This week France’s Emmanuel Macron has been hosting African leaders and global funding organisations in a summit designed to mobilise resources for a continent in recession due to COVID-19. Far removed from headline-grabbing initiatives such as special drawing rights and new debt relief arrangements, novel efforts are being pioneered on the ground to raise money for social welfare projects. One such initiative is social impact bonds, under which investors provide working capital upfront to nongovernmental organisations to deliver services. Repayments are made according to targets being met. Zoheb Khan assesses how two of only a handful in the world have fared in South Africa.

While world leaders focus on the dangers of climate change in the far north at this week’s Arctic Council meetings, disturbing new research points to an even greater threat at the other end of the Earth.

Countries are on pace to pump enough greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere to push Antarctica’s ice sheet past a climate tipping point around 2060, with ice loss that will be irreversible into the next century and beyond, a new study warns. Ice and ocean scientists Julie Brigham-Grette and Andrea Dutton explain the findings and point out the flaw in political arguments that suggest the world can safely exceed 2 degrees Celsius of warming and count on technology to dial back the temperature later.