The events of the Arab Spring took the world by surprise: there were no obvious signs of an approaching storm in the Levant and the Maghreb. Objective measures—used on a regular basis—showed that…

Elena Ianchovichina, Martijn Burger, Efstratia Arampatzi |

The agreement reached by 196 countries at Paris to collectively work to limit the growth of global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is a landmark…

Charles Cormier |

The Climate Change conference in Paris only confirmed what we already knew—that increasingly, there’s an overlap between conventional security threats of a military nature, which are focused on…

Mohamed Abdallah Youness |

Defense budgets are not publicly available, oversight is weak, and information about hidden spending is non-existent, says Transparency International-UK (TI-UK) of defense spending by the 17…

Christine Petré |

The 2014/15 oil price collapse may actually provide an opportunity for the Gulf region to focus on “green” economic thinking and on maximizing energy productivity overall. Given their large…

Waleed Alsuraih |

El Niño is back and may be stronger than ever.   A wooden boat is seen stranded on the dry cracked riverbed of the Dawuhan Dam during drought season in Madiun, Indonesia's East Java province…

Axel van Trotsenburg |

Over 25, 000 people have descended on the Bourget in the suburbs of Paris to attend the much anticipated 21st Conference of Parties on climate change, or “COP21”. The first meeting today is due to…

Maria Sarraf, Martin Heger |

The White Nile in South Sudan. Photo by Steve Utterwulghe. As I was landing in Juba, the bustling capital of South Sudan, I couldn’t help but reminisce about my days working in Khartoum for the UN…

Steve Utterwulghe, Patrick Banya |

To development economists (like myself), the uprisings that started in Tunisia and spread to several countries in the Arab world in 2010-11 came as somewhat of a surprise.  For the previous decade…

Shanta Devarajan |

We are currently witnessing shifts in major industries as a result of rapid technological innovation and industry interconnectivity. The amalgamation between transport and software, for example,…

Reem Muhsin Yusuf |