Helmut Sorge
| Posted : June 15, 2021
They did not know who the fighters were; the Turkic-language speaking citizens did not understand a word they said. Sure, they were the enemy, because they were killing their brothers and sisters and destroying their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, a forgotten enclave loyal to Armenia but surrounded by Azerbaijan. In September 2020, when the fighting erupted again, it did not take long to find out who had sent these foreigners to kill or expel them from their land, named by its inhabitants as the Republic of Artsakh after the last civil war at the end of the 1980s. A United Nations working group on the use of mercenaries found “widespread reports that the government of Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s assistance, relied on Syrian fighters to shore up and sustain its military operation” (Human Rights Commission, October 2020).
Helmut Sorge
| Posted : June 11, 2021
For science fiction writers, the universe has no limits. They imagine spacecraft conquering the unknown, the mining of asteroids, access to solar power and room for colonization by earthlings tempted by new frontiers billions of miles and dreams away. Or worlds to conquer barred by radioactive fields, devilish storms, metallic dust, unbearable darkness leading towards black holes and hell in space, and the sun, radiating up to 15 million degrees Celsius, which suggests nothing less than nuclear fusion. The incredible projections of science fiction authors are beginning to be overtaken by reality and technology, and the creativity of the human brain. Spacecraft such as the New Horizons and the twin Voyager 1 and 2, race with an average speed of 38,000 miles per hour into the unending universe, traveling 14 billion miles away from earth, having moved from the solar system into the interstellar universe. The 815kg Voyager 2 went to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited the outer planets. Forty-three years, nine months and 18 days (as of June 7, 2021) after launch, the Voyagers are still traveling, in communication with ground control, which needs seven hours to reach the spacecraft. Meanwhile, the New Horizons 478kg spacecraft (launched in 2006), traveling at 36,400 miles per hour, powered by a nuclear battery, is expected to continue exploring until the late 2030s and possibly move into interstellar space in the 2040s...
Otaviano Canuto , Pepe Zhang*
| Posted : June 07, 2021
First appeared at AMERICAS QUARTERLY
A growing global imbalance threatens to further weaken already vulnerable emerging markets. The massive vaccine disparities between advanced and developing economies may exacerbate what the IMF has dubbed “divergent recoveries”—with dire consequences for Latin America.
Despite being home to only 8% of the world’s population, the region has already suffered nearly 30% of all global COVID-19 deaths. The pandemic has also hit GDP and employment harder in Latin America than any other developing region. Poverty and inequality have spiked, potentially rolling back 20 years of hard-fought progress. While Latin American countries are trying to regain what was lost, in the short term an uneven global recovery will bring grim economic ramifications through three main channels of transmission: health spillovers, global macro/political risks, and societal consequences.
Nadia Makara Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Alumna (2018)
| Posted : June 03, 2021
In an effort to spur economic growth, industrial parks were created to combine industrial activities with infrastructure, service, and commercial activities. These parks involve a collection of businesses, utilizing a combination of heavy and light manufacturing, that are located in a dedicated zone for industrial use to boost efficiency, minimize operational costs, and maximize output. Though industrial parks can contribute to economic growth and social development in a region, they can also cause negative social and environmental impacts. These impacts include air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, land contamination, over-extraction of resources, labor abuses, and social disruption. These impacts, in turn, contribute to climate change, environmental degradation, and deterioration of the social fabric (UNIDO, WBG & GIZ, 2017).
Helmut Sorge
| Posted : June 03, 2021
For years, no one knew why dozens of battered wooden ghost boats, often with the corpses of North Korean fishermen, whose starved bodies were reduced to skeletons, routinely washed up on the Japanese coast, wrote Ian Urbina in an August 2020 report for Yale University’s 360 environment project. The explanation, he said, could be that “China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, forcing out smaller North Korea boats and leading to a decline in once abundant squid stock ”.North Korean fishermen washing up in Japan—225 in 2018, 158 in 2019—might have “ventured too far from shore in a vain search for squid and perished”. In violation of United Nations sanctions, hundreds of Chinese vessels, tracked by satellites, fished in North Korean waters in 2019 (Foreign Policy, Nov. 20, 2020).
Sabine Cessou
| Posted : June 01, 2021
This young French entrepreneur cannot be reduced to a single side of herself. To describe her as the founder of Lydexperience, a training platform focused on leadership coaching, is certainly not enough. She is also into politics and has held an electoral mandate, with expertise on equality, training and female entrepreneurship.
Mahmoud Arbouch
| Posted : May 31, 2021
La Diaspora marocaine, qui compte aujourd’hui près de 5 millions de ressortissants à l’étranger, contribue de manière significative au développement économique du Maroc. Leurs transferts de fonds jouent un rôle crucial dans la réduction de la pauvreté, surtout en milieu rural. Ils permettent également d’améliorer l’accès à l'éducation et à la santé. Les transferts des Marocains du monde qui, généralement, occupaient le deuxième poste de recettes dans la balance des paiements du Maroc, après les recettes voyages, et comptaient pour 6% à 7% du PIB, ont enregistré une surprenante hausse de 5% en 2020 pour s’établir à 68 milliards de Dirhams. Cette évolution à contre-courant de toutes les prévisions qui tablaient sur une baisse comprise entre 20% et 30%, montre ainsi qu’il y a une forte contra-cyclicité dans un contexte économique mondial particulièrement délicat.
Otaviano Canuto
| Posted : May 24, 2021
Commodity prices have recovered their 2020 losses and, in most cases, are now above pre-pandemic levels (Figure 1). The pace of Chinese growth since 2020 and the economic recovery that has accompanied vaccine rollouts in advanced companies are seen as driving demand upward, while supply restrictions for some items—oil, copper, and some food products—have favored their upward adjustment.
Rachid El Houdaigui
| Posted : May 24, 2021
Au-delà des faits et de leurs soubassements, la réaction de l’Union européenne au flux massif de migrants vers Sebta révèle le vrai visage de ce partenaire clé du Maroc et du continent africain ; une posture représentée par deux visages opposés, celui des beaux discours sur les valeurs du partenariat et, l’autre, de la realpolitik tournée plus vers le passé que vers le futur.
Rachid El Houdaigui
| Posted : May 24, 2021
Más allá de los hechos y sus fundamentos, la reacción europea respecto al flujo masivo de migrantes a Sebta revela el verdadero rostro de este socio clave de Marruecos y del continente africano, una postura representada por dos caras opuestas: la de los bonitos discursos sobre los valores del partenariado por un lado, y por otro la de la realpolitik que mira más hacia el pasado que el futuro.
