Environment
Iran War Forces India to Confront the Cost of Strategic Dependence
The Iran war is beginning to expose a vulnerability India has spent years trying to manage but cannot eliminate quickly: a country can be strategically autonomous in its diplomacy while remaining deeply dependent economically on…
G20 Summit in Johannesburg Exposes a Growing Split Over the Global Economic Order
The G20 summit in Johannesburg this weekend was supposed to demonstrate the growing influence of the Global South in international economic governance. It was the first G20 leaders’ summit held on African soil, hosted by…
Donald Trump Is President Again. His First Week Shows That the Central Argument of His Second Term Will Be About How Much a President Can Change Without Congress.
Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January and immediately began testing the boundaries of presidential power. Within days, he signed a large wave of executive orders and presidential actions covering immigration, energy,…
Los Angeles Is Burning. The Hardest Climate Question Is No Longer Whether Extreme Events Will Happen, but Who Pays When Risk Becomes Uninsurable.
Los Angeles is experiencing one of the most destructive wildfire disasters in its history. Fires that erupted on 7 January have swept through communities including Pacific Palisades and Altadena, killing at least sixteen people by…
Rich Countries Have Agreed to Provide $300 Billion a Year for Developing Countries. The Argument Is Whether That Number Is Large or Almost Meaningless.
The COP29 climate summit in Baku ended this weekend with developed countries agreeing to take the lead in mobilising at least $300 billion per year for developing countries by 2035, replacing the old $100 billion…
China Built Electric Cars the West Wants. Now the Argument Is Whether Being Too Competitive Has Become a Trade Problem.
China’s rise in electric vehicles is becoming one of the clearest tests of whether the global economy is moving away from the free-trade consensus that shaped much of the last three decades. Chinese manufacturers such…
Nearly One Billion Indians Can Vote. The More Important Question Is Whether the World’s Largest Election Is Also Becoming a Fairer One.
India began voting this week in what is, by scale, the largest democratic exercise in human history. Nearly 970 million people are eligible to vote across a seven-phase election running from 19 April to 1…
Climate Change Has Already Caused Damage That Cannot Be Adapted Away. Now Comes the Harder Question: Who Pays?
COP28 opened in Dubai this week with an agreement that climate negotiations have struggled towards for decades. Governments formally operationalised a new Loss and Damage Fund intended to provide financial support to developing countries facing…
The Storm Hit Libya. The Scale of the Disaster Was Built Over Years.
Thousands of people are dead and thousands more remain missing after catastrophic flooding devastated the eastern Libyan city of Derna early on Monday. Storm Daniel brought intense rainfall across the region, but the most destructive…
Mark Rutte’s Government Collapsed Over Migration. Sometimes Compromise Is What Keeps Democracy Working. Sometimes Refusing It Does.
The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after the four parties governing the Netherlands failed to reach an agreement over migration policy. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who has led the country since 2010, will remain in…
The Kakhovka Dam Has Been Destroyed. Modern Wars Are Increasingly Fought Through the Systems Civilians Depend On.
The Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine was destroyed early on Tuesday, releasing an enormous volume of water from the reservoir behind it into communities along the Dnipro River. Thousands of people have been evacuated from…
Rich Countries Have Finally Accepted the Principle of Paying for Climate Damage. Now Comes the Difficult Part.
After negotiations extending beyond the conference’s scheduled conclusion, governments at COP27 in Egypt reached an agreement early today that developing countries have demanded for decades: the creation of a dedicated fund to address loss and…
