Paulo Artaxo SÃO PAULO – Last month, a deeply divided Brazil voted to elect its next president. Faced with a choice between Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party and the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilians chose the extremist –…
Category: Columns
Inequality undermines democracy
Economic inequality – involving both income and wealth concentration – has risen in nearly all world regions since the 1980s. Gross economic inequalities moderated for much of the 20th century, especially after World War Two until the 1970s, but has…
3 hard truths about the global sanitation crisis
by Seema Thomas Today when you go to the toilet, be it in someone’s basic latrine in a rural village you might be visiting, in a public toilet where you work, or on a comfortable water-flushed ‘loo’ at home, take…
Educating children starts with parents
Neha is a first-generation learner. Her mother, Hema, a maid, wants her only daughter to grow up to become a government servant. This, according to her, will give her family security, stable water and electricity connections, and also an attached…
Migration into Europe: A long-term solution?
Why has migration become such a big problem? Many reasons can be adduced: the war in Syria, the integration of Eastern Europe, lack of new jobs in many Western countries following the Global Financial Crisis etc. But listing individual reasons…
Brexit: The beginning of the end?
In the documents released this week by the British government and the EU there is a striking contrast between the detailed and specific nature of the proposed Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and the cursory, imprecise nature of the accompanying Political Declaration…
Electoral authoritarianism, elective dictatorship
Jair Bolsonaro will be President of Brazil. A homophobic soldier with authoritarian excesses, who has scorned democratic mechanisms and threatened his political rivals, will lead the greatest regional power in Latin America that is now a global giant.
Why Brexit won’t cure Britain’s broken economic model
Simon Deakin explains in this audio podcast that Britain’s low-wage, low productivity economy is the result of 40 years of neoliberal economic policies. While some on the Left think that Brexit will allow a reset of British economic policy, this…
All SDGs relate in some way to the oceans
When Peter Thomson, the United Nation’s Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, heard in 2010 there was going to be a 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, he knew he had to include the ocean question.
Creating good quality jobs: If not now, then when?
Everybody at the European level agrees that we need more quality jobs to build momentum for recovery and climb out of the years of crisis. But what does this actually mean? And what realistic plans are in place to achieve…
Addressing problems of contemporary capitalism
In a forthcoming book, Branko Milanović identifies four ‘troublesome features’ in ‘meritocratic liberal capitalism’ (while retaining full responsibility for these very tentative remarks, I would like to thank Branko Milanović for his feedback on them). These are the rising share…
World Diabetes Day: The Food System and Human Health
From Danielle Nierenberg I’m writing to you from California, where we’ll be hosting Food Tank’s Inaugural San Diego Summit, “Growing the Food Movement,” on Wednesday, November 14th!
Electoral authoritarianism, elective dictatorship
Jair Bolsonaro will be President of Brazil. A homophobic soldier with authoritarian excesses, who has scorned democratic mechanisms and threatened his political rivals, will lead the greatest regional power in Latin America that is now a global giant. In fact,…
Two major problems of the world
Shah Abdul Hannan The two greatest problems of the present world are the spread of immorality and poverty of a great number of people. The reason of immorality is lack of faith in the Creator or its absence in practice.…
Income inequality and trust in national governments
Trust in national governments has reached worryingly low levels in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), at least compared to the EU-15 average. In addition, trust in the EU is generally higher than trust in national governments, underlining the importance…
Lessons for the ‘Rest’ from ersatz miracles
Of the ten fastest growing economies since 1960, eight are in East Asia. Two main competing explanations claimed to explain this regional concentration of catch up growth since the late 20th century, often referred to as the East Asian miracle.
Platform work – Breaking barriers or breaking bad?
If you’ve ever ordered a taxi through an app, taken a pizza delivery from a guy on a bike or searched a website for a plumber to unblock your drain, you’ve probably witnessed platform work first hand. The ability to…
SPD may deal final blow to Angela Merkel’s Chancellorship
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered another poor state election result on Sunday October 28 with 27 per cent, down 11.3 percentage points from the 2013 election in Hesse. Her grand coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD) slumped…
Truth never dies: Justice for slain journalists
Violence and toxic rhetoric against journalists must stop, say United Nations experts.Marking the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, U.N. Special Rapporteurs David Kaye, Agnes Callamard, and Bernard Duhaime expressed concern over the plight that journalists are…
Social Europe is a myth
The progressive discourse on Europe is full of taboos and myths. Entering these debates requires caution. It’s a challenge to clearly articulate the social consequences of European integration and, in so doing, come into conflict with the myth of ‘Social…
A radically realistic climate vision
By Barbara Unmüßig Berlin – According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s main scientific authority on global warming, keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is a feasible goal.…
Transparency for Tuna
By Peter M. Christian and Mark Zimring Palikir/San Francisco – A cluster of small Pacific islands is poised to make history in the management of global fish stocks. This week, when conservationists from around the world gathered at the fifth…
Why the left must talk about migration
For a number of years now the left has been disappearing fast from the electoral scene while the far and populist right has been gaining ground. Social democratic parties have been reduced to single-digit vote shares in France, Netherlands and…
A “Crisis Point” for human rights defenders
Globally, the people working to defend our human rights are increasingly under attack, reaching a “crisis point.”More than 150 human rights defenders (HRDs) from around the world gathered in Paris this week to set out a vision for the enduring…
Trump and Bolsonaro: Alarming similarities
Observing recent political developments in the United States and Brazil, there are clearly similarities between the phenomena of ‘Trumpism’ and ‘Bolsonarism’ that do not seem to be a mere coincidence.
People’s vote is a democratic engagement at Its best
The recent anti-Brexit march in London represented an exciting burst of democratic participation. As a young person, it was incredible to be part of a demo that proved that we are not apathetic, but care deeply about the cosmopolitan, liberal…
An ounce of democracy
As the old adage goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Nowhere is this more appropriate than when it comes to conflict. Violent conflict causes not only human suffering and destruction but robs entire societies of…
Did post-Soviet Russians drink themselves to death?
Although initially obscured by The Economist, among others, the sudden and unprecedented increase in Russian adult male mortality during 1992-1994 is no longer denied. Instead, the debate is now over why?
Nepal has joined the civilized world
Where there’s corporal punishment there’s ALWAYS the possibility of serious or mental injury. And parents, who think it won’t happen to their child, are living with their head in the sand or are complete fools
Resolving the complex South China Sea dispute
Iffat Ara Jasmin …