livelihoods of diverse groups of people that depend on these. The paper concludes that hydropower development in the region is characterized by inherent contentions and uncertainties, refuting the idea that dams constitute development projects whose impacts can be simply predicted, controlled and mitigated. Indeed, in a highly complex geological, ecological, cultural and political context that is widely regarded to be especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, hydropower as a development strategy makes for a toxic cocktail.