As digital nomads become increasingly visible in cities around the world, they are often cast as the face of gentrification and rising housing costs. Yet focusing on the individual may obscure the broader forces reshaping urban life. In this blog, ISS PhD candidate Alberto Estrada Mares draws on fieldwork in Mexico City to examine how competing visions of the city shape experiences of belonging, exclusion and urban transformation.  ‘Gringo, go home!’ was the chant that echoed through the streets of Mexico City during the 2025 protests against skyrocketing rents, casting digital nomads as the villains behind gentrification. But are they really the architects of this phenomenon, or are they, rather, symptoms of a failed and deeply unequal vision…

As the world marks the International Year of the Woman Farmer, it is worth asking how far our financing models actually go in recognising women’s labour, leadership, and power in Africa’s commodity value chains. Financing agriculture in developing economies is never just a technical exercise, it is a political one. My work with the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) revealed

This blog post is part of a Women’s Month series marking the International Year of the Woman Farmer, drawing from interviews with Mary Portillo, Yuri Tabora and Araceli Peraza women working at the Capucas agricultural cooperative. Their narratives show that real transformation requires more than visibility; it depends on the institutional scaffolding that shapes who gets to lead, learn and

n early November, Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon raised their voices, reminding us that without forests there is no future: “sem floresta, não há futuro”. During the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30), global leaders discussed how to protect tropical forests as a collective effort. However, it ended without a binding agreement to stop deforestation. Given that tropical forests