CIRSD Recommends
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Cement Isn’t As Terrible for the Climate As We Thought
If you’re making a building, you’re probably going to use cement—and that means contributing to global warming. But new research suggests it may not be so bad in the long run.
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North Korea: Breaking geopolitical deadlock
Current international policy vectors toward North Korea have largely failed to curtail North Korea’s WMD programs and change its policies. As Pyongyang prepares for a possible sixth nuclear test, it’s clear a new approach is called for.
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What ISIS Leaves Behind in Mosul Will Reveal a Lot
Did the bureaucrats of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) keep careful records? Did they flee Mosul too quickly to destroy the written record of their occupation?
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Animal life-cycles have already shifted in response to climate change - and that's a problem for humans too
Every aspect of life has been impacted by global warming, and some changes are being felt decades before scientists thought they would.
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The biter bit
Killing mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, the sort that transmit malaria, is a serious business—so serious that some doctors would like to do it by using people as bait. Their idea is to dose those in malarious areas with a drug called ivermectin. This will not protect the dosees directly, for it does not act on the parasite that causes the disease. But it may protect them indirectly, by making their blood poisonous to Anopheles
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An Economic Ultimatum for the Arab World
If Middle Eastern countries do not start making real progress on fundamental political and economic reforms, further regional turmoil is inevitable. With the rentier systems that governments have maintained for decades now at a breaking point, policymakers must begin the difficult, but not impossible, process of establishing new social contracts.
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Increasing China's Food Supply – With Drones
Although drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) achieved prominence owing to their recreational and military uses, they hold other value. In particular, drones could help increase the food supply, a critical need as the world’s population is estimated to reach 9.9 billion by the year 2050.
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Should Baathists have role in post-IS Iraq?
Iraqi security forces arrested Saddam Hussein’s cousin Nizar Hammoud Abdul Ghani, who was one of the Iraqi president’s personal guards, on Oct. 25 for his alleged involvement in the Islamic State's attack on Kirkuk on Oct. 21.
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The 4 Types of AI That Will Rule Our Future
The common, and recurring, view of the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence research is that sentient and intelligent machines are just on the horizon. Machines understand verbal commands, distinguish pictures, drive cars and play games better than we do. How much longer can it be before they walk among us?
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Trump Spells End of Normality for Europe
Angela Merkel has no lack of experience in dealing with egocentric men. The chancellor has known Russian President Vladimir Putin for years and she speaks regularly with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the phone.
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Africa cannot trade its way to an industrial revolution
Technological innovation, in agriculture and other sectors, can improve trade — and not the other way around, writes Zama Nkosi
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Donald Trump's First 100 Days: How He Could Reshape U.S. Foreign Policy
On Inauguration Day 2017, Donald Trump will inherit Barack Obama’s “pen and phone” inside the Oval Office. Within the first day, by using the power of executive authority, he can begin to reshape U.S. foreign policy even without securing support from within the Congress for these actions, by following the path that his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush have already laid out.
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The Danger of Ignoring the 'Espionage' in Cyber Espionage
This week, I had the honor of delivering a keynote speech for the Global Cyber Security Leaders Conference in Berlin. The city, which decades ago was a hub of Cold War-era espionage, provided the perfect backdrop for my attempt to put its modern cousin — cyber espionage — into context.
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SAARC Is Dead; Long Live SAARC
In less than two weeks, Pakistan was scheduled to host the 19th annual South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit.
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Meet Trump's Cabinet-in-waiting
President-elect Donald Trump does not have the traditional cadre of Washington insiders and donors to build out his Cabinet, but his transition team has spent the past several months quietly building a short list of industry titans and conservative activists who could comprise one of the more eclectic and controversial presidential Cabinets in modern history.
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The Guardian view on air pollution: ministers must act
On Sunday, the capital city of one of the world’s fastest growing economies was effectively shut down in an emergency act. The reason was not terrorism, but air pollution. The threat to citizens from smog in Delhi was judged so great that traffic was ratioined, coal-fired power stations closed and diesel generators suspended. This was a brave and sane decision in the world’s largest democracy.
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Prosperity in sustainability
President John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to great undertakings by setting bold goals: to go the moon, to overcome racial discrimination, to make peace with the Soviet Union. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” JFK told a joint session of Congress 55 years ago, and his words still stir us today.
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Is A Pan-Asian Power Grid Possible?
After a series of massive investments into the power industry, China is now looking for ways of exporting excess electricity. This past March, the Interconnection Development & Cooperation Organization was established with the goal of creating the means to transport power across Asia. Countries such as India, South Korea, and Japan have already expressed an interest in the plan, along with other neighboring countries.
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Diversification or specialization: What is the path to growth and development?
In general, international trade theories predict that once countries open up to trade outside their borders they will specialize in goods for which they have comparative advantage. Early theories of trade explained comparative advantage being driven by relative productivity difference (as explained by David Ricardo) or by relative abundance of factors of production (as explained by Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin).
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Is North Korea’s nuclear tech for sale?
As North Korea’s economic position worsens, the risk that it sells its nuclear weapons technology grows. Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test on 9 September, accompanied by claims it has developed a warhead that can be mounted onto rockets. This test is estimated to have been at a yield of 25–30 kilotons — significantly larger than previous tests.
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Knowledge Is Power: The Future of Energy
Matthew Boulton, of the 18th-century engineering firm Boulton & Watt, once boasted of his company's steam engines, "I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have: power." He and James Watt had demonstrated the ultimate meaning of Francis Bacon's famous dictum "Knowledge is power." Watt's knowledge of the science of energy made it possible to create a transformative new source of power.
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‘Everyone Needs to Act’: What Experts Expect From the Summit
When representatives of 200 nations meet at a crucial two-week climate change conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Monday, their goal will be to put some force behind the pledges they made a year ago in Paris to reduce the emissions responsible for global warming.
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Three powers will shape future state of world
Intensifying competition among the world's major powers raises the issue of political leadership to a new level. The obvious lack of strong leadership in the European Union has not only led it to crises, but has also disqualified the EU from being a global strategic actor.
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Academics Write Rubbish Nobody Reads
Professors usually spend about three to six months (sometimes longer) researching and writing a 25-page article to submit an article to an academic journal. And most experience a twinge of excitement when, months later, they open a letter informing them that their article has been accepted for publication, and will, therefore, be read by…
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Investment for Sustainable Growth
The big disappointment in the world economy today is the low rate of investment. In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, growth in high-income countries was propelled by spending on housing and private consumption. When the crisis hit, both kinds of spending plummeted, and the investments that should have picked up the slack never materialized. This must change.
