Asia & the Pacific

For many, integrating “decarbonization” into public policy, corporate and financial strategies has become a requirement, not an option — yet, what happens when the critical link between climate stability and decarbonization breaks?

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

Joseph Nye asks: When the next terrorist attacks come, will US presidents be able to channel public demand for revenge by precise targeting, explaining the trap that terrorists set, and focusing on creating resilience in U.S. responses? That is the question Americans should be asking, and that their leaders should be addressing.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important cooperative framework that increasingly affects the global economy, trade, and emission patterns. However, most existing studies pay insufficient attention to consumption-based emissions, embodied emissions, and non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study constructs a GHG emissions database to study the trends and variations in production-based, consumption-based, and embodied emissions associated with BRI countries

Today’s economic crisis leaves us with an unsettling and perplexing regret. Why weren’t financial portfolios already adjusted for risks that stem from health events such as pandemics? After all, financial portfolios are adjusted for liquidity risks, market risks, credit risks, and even operational and political risks.

February 24th, 2020, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Gesche Joost, Professor of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts and head of the Design Research Lab since 2005, discussed the digital divide and how it will shape social connectivity in an event moderated by Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, and Lauren Zabierek, Executive Director of the Cyber Project.

In this paper, a quantitative Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework is used to stochastically analyze the feasibility of waste-to-energy systems in selected cities in Asia.

Stephen Walt writes that several important events occurred in 2019, but few did anything to significantly alter global trends.

Chinese diplomats in Africa are robustly defending Beijing’s policies on Twitter as part of a new and sometimes aggressive public relations campaign which is playing out across the globe as the country’s envoys answer President Xi Jinping’s call to “tell China stories well”.south chi

Stephen Walt elaborates on five important lessons from the Cold War,  which should be guiding contemporary U.S. foreign policy. He also explains how President Donald Trump has been ignoring or violating every one of them.