CIRSD Recommends

Fu Ying on why China and America must co-operate to defeat covid-19

China is neither the former Soviet Union, nor intent on becoming the next America

The pandemic is too important to be left to the scientists

For all of us who have watched with mounting terror as President Trump offers the public a series of half-baked ideas and hunches on how to handle, treat and cure covid-19, the solution seems obvious: Follow the science. Trump’s detractors have taken

The Deadly Urgency of Now

The consequences of lapses in international cooperation in combating COVID-19 over the last few months can now be counted in lost lives. Having failed to stop the first wave of the pandemic, we must not make the same mistake again.

The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s

While there is never a good time for a pandemic, the COVID-19 crisis has arrived at a particularly bad moment for the global economy. The world has long been drifting into a perfect storm of financial, political, socioeconomic, and environmental risk

Financing SDGs under a new normal: Challenges and response to COVID-19 pandemic

The pandemic has led the global economy to a new conundrum. Just in the first three months, investors moved around US$90 billion out of emerging markets, the largest outflow ever recorded.

The Perfect Storm

The modern world faces a perfect storm: the combination of a deadly and highly infectious virus, an emerging worldwide economic depression, the collapse of global governance, and an absence of coordinated and effective international response. Yet in

Judy Asks: Should Europe Have Common Debt?

How to deal with the economic costs of the coronavirus is dividing the eurozone countries once again.

The Leadership Failure That Will Cost Us Everything

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that delaying prudent policymaking does not merely result in higher marginal costs down the road. Rather, it puts us on an entirely different trajectory – one that all too easily can end in catastrophe.

Wood energy as a climate change solution

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will soon issue a regulation governing how carbon dioxide emissions from wood burned for energy (“biomass”) will be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Millions more children at risk with immunization services disrupted amid COVID-19 pandemic

Making its call at the start of the 2020 edition of World Immunization Week, UNICEF said on Saturday that millions of children are in danger of missing life-saving vaccines against measles, diphtheria and polio due to disruptions in immunization serv

IMF, EU 3bn Loan Welcomed in Balkans Despite Unknowns

EU candidate countries from the region have greeted an offer of 3 billion euros in emergency loans to deal with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic – although the terms of the loans have yet to be clarified.

Fifty Thousand Americans Dead from the Coronavirus, and a President Who Refuses to Mourn Them

In just the past few days, President Trump has blamed immigrants, China, the “fake news” and, of course, “the invisible enemy” of the coronavirus for America’s present troubles. He has opined extemporaneously about his plans to hold a grand Fourth of

Great Power Populism

The fusion of populism and great power rivalries introduces an additional degree of unpredictability in an international affairs environment already beset by a condition reminiscent of an individual in the midst of a nervous breakdown, itself due at

Weekend Roundup: Time to Redefine Defense and Redesign Global Cooperation

The present order is still primarily a legacy of past world wars. National arsenals and multilateral institutions established to fortify that order have all been aimed at not having to fight the last war again or prevailing in a rematch. As such, the

Security for a Post-Pandemic World

In the pandemic, for the first time in living memory, humanity is confronting a common threat that it must defeat collectively. Most arguments currently revolve around the cost of that victory in terms of loss of life and economic damage. The disrupt

Macron, Merkel, and Europe's "moment of truth"

The French president has laid down the gauntlet by warning the European political project could end if it fails to embrace burden-sharing. One of two scenarios could now play out.

The end of economic growth

What economies face now may not be solely a coronavirus-triggered meltdown. As devastating as the coming recession—or depression—is likely to be, the health crisis is exacerbating problems in a system that was already under strain.

Coronavirus: World risks 'biblical' famines due to pandemic - UN

The world is at risk of widespread famines "of biblical proportions" caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN has warned.

U.N. chief says there’s a bigger threat than coronavirus

In Earth Day speech, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will challenge President Donald Trump on fossil fuel subsidies.

The Pandemic and the Myth of Government Competence

Though it is taking place amid some of the most terrible circumstances imaginable, the coronavirus outbreak is also a real-world experiment. We are testing many of the assumptions shared by those who invest a lot of trust in public knowledge and gove

Without a central plan, Europe risks a weakened coronavirus recovery

And the clock is ticking: The last opportunity to act will be April 23, when European leaders convene to approve their ministers’ document. So far, no unity has emerged for badly needed, centralized European fiscal action.

COVID-19: ‘Phased process’ for lifting restrictions is key, WHO chief urges G20

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) told a virtual meeting of the G20 leading global economies on Sunday that although it was encouraging for some countries to be planning to ease lockdowns against COVID-19, “it is critical that these mea

Will There Be a New Cold War with China? A Reply to Niall Ferguson

The end of the Cold War was a heady time in the West. Francis Fukuyama’s essay “The End of History?”—which argued that the world was witnessing the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”—was published in the National Interest a few

MEPs warn Várhelyi of serious situation in Serbia in regard to human rights

STRASBOURG – A group of 21 MEPs sent a letter to European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi in which they point out to “extremely serious” situation in Serbia in regard to constitutional and human rights, N1 reports.

Will COVID-19 Put Us Right with Nature?

The COVID-19 virus, as frightening as it now seems, may ultimately fail to jolt humanity out of its profligate habits. But instead of regarding the pandemic as merely another problem requiring a technical fix, the world should see it as an opportunit

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