Global warming is increasingly disrupting weather patterns and precipitation across the planet. In the Hindukush and Himalayan region, however, this will initially result in greater river flows by 2050-60 due to rapidly melting glaciers. Increase in water volumes will mean a higher risk of frequent floods, landslides, bursting of dams, soil erosion and crop failure.
After threatening to set up an air defense identification zone, what might the economic impact be if Beijing went one step further and closed off the entire area inside its so-called “nine-dash line”?
The future of global inequality, in other words, rests on India’s shoulders. To join the global middle class, India must do much better. It must improve infrastructure and education. It must implement good governance and reduce harmful corruption. It must attract foreign investment and make growth a priority. And it must do all this while limiting its use of coal, in order to help halt the danger from global warming.
What do Punjab and Italy’s Po Valley have in common? More than you might imagine, which explains why immigrant Sikhs from the Indian state became the backbone of Italy’s most famous cheese-making industry.
The Syrian civil war is like a massive tidal wave which swept across the country leaving behind widespread devastation. Buildings bear the physical marks of the damage. More than half of the Syrian population now live in poverty, says a study by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, with the unemployment rate now near fifty per cent. Half of Syria’s children have dropped out of school, with many Syrians unable to access health care.
Much as Japan Inc. caused a sensation with its buying spree in the eighties, acquiring prominent U.S. companies and landmarks, including Rockefeller Center, Chinese companies are making their presence felt. Acquisitions range from AMC cinemas to IBM’s personal computers unit.
Shuanghui International’s $7.1 billion purchase of US pork giant Smithfield was a US milestone for many reasons. Not only was it the biggest investment ever by a Chinese company, it also was proof that the US government could make impartial decisions about Chinese investment. And it meant that 70,000 US workers are now in the employ of Chinese-owned, US-based companies—more than twice the pre-Smithfield number—according to Rhodium Group, an advisory firm.
More than one billion people lack access to clean drinking water, sufficient food and electricity. Meanwhile, the global population is growing by some 80 million people every year. By 2030, the nine billion people living on earth will need 30% more water, 40% more energy and 50% more food to survive.
There are many challenging numbers confronting China‘s new leaders, but two are especially stark.
China has 20 per cent of the world’s population, but only nine per cent of the world’s farmland. And even that imbalance in the amount of land available to produce food for an increasingly demanding population of 1.3 billion is getting worse by the day.
China loses close to a million hectares of arable land a year to urban development. Between 1996 and 2006 nine million hectares of farmland were eaten up by China’s expanding cities.
