Blogs

Societal sustainability rests on the three interconnected pillars of water, energy and food, the WEF Nexus. Supply and demand of each must be in balance with the other two or the three-legged stool either wobbles or falls over leading to social and political instability. The ultimate driver of the Nexus is economics, and WEF interactions […]

The election commission of Burundi announced Monday that the ruling party candidate, Evariste Ndayishimiye, won the 2020 presidential election (Al Jazeera). With an 87.7 percent voter turnout, Ndayishimiye of the National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) won 68.72 percent of the vote (Al Jazeera). Ndayishimiye ran […]

In trying to understand the potential effects of COVID-19 on society, some commentators have looked to the Black Death – the name given to the Yersinia Pestis plague that first ravaged Europe from 1347 to 1351. The Black Death started the Renaissance, caused the end of serfdom and “feudalism,” led to the Reformation and so […]

The emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic and a collapse in oil prices have inflicted acute socioeconomic shocks across Gulf Arab states, which now confront the unenviable prospect of managing prolonged economic downturns. Policymakers must consider controversial measures to cut government expenditures and generate needed revenues. Raising taxes – such as the value-added tax (VAT) and […]

Note: Journalist Veronica Camacho wrote this opinion piece just one day before she learned she lost her job as TV Host at Ecuavisa after working there 15 years. GPII’s Katie Coronado subsequently interviewed her about how it happened and what she will do now that she has been impacted directly by this pandemic. Her responses […]

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” How have the Isle of Man and other small states responded to those recent COVID-19 related weeks? The Isle of Man is an island of around 85,000 people and 227 square miles, located in the Irish Sea roughly midway between England, Scotland and Ireland. It is […]

As a frequent traveller to China, having been to several cities there in November and to Hong Kong in January, I nervously tracked news of the outbreak of a new viral disease in Wuhan as it emerged. With the number of cases of infection growing in the UK, I was surprised by the complacency of […]

Immigrants have been vital to this nation’s success pre-COVID, and they will be key participants in ensuring the U.S. economy grows when the pandemic is over. Foreign born workers were instrumental in powering the consistent economic growth the U.S. saw from 2010 to early 2020. To see that growth again, it will take native-born Americans […]

William ‘Bill’ Nichols served as a volunteer consultant through the United States Agency for International Development’s Farmer-to-Farmer Program (USAID F2F) for two weeks in January 2020. From New Mexico, his collaboration as an F2F volunteer improved the tree nursery production of four cooperatives in southern Morocco. One immediate benefit of his visits with Moroccan farmers […]

America First is clearly a failed policy – for the United States and the world at large. This Trumpian isolationist doctrine appeals to a small base of nativist Americans who subscribe to hard-core isolationist views. As America pulls back from the very international institutions it helped establish in the post-World War II era, the guardrails […]