Articles

33 Items

French soldiers paddling from house to house in an inundated western front village searching for food in France on June 7, 1940. The French voluntarily flooded the village in an attempt to hold up the blitzkrieging German army.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Water and Warfare: The Evolution and Operation of the Water Taboo

    Author:
  • Charlotte Grech-Madin
| Spring 2021

Since the end of World War II, nation-states in international conflict have made concerted efforts to restrain the weaponization of water. Distinct from realist and rationalist explanations, the historical record reveals the rise of an international normative inhibition—a “water taboo”—on using water as a weapon.

Charging electric Vehicle

Flickr/Sino-German Urbanization Partnership

Journal Article - Elsevier Inc.

Electric Vehicle Recycling in China: Economic and Environmental Benefits

    Authors:
  • Fuquan Zhao
  • Zongwei Liu
  • Han Hao
| January 2019

With the rapid growth of electric vehicles in China, their benefits should be scientifically identified to support the industry development. Although the life cycle benefits of electric vehicles have been analyzed worldwide, the recycling phase has not been fully studied yet, especially in China. Therefore, this study focuses on the economic and environmental benefits of electric vehicle recycling in China. Based on the technology adopted by leading enterprises, the gross income and reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are calculated to reveal the benefits.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual news conference in Moscow

AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

How the Next Nuclear Arms Race Will Be Different from the Last One

| 2019

All the world's nuclear-armed states (except for North Korea) have begun modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, leading many observers to predict that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race. While that outcome is not yet inevitable, it is likely, and if it happens, the new nuclear arms race will be different and more dangerous than the one we remember. More nuclear-armed countries in total, and three competing great powers rather than two, will make the competition more complex. Meanwhile, new non-nuclear weapon technologies — such as ballistic missile defense, anti-satellite weapons, and precision-strike missile technology — will make nuclear deterrence relationships that were once somewhat stable less so.

Uncovering the Domestic Factor in the Sino-Russian Energy Partnership

World Bank Photo Collection/Flikr

Journal Article - Geopolitics

Uncovering the Domestic Factor in the Sino-Russian Energy Partnership

| Oct. 15, 2018

The article outlines the role of national narratives in driving both Russia and China’s energy foreign policy and goes on to argue that the Sino-Russian gas breakthrough in 2014 was due to the peculiar way in which domestic factors paired with international circumstances to produce the outcome at that particular moment.

teaser image

Journal Article - Middle East Institute

Sovereign Wealth Funds in Small Open Economies

| Apr. 24, 2018

The small open economies of the Gulf and Southeast Asia are pioneers in the establishment of

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). The SWFs of countries like Qatar and Singapore are among the

world’s largest in terms of total asset size relative to Gross Domestic Product. This article looks

at the different compulsions behind the setting up of SWFs by small open economies.

 

Nomads near Lake Namtso, Tibet, 2005

Creative Commons

Journal Article - Global Environmental Change

Promise and Reality of Market-based Environmental Policy in China: Empirical Analyses of the Ecological Restoration Program on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

    Authors:
  • Steven A. Wolf
  • James P. Lassoie
  • Gregory L. Poe
  • Stephen J. Morreale
  • Xukun Su
  • Shikui Dong
| 2016

Environmental conservation programs in China have increasingly emphasized integration of marketbased logic into regulatory programs. But the realization of market logic and the effectiveness of such efforts are widely questioned by scientists and policy analysts. The authors empirically analyze the design, implementation, and outcomes of the ecological restoration program in the Three-Rivers Headwater Region in China, a large-scale conservation scheme aimed at restoring degraded grasslands and improving local livelihoods.

A rural stove using biomass cakes, fuelwood and trash as cooking fuel... It is a major source of air pollution in India, and produces smoke and numerous indoor air pollutants at concentrations 5 times higher than coal.

Wikipedia

Journal Article - Nature Energy

Energy decisions reframed as justice and ethical concerns

| 6 May 2016

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

teaser image

Magazine Article - H-Diplo/ISSF

Roundtable on Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington And Its Cold War Rivals by Or Rabinowitz

| November 16, 2015

"In Bargaining on Nuclear Tests the historian Or Rabinowitz demonstrates the rare ability to engage with contemporary policy debates on nuclear proliferation and U.S. nonproliferation strategies on the one hand, and successfully utilize qualitative analytical frameworks in social science like prospect theory (19) on the other."