Global Challenges

On 14 January 2016, four Indonesian militants mounted a brazen lunchtime assault on a Starbucks Café and a police post in downtown Jakarta. The general area boasts government offices, shopping malls and eateries as well as a United Nations office...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) published its annual Global Risks Report in the run up to its annual meeting in Davos. Food and water crises, energy price shocks, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, extreme weather events and failure of climate...

There have been two important reforms announced, one in the EU and other in the IMF.  Many investors may have missed due to the carnage in the markets. While the economic challenges that Europe faces remain potent, the refugee problem...

Europe’s refugee crisis neither began nor ended when the body of a Kurdish boy was found washed up on a Turkish beach in September. In all, he was just one of 3,770 people who lost their lives in 2015 as...

One of the remarkable outcomes of the climate change negotiations in Paris is an initiative launched by 28 billionaires on the sidelines of COP21 to push for an increase in funding for clean energy technologies. One of the remarkable outcomes...

The World Economic Forum is underway in Davos.  The global capital markets are off to one of their worst years ever.  The threat of terrorism hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles while GDP growth, except in a few...

The weak growth, large output gap, low return on capital, and a host of other economic malaise are widely recognized.  There seem to be two main schools.  One is associated with Reinhart and Rogoff.    They argue that "this time is...

Our impact on the environment might not be at the forefront of our minds during the rush of the Christmas festive season. We might be far more worried about our light wallets from the expected pile of presents and massive...

Today, almost 200 nations have united in a global agreement on global change. However, the efforts of a few can still undermine the hopes of the many. After the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, it took almost a quarter of a century...

The Paris climate talks have been heralded as a historic deal. However, while they have been praised for the very feat of reaching an agreement and for setting an ambitious aim to keep warming below 2℃ and endeavouring to limit...

While the brutal expansion of the Islamic State of Levant (ISIL) has triggered great fears in popular imagination, Dr. Steinbock says that the ISIL’s — and its potential successors’ — claim to a territorial caliphate is likely to pose enduring economic, political and strategic challenges to...

One possible future – a glimpse of our children’s fate if the climate keeps changing faster than our efforts to address it. Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more...

The G20 leader’s summit took place in November in Istanbul, Turkey. The emphasis of Turkey’s G20 presidency this year is on “inclusive and robust global growth.” Turkey recognizes inequality as a major problem within countries as well as across national...

Recent tensions over maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea have highlighted the lack of consensus over the existing security order in Asia. Understanding China’s perception of the Asian security order is crucial to find innovative policy solutions to...

Development researchers cover many dimensions when discussing poverty in developing countries. Numerous studies have focused on the size of the response of the poverty rate to growth of real per capita income, usually stated in terms of income or growth...