CIRSD Recommends
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The Logic of Effective Climate Action
The starting point for addressing climate change, economists agree, is a tax on carbon. But while the resulting reduction in emissions would benefit virtually everyone on the planet, those who bear a disproportionate share of the costs will mobilize in opposition – that is, unless they are given a reason not to.
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Climate change will feature heavily in Germany’s election
The first sign of trouble on the Rhine, Europe’s busiest inland waterway, was when the river cruises and hotel ships disappeared. Then the cargo vessels got smaller, or simply stopped sailing; goods like coal were shifted to trains. Water levels fell low enough to expose unexploded wartime bombs. These grim scenes, described by Florian Krekel of the Bingen office of Germany’s Waterways and Shipping Administration, date from autumn 2018, when a long drought so depleted the waters along this scenic part of the Rhine that navigation became near-impossible. Manufacturers on the river had to slash production, exporters were cut off from world markets and petrol stations in Cologne had to raise prices. The disruption shaved 0.2 percentage points off German gdp, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Over two-thirds of Germany’s land area was afflicted by the great drought of 2018. Soon afterwards climate change shot up the list of voters’ priorities (see chart). And as its effects, potential or actual, on Germany’s waterways, forests and farms have become harder to ignore, it has remained at or near the top ever since. Germany’s parties, gearing up for an election in late September, are reacting accordingly
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We Don’t Need the G7
The group’s recent summit in Cornwall should be its last. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.
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Europe’s Digital Future
In recent years, the European Union has unveiled a series of ambitious legislative and regulatory packages to rein in problems endemic to the new digital economy. Can leading the world in tech governance help to establish Europe's place in the twenty-first century?
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Producing a Vaccine Requires More Than a Patent
Intellectual Property Is Just One Piece of an Elaborate Process
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India's COVID-19 Crisis Is Spiraling Out of Control. It Didn't Have to Be This Way
Dusk is falling in the Indian capital, and the acrid smell of burning bodies fills the air. It’s the evening of April 26, and at a tiny crematorium in a Delhi suburb, seven funeral pyres are still burning. “I have lived here all my life and pass through this area twice a day,” says local resident Gaurav Singh. “I have never seen so many bodies burning together.”
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The Geopolitics of Climate Change
By tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, everyone will be better off, thanks to better jobs, cleaner air and water, fewer pandemics, and improved health and well-being.
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Biden announces US will aim to cut carbon emissions by as much as 52% by 2030 at virtual climate summit
President Joe Biden on Thursday kicked off a virtual climate summit attended by 40 other world leaders by announcing an ambitious cut in greenhouse gas emissions as he looks to put the US back at the center of the global effort to address the climate crisis and curb carbon emissions.
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Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform
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Europe's Complacency Trap
Members of the EU establishment should not read too much into failures of “populist” governance. Until the bloc can devise institutional arrangements that allow for consistent, equitable growth, crises will keep coming – and so will anti-establishment challengers.
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The Shadow of a New Cold War Hangs Over Europe
The Ukraine question is at the crux of European security
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The Liberal Order Begins at Home
How Democratic Revival Can Reboot the International System
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Pandemic threatens lost decade for development, UN report reveals
“The global economy has experienced “the worst recession in 90 years, with the most vulnerable segments of societies disproportionately affected”, said the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing in their Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2021, pointing out that some 114 million jobs have been lost, and about 120 million people have been plunged back into extreme poverty.
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Biden's most important stimulus measure
The US federal government should spend more money, and fast, to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, rescue hard-hit families and help states, cities and small businesses. But it should also strive for a relief package built on some degree of bipartisan consensus.
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The Ethno-Territorial Separation of Bosnia Was the Key to Ending the War and Keeping Peace
The Dayton system has kept the peace for twenty-five years. Why destabilize Sarajevo now?
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Russia and US National Interests: Maintaining a Balance of Power in Europe and Asia
While Russia is not a superpower, it remains one of the few countries that both defines its interests in global rather than regional terms and retains limited but real global power-projection capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. national security continues to be guided by the premise that the United States cannot allow another state to become the preponderant power in either Europe or Asia, the two continents Russia famously spans. This primer attempts to assess Russia’s impact on a vital U.S. interest: maintaining a balance of power in Europe and Asia that promotes peace and stability with a continuing U.S. leadership role. Its main conclusion: As the United States endeavors to retain favorable balances of power in both these key regions, its interests are best served by having Russia remain an independent pole within the international system rather than grow even closer with China and forge a formalized, strategic Sino-Russian entente.
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Joe Biden's Ronald Reagan Problem
President-elect Joe Biden is inheriting a national crisis that has built up over 40 years. On January 20, 1981, former President Ronald Reagan took the US on a radical course when he declared in his inaugural address, "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He set out to weaken the federal government by slashing taxes on the rich, dismantling regulations, cutting back on public programs and turning many of the nation's problems back to the states.
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Biden to sign executive orders rejoining Paris climate accord and rescinding travel ban on first day
President-elect Joe Biden plans to sign roughly a dozen executive orders, including rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending the travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries, on his first day in office, according to a memo from incoming chief of staff Ron Klain.
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Sustainable Development: GOAL OF THE MONTH
Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
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The World China Wants
Does China want to transform the global order to advance its own interests and to reflect its own image? That may be the most important question in geopolitics today, yet the answers it elicits tend to reveal more about modern biases than they do about what a future Chinese superpower would look like.
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Sustainable Development: GOAL OF THE MONTH
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
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The world's fastest-growing source of food
The green fronds that grow along much of India's shoreline have large potential as a sustainable food source, while helping to fight climate change.
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Jack Ma Makes Ant Offer to Placate Chinese Regulators
Trying to salvage his relationship with regulators in a Nov. 2 meeting, the Chinese billionaire said he was ready to do what the country needed
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Global Markets Are Partying Like It Is 2008 (But a Crash Is Coming)
After the 2008 U.S. housing and credit market crisis, Chuck Prince, the former Citibank CEO, explained his bank’s speculative activity during the bubble by noting that when the music is playing you have to dance. Today, with the world’s major central banks continuing to supply the markets with ample liquidity, there can be little doubt that the music is blaring and the markets are dancing.
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To end the pandemic, WHO says $28 billion ACT project is ‘the best deal in town’
“This is the best deal in town. No question. This will pay itself off within 36 hours, once we get international travel and trade mobility moving again”, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to the WHO Director General and lead for the coalition, known as ACT Accelerator.
