Numerous Chinese cities go through what is now dubbed an “airpocalypse” mainly due to the explosion of coal plants and transport by cars.
In the meantime, Russia is renewing and expanding its network of oil and gas pipelines toward China.
Meanwhile, the Arctic and subarctic region is going through a major atmospheric warming of more than 4° in less than a century, which makes it increasingly more attractive to industrial investment, especially because the Arctic could contain more than 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the undiscovered gas reserves, as well as other important mineral deposits and fishing potential (Arthur Guschin, “Understanding China’s Arctic policy“, The Diplomat, November 14, 2013).
The warming and melting of the region could turn these deposits into extractable resources (“The Arctic Death Spiral”, Arctic News, July 2013).
These three situations are interconnected and are affecting basic international strategic equilibria.
As we saw in “Arctic Fusion: Russia and China convergent strategies” (Valantin, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, June 23, 2014), the two Eurasian giants are elaborating common industrial, energy and shipping strategy in order to develop the Arctic region. However, this “great convergence” goes beyond their “simple” economic development: the stake is also the Chinese energy transition.
For the complete article, please see Red Team Analysis.
As part of this year’s online World Water Week at Home, adelphi and IHE Delft convened the workshop "Water diplomacy: a tool for climate action?". The workshop reflected on the role that foreign policy can play in mitigating, solving and potentially preventing conflicts over the management of transboundary water resources, especially in a changing climate.
The Cerrado, a tropical savannah region located in Central Brazil, is nearly half as large as the Amazon and a deforestation hotspot. Yet little attention is paid to this important biome. That has to change.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects may exacerbate the risk of climate-related instability across the Middle East in the long term.
With the European Green Deal, the European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen has committed to accelerating decarbonisation in Europe as a major priority. The report "The Geopolitics of Decarbonization: Reshaping European Foreign Relations" shows how the EU’s external relations need to evolve to adequately reflect the political, economic and social outcomes of this process.