Message for President Obama on South Asia

The Afghanistan Situation

Sources Of Climate- And Health-afflicting Soot Pollution Over South Asia Identified

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2009) — A gigantic brownish haze from various burning and combustion processes is blanketing India and surrounding land and oceans during the winter season.

This soot-laden Brown Cloud is affecting South Asian climate as much or more than carbon dioxide and cause premature deaths of 100 000s annually, yet its sources have been poorly understood.

In the journal Science Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues at Stockholm University and in India use a novel carbon-14 method to determine that two-thirds of the soot particles are from biomass combustion such as in household cooking and in slash-and-burn agriculture. More >>>

Click here in-depth paper

Toward a nuclear-free world: a German view

January 9, 2009 -In 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn issued an appeal for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Their knowledge and experience as respected secretaries of state and defense and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee under Republican and Democrat administrations gave their concerns about the growing nuclear threat special weight.

Being realists, they knew that the abolition of all nuclear weapons could only be achieved gradually, and therefore they proposed urgent practical steps aimed at realizing this vision. More >>>

Bush reportedly rejected Israeli plea to raid Iran

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran's main nuclear complex, opting instead to authorize a new U.S. covert action aimed at sabotaging Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported.

Israel's request was for specialized bunker-busting bombs that it wanted for an attack that tentatively involved flying over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country's only known uranium enrichment plant is located, the Times reported Saturday in its online edition. The White House deflected requests for the bombs and flyover but said it would improve intelligence-sharing with Israel on covert U.S. efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. More >>>

How Nuclear-Armed Rivals Pakistan and India Will Test Obama

Their explosive mix of terrorism and nuclear weapons fuels fears of an all-out war

January 7, 2009: Guiding U.S. relations with India and Pakistan—two rivals with sometimes deep tensions over terrorism, territorial issues, and nuclear arms—will be among the most complicated foreign policy tasks facing the incoming Obama administration.

During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, South Asia has been moving closer to the core of U.S. foreign policy, for reasons of both hazard and opportunity. The tribal areas of Pakistan are now regarded by the U.S. intelligence community as the single greatest source of international terrorism in the world.

Pakistan, the recipient of some $10 billion in U.S. aid during the Bush years, is being pressured on an array of fronts to combat Islamic militancy as a security threat and as a political movement; shore up civilian rule and prod the powerful military to retreat from politics; and focus on practical state-building and development to overcome entrenched poverty. More >>>

In this special series on Pakistan's role in the so-called war on terror Rageh Omaar travelled to the country's remote northwest late last year to witness first-hand the army's fierce conflict with the Taliban.

Part 1

Part 2

Pakistan’s Tribal Faultline

Part 3

“Space Race” level of investment needed in low carbon technology within the next decade

An E3G-Chatham House report, Innovation and Technology Transfer: Framework for a Global Climate Deal, released December 4th 2008, is calling for urgent global investment in low carbon and adaptation innovation to be a central component of a new Global Climate Deal.

This increase in global R&D investment, roughly equivalent to that of the space race era, needs to be delivered within the next decade to achieve climate security.

Stabilising global temperature increases below 2°C will require global emissions to peak and reduce in the next 10-15 years. The E3G-Chatham House analysis shows that current approaches to low carbon innovation and deployment are not adequate to meet the climate change challenge.

Lead author, Shane Tomlinson of E3G, explains:

Climate change presents the world with a unique challenge. The Earth’s capacity to absorb and adapt to temperature increases and climatic changes puts a very real time limit on when low carbon and adaptation technologies need to be delivered.

To avoid locking our economies into high carbon growth we need to transform global cooperation to simultaneously develop and deploy new technologies in rich and poor countries within this timeframe. This will require a very rapid shift towards new innovations such as low carbon energy sources and drought resistant crops.” More >>>