Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"Although the country has successfully imported model environmental policies, it has yet to develop the complex institutional infrastructure needed to make them work, especially an independent judiciary, a capable bureaucracy, and effective co-operation between central and local governments."

"The post-election era will require economic construction. Much of this will start with building essential infrastructure needed for growth — especially in transportation, energy and in telecommunications. The World Bank estimates the DRC's infrastructure needs at over US $5 billion a year over the next decade. After all, the country is the size of Western Europe, but has only 2,800 kilometres of all-weather paved roads running through it. This is about the same as Rwanda's networks of roads — even if Rwanda is some 90 times smaller than the DRC. The DRC also has extensive potential navigable waterways that need to be developed. And massive investment in air transportation infrastructure could make the country a hub for the rest of Africa, given the DRC's geographical centrality on the continent."

"Beijing needs to learn, as other nations have, that popular participation is necessary to force entrenched business and bureaucratic interests to help clean up the environment. Until this happens, the US embassy's air quality monitor will continue to say what Chinese officials will not: China and its capital are gasping for air."

How can the states of the Middle East begin to create the political conditions for achieving sustained progress toward the elimination of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons? This paper examines the challenges and obstacles that the parties of the region will need to overcome to bring a WMD-free zone into force, and recommends near-term steps for improving regional security.

"...[I]t is becoming clear that issues such as infrastructure — energy, transportation, irrigation, and telecommunication — and youth employment are emerging as common themes in African politics irrespective of ideological differences. The predominance of such issues will select for pragmatic leadership over ideology. It is therefore not a surprise that African countries are increasingly electing engineers as presidents."

"Africa's national diversity is becoming a burden for diplomatic interaction. It is more efficient for the United States to work with regional groups in Africa than with individual states. This means that efforts to foster regional integration by creating larger markets, simplifying trading rules, reducing corruption, and investing in regional infrastructure to promote movement of goods will go a long way toward strengthening US-Africa relations."

"The main challenge is the lack of alignment between infrastructure strategies and the need to expand engineering training. As a result, there are very few engineering programs in African universities. There is also a perception that engineering is associated with large projects that tend to be linked to high costs, corruption and ecological degradation."

John Park, research fellow with the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program, is interviewed by CNN, NPR, and other media about the regional and global impact of the death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

"...[N]ew jobs can be directly created in the design, construction, operation and maintenance of infrastructure projects. However, such job creation is unlikely to happen unless there are deliberate policy guidelines. This is mainly because construction projects tend to focus primarily on immediate cost-effectiveness and less on indirect benefits such as youth employment."