Environment Archive

Does it matter who runs the United Nations? There was a frisson of excitement at U.N. headquarters at the start of this month when a consortium of advocacy groups launched a campaign to overturn the “outdated and opaque” process for selecting the secretary-general. But at a time when increasing global divisions threaten to reduce the U.N. secretariat’s ability to improve international cooperation, there are questions about how much impact the post can really have. The current secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, steps down at the end of 2016. As I have previously argued, Ban took far too long to find his feet […]

The United States and China surprised other G-20 members when they announced a new agreement last week on curbing greenhouse gas emissions just a few days prior to the group’s summit in Australia. But the G-20 member who perhaps noted this development more than others is India, currently the world’s fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter. India was taken off guard by what amounts to China’s first step back from its previous ironclad refusal to make any binding commitments on limiting overall emissions. New Delhi is now preparing to fend off greater pressure directed its way to make similar pledges in the […]

Whenever a U.S. president’s party experiences major losses during a midterm congressional election, there is always pressure to fire members of his team. In this particular cycle, pundits have urged President Barack Obama to consider replacing his national security adviser, Susan Rice, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, among others, as part of an effort to change course and find a new direction for his last two years in office. But staffing questions do not lie at the heart of the Obama administration’s problems. Rather, the administration has fallen short in its ability to define U.S. strategic priorities and to […]

In September, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte offered assistance to Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif on water management after a dike was breached, forcing over 700,000 Pakistanis to flee their homes. In an email interview, Mariska Heijs, training and research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations “Clingendael,” discussed the Netherlands’ water management diplomacy. WPR: How prominently does water management diplomacy fit into the Netherlands’ wider foreign aid and development policies, and what expertise does the Netherlands offer? Mariska Heijs: Water is one of the four themes of the Netherlands’ foreign aid and development policy, alongside security and […]

KAMPALA, Uganda—As he delivers his lecture from the breezy, pink-hued classroom, Robert Rutaro is optimistic about Uganda’s future in oil. An attorney with a master’s degree in oil and gas law from Scotland, Rutaro returned home this January to find a job in Uganda’s Ministry of Energy and now doubles as a lecturer at the Institute of Petroleum Studies-Kampala (IPSK), a two-year-old university offering a range of degree programs in oil and gas sector management. Since 2006, when the Anglo-Irish firm Tullow discovered East Africa’s first commercially viable oil in the vicinity of Uganda’s Lake Albert, the country has been […]