Environment
Indonesia’s nickel superhighway
Indonesia currently has the most significant nickel deposit in the world, putting it in a prime position to build advanced industries such as renewable energy, in which rare…
2022: A global turning point
Tectonic shifts in world affairs are underway as 2022 draws to a close.
With the Ukraine war drawing a line under the familiar post-Cold War period, the world has entered a…
Europe must fully embrace nuclear energy
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine stripped away many naive assumptions. War in Europe is not a thing of the past. Greater economic integration will not deter a madman. And…
Strengthening disaster resilience in the Pacific
Climate change is compounding disaster risk around the world. Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make clear that the growing effects of…
Can China build a “community” for shared oceans?
While China’s growing naval presence has garnered much attention, awareness about its global maritime governance model remains limited. President Xi Jinping has spoken about …
Water scarcity challenges China’s development model
Southern China’s longest drought on record is the latest manifestation of a slow-burning but increasingly severe water crisis. Left unchecked, it has the potential to act as a…
The Quad needs a futures focus
If there is a cumulative lesson from the past few years, it’s that the era of “polycrises” is firmly upon us. A polycrisis is defined as the net effect from the non-linear…
A minute to midnight: reversing environmental tipping points
In 2009, academics Johan Rockström, Will Steffen and colleagues proposed an idea well beyond the geopolitical concept of borders. What they described was the notion of…
Indonesia-Australia climate change cooperation begins with the ocean
The recent visit to Jakarta by Australia’s new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was productive. Among many issues raised in a joint communique released following a meeting with…
Diplomacy is indispensable to manage the Mekong
Milton Osborne mischaracterises the Mekong River Commission when writing last month in The Interpreter that the regional organisation “ignores reality”. To say we were …