Our Planet

2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer

Mahatma Gandhi supposedly once said: “It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?” Translated to the world order of today, his question would be: “What if China would aspire to the standards of living of the United States?” Our planet is certainly flexible. A quarter of its surface has been plowed up, and its atmosphere, soil, and water have been fundamentally altered in many places. Humanity now extracts more nitrogen from the air than nature does, and we use more water than all the rivers put together. It’s a miracle that Earth’s systems have been able to withstand these interventions as effectively as they have. Many parts of the world are cleaner than they were a century ago. Pollutants like sulphur, nitrogen, and small particles are now routinely filtered from exhaust pipes and chimneys. We’ve mastered the problems of acidification and smog. But those were the easy tasks. The fact that we dealt with bad things in the past is no guarantee of a rosy future. Interference in our environment is too great for that. Humanity continues its assault on the planet. The toughest problems remain unsolved. The truth is that we are already consuming more than one Earth can support. Just as a company can spend more than it earns by selling its assets, we are eating into Earth’s capital, which was accumulated during thousands of years. In a report published by a group of leading scientists, it was concluded that we already have transgressed safe planetary boundaries in many respects. We already have surpassed the carrying capacity of Earth’s climate with a factor of 1.5, we are at a tenfold rate of bearable biodiversity loss, we extract four times more nitrogen from natural cycles than can be considered sustainable, and we are at the tolerable thresholds of the phosphorus cycle, ocean acidification, and stratospheric ozone depletion. Human civilization is out of kilter with the natural environment. We are using considerably more than one Earth. Many subsystems of Earth react in a nonlinear, often abrupt, way.

Volume Nine of this series traces the development of the ‘world novel’, that is, English-language novels written throughout the world, beyond Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey chapters and chapters on major writers, as well as chapters on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The text covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains chapters on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.


Author(s):  
Chandan Saini ◽  
Ashish Miglani ◽  
Pankaj Musyuni ◽  
Geeta Aggarwal

Regular inspections are carried out to ensure system conformity by the Food and Drugs Regulatory Authority (FDA) of the United States one of the most stringent regulatory authorities in the world. The inspectors send Form 483 to the management after the inspection, detailing the inappropriate conditions. Because the FDA guidelines are difficult to comply with, a company can contravene the regulations. If any significant infringements can affect the protection, quality, effectiveness, or public health of the drug is identified, the FDA issues advice to the company. Warning Letters (WL) shall be an official notification of non-compliance with federal law within a period to be issued by manufacturer, clinician, distributor, or responsible person in the company. The delivery of a letter has a considerable impact on the company's reputation and position in the market. Inadequate WL reactions could lead to a refusal, import denial, memorandum or even conviction and order. A brief study was conducted in this document of Form 483 and WL for four years (2017–2020) on an understanding the regulatory provisions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Damian Kaźmierczak

Using a sample of 1,705 convertible bonds issued by manufacturing and service companies from the United States (1,138 issues); Europe (270); and Asia (297) between 2004 and 2014 this paper investigates the role of callable convertibles in the corporate investment process. This research shows first that callable convertibles are used to finance investment projects particularly by American firms which may exercise new investment options to improve poor financial performance. Secondly, the same strategy may be followed by European companies, but they seem not to carry out investments on as large a scale as American firms. Thirdly, the research results do not provide evidence that Asian enterprises use callable convertibles for investment purposes: they likely use these instruments for different reasons.


2021 ◽  
pp. 932-950
Author(s):  
Vladislav Vyacheslavovich Emelyanov

Every few decades, the world order changes due to various geopolitical, economic and other circumstances. For example, as a result of globalization, the world order has undergone significant changes in the last forty years. Globalization has led to the destruction of the postwar world order, as well as to world leadership by the United States and the West. However, in recent decades, as a result of globalization, the U.S. and the West began to cede their leadership to developing countries, so there is now a change in the economic structure of relations in the world system. Today the center of economic growth is in the East, namely in Asia. There are no new superpowers in the world at the moment, but the unipolar world will cease to exist due to the weakening of the U. S. leadership, which will lead to a change in the world order. A new leader, which may replace the U. S., will not have as wide range of advantages as the USA has. Most likely, the essence of the new order will be to unite the largest countries and alliances into blocks, for example, the USA together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the EU, etc. The article outlines forecasts of GDP growth rates as well as the global energy outlook; analyzes the LNG market as well as the impact of the pandemic on the global oil and gas market; and lists the characteristics of U. S. geopolitics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Vitaly KOZYREV

The recent deterioration of US–China and US–Russia relations has stumbled the formation of a better world order in the 21st century. Washington’s concerns of the “great power realignment”, as well as its Manichean battle against China’s and Russia’s “illiberal regimes” have resulted in the activated alliance-building efforts between Beijing and Moscow, prompting the Biden administration to consider some wedging strategies. Despite their coordinated preparation to deter the US power, the Chinese and Russian leaderships seek to avert a conflict with Washington by diplomatic means, and the characteristic of their partnership is still leaving a “window of opportunity” for the United States to lever against the establishment of a formal Sino–Russian alliance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-255
Author(s):  
Hryhorii M. Kalachyhin ◽  

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the leading institutions involved in global economic regulation. Its purposes are to ensure multilateral cooperation on the liberalization of international trade, harmonize existing standards and requirements, and peacefully resolve trade disputes between countries. Since 11 December 2019, dispute resolution has been handicapped due to the consistent blocking of the appointment of members to the WTO Appellate Body (AB) by the United States. This has reduced the multilateral trading system’s (MTS) predictability and threatens its final decay. In this article, the fundamental and formal causes of the collapse are described, and its circumvention mechanisms and effectiveness are discussed. At the same time, an assessment is given of the possibility to overcome the collapse in 2021, considering the change of the U.S. president and other events. Special attention is paid to Russia’s position and its current and potential losses. Finally, the issue of dispute resolution through regional trade agreements is proposed for discussion. The fundamental reasons for the collapse were the shifting balance of power in the world order and the WTO’s inflexibility in adjusting the rulebook and its procedures. The main reasons for the U.S.’ dissatisfaction are objective but based on formalities; the blockage of the AB is an overreaction. Moreover, the U.S.’ position on this issue has not changed with the new president. As a result, there is abuse of the current situation as WTO members file appeals “into the void.” Existing tools to circumvent the collapse are partial and not yet popular among WTO members. Russia needs to resume the AB’s work to complete previously started high-profile disputes and to defend its interests in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itumeleng D. Mothoagae

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.


1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN

Many expected that after the Cold War, there would be peace, order, increasing prosperity in expanding markets and the extension and eventual consolidation of civil and political rights. There would be a new world order, and it would in these ways be liberal. In international politics, the United States would be supreme. It would through security treaties command the peace in western Europe and east Asia; through its economic power command it in eastern Europe and Russia; through clients and its own domination command it in the Middle East; through tacit understanding command it in Latin America; and, in so far as any state could, command it in Africa also. It could choose whether to cooperate in the United Nations, and if it did not wish to do so, be confident that it would not be disablingly opposed by illiberal states. In the international markets, it would be able to maintain holdings of its bonds. In the international financial institutions, it would continue to be decisive in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it would be an important influence in the regional development banks; and it would be powerful in what it was to insist in 1994 should be called the World (rather than Multinational) Trade Organisation. Other transactions in the markets, it is true, would be beyond the control of any state. But they would not be likely to conflict with the interests of the United States (and western Europe) in finance, investment and trade, and would discipline other governments.


2020 ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
I. V. Bocharnikov ◽  
O. A. Ovsyannikova

Тhe article reveals the main directions of transformation of the modern world order caused by the decline of the American-centric system, as well as the crisis of European integration. The main factors that determine the development of these processes, problems and prospects for the formation of a new world order at the beginning of the third decade of the XXI century are determined. The most significant aspects of the transformation of the policy of the United States and its European allies in relation to Russia are considered, and historical analogies are drawn with the processes of transformation of the world community in the XIX and XX centuries.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Lloyd E. Ambrosius

One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the First World War. Four days earlier, in his war message to Congress, he gave his rationale for declaring war against Imperial Germany and for creating a new world order. He now viewed German submarine attacks against neutral as well as belligerent shipping as a threat to the whole world, not just the United States. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” he claimed. “It is a war against all nations.” He now believed that Germany had violated the moral standards that “citizens of civilized states” should uphold. The president explained: “We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.” He focused on protecting democracy against the German regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II. “A steadfast concert for peace,” he said, “can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.” Wilson called on Congress to vote for war not just because Imperial Germany had sunk three American ships, but for the larger purpose of a new world order. He affirmed: “We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty.”


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