Environment & Climate Change

8 Items

A 2014 meeting between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Netherlands

US Embassy, The Hague

Analysis & Opinions

Shunning Beijing's infrastructure bank was a mistake for the US

| June 7, 2015

The Obama administration’s negative response to China’s proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was a strategic mistake. Though some Chinese moves might be destabilising and require US resistance, this initiative should have been welcomed.

The US should be careful about opposing ventures that are popular and likely to proceed. Losing fights does not build confidence. Moreover, the new bank’s purpose — to develop infrastructure in Asia — is a good goal. The world economy needs more growth. Many emerging markets are eager to boost productivity and growth by lowering costs of transportation, improving energy availability, enhancing communications networks, and distributing clean water.

The AIIB offers an opportunity to strengthen the very international economic system that the US created and sustained. The AIIB’s designated leader, Jin Liqun, a former vice-president of the Asian Development Bank, sought advice in Washington. He engaged an American lawyer who was the World Bank’s leading specialist on governance. He also reached out to another American who had served as World Bank country director for China and then worked with the US embassy.

If the AIIB was indeed threatening the American-led multilateral economic order, as its opponents seemed to believe, then its Chinese founders chose a curiously open and co-operative way of doing so.

Report - United Nations

The Biofuels Market: Current Situation and Alternative Scenarios

    Author:
  • United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
| 2009

The purpose of this volume is to present possible scenarios for the biofuels industry. Each chapter describes how the sector could evolve depending on the policy and strategies that individual countries may select. However, the assumption is that individual choices may have global impacts. Each scenario therefore tries to provide insights on the global economic, energetic, environmental and trade repercussions of specific policy developments.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair listens to a student explaining the biofuel crops and research carried out at an experimental farm at Pretoria University in Pretoria, South Africa, June 1, 2007.

AP Photo

Report Chapter

Advanced Biofuels and Developing Countries: Intellectual Property Scenarios and Policy Implications

| 2009

"Chapter III analysed the commercial viability of second generation biofuels. This chapter focuses on related intellectual property rights (IPRs) aspects. Three hypothetical scenarios in the context of the intellectual property protection of second generation biofuels are developed, with each scenario representing a different level of strictness of protection. Therefore, each scenario translates into a different level of potential access to advanced biofuel technologies by developing countries."

President Barack Obama meets with China's President Hu Jintao at Winfield House in London, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

AP Photo

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

U.S.-China Relations: Key Next Steps

| May 1, 2009

With the United States and China expected to be the two dominant powers in the twenty-first century, it is essential that they actively manage their relationship to avoid military conflict, a group of distinguished Chinese and American scholars said at a major conference in Washington, D.C. The scholars—from Harvard Kennedy School, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and elsewhere—have worked together for more than two years to create a blueprint for a new relationship between the two countries.