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Cautious Optimism: China’s Nuclear Energy Safety Measures Improving
›Motivated in part by mounting public pressure to cut down on the smog created by more than 600 coal-fired power plants, China’s nuclear energy capacity is growing faster than any other country in the world.
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Wael Hmaidan: Development Goals Unattainable Without Addressing Climate Change
›When it comes to sustainable development, not all goals are created equal, says Wael Hmaidan, the director of Climate Action Network International, in this week’s podcast. Climate change “intersects everything we do,” he says, but is underrepresented in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global development agenda being drafted to replace the Millennium Development Goals next year.
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Top 10 Posts for September 2014
›What if it’s not increased scarcity that’s most disruptive about climate change, but variability? Cullen Hendrix explains how new research on water conflict suggests that’s the case in last month’s most popular story.
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New Approaches to Projecting Population Yield Divergent Forecasts and Valuable Insights
›As the UN General Assembly begins charting a course toward sustainable growth, population projections will likely undergird many of their most important assumptions about the future. As two new papers released last week demonstrate, however, there are differing opinions about how much the world’s population will grow and when it will stabilize.
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Short Films on Cuba, France, Australia Reminders of Immediacy of Climate Challenge
›Much of the time, discussion about climate change is focused on the future – How bad will it be? Will it lead to more conflict? Who will be most vulnerable? But it is in fact a current phenomenon. The climate system is already, for all intents and purposes, irrevocably changed and millions of lives have been changed along with it.
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High Poverty: Medicinal Plants Offer Way Forward for Nepal’s Mountain Communities
›In a tiny village called Chepuwa in the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal, high in the Himalayas and almost four days’ trek from the nearest road, Mikmar Bhote has been growing and selling medicinal and aromatic plants for five years.
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Not All Security Questions Have Military Answers, Says Sharon Burke
›The U.S. military has historically relied on its capacity for technological innovation to respond to new risks and crises. But, as Sharon Burke explains in this week’s podcast, the Pentagon has had to invent a new role for itself in response to a changing world.
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Paola Adriázola and Stephan Wolters, ECC Platform
Investing in Collaboration to Manage Natural Resource Conflict
›September 25, 2014 // By Wilson Center StaffConflict over environmental resources endangers rural people’s livelihoods and can increase the risk of broader social conflict. Yet joint action to sustain shared resources can also be a powerful means for community building. The Strengthening Aquatic Resource Governance (STARGO) project demonstrated this in three ecoregions: Lake Victoria, with a focus on Uganda; Lake Kariba, with a focus on Zambia; and Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. The results of the project were released at an event in Berlin in early July 2014.