A little Monday reading

Sometimes I take a look at my “to-do list” and all creativity leaves the building.  On those days, I’m glad to be able to point you toward other Fletcher writers, and there’s a bounty of material to share!

Hot off the wire this morning is an op-ed by Haider Mullick, a Fletcher PhD candidate.

Also timely, this article from Foreign Affairs, co-authored by second-year MIB students, Jianwei Dong and Kate Fedosova, along with Dean Chakravorti (about whom you’ll be reading more in the blog on Wednesday).

And then there’s this update from The Fletcher Forum.

Dear Fletcher students, faculty, and staff,

We hope you’ve been following The Fletcher Forum’s ongoing conversation on Climate Change as part of the 2014 Global Risk Forum.  These past two weeks, we’ve had some very interesting articles on how we might approach and mitigate this global risk.

Professor William Moomaw opened the conversation arguing that Restorative Development — meeting our needs while allowing nature to do its job — is an essential element of any strategy for tackling climate change.  Fletcher PhD candidate Laura Kuhl responded by arguing that while Restorative Development may be a helpful approach to integrate mitigation, adaptation, and development goals, we should remain cautiously optimistic, since so much depends on how such an approach is implemented on the ground.

We then heard from Dr. Richard Houghton, the Acting President and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.  Dr. Houghton argued for an alternative strategy: forest management, which he thinks can play an important role in reducing carbon emissions. But it is not a permanent strategy, he argues, and the window of opportunity may be closing.

Next, Fletcher MALD student Caroline Ott responded that by focusing on the risks posed by the current fragility of climate negotiations, we are investing too heavily in a process whose outcome is not essential to the goals of emissions reductions and climate adaptation.  Rather than looking to climate negotiations as the finish line for a climate treaty, she argues, we should be using these talks to incite action from a range of bilateral and philanthropic institutions.

We are very pleased with the intellectual caliber of these perspectives and ideas about how to mitigate one of the critical global risks we are facing as an international community.  We hope you’ll continue reading these conversations and submit your own responses to web.editor@fletcherforum.org.  You can also engage with us on social media, follow us on twitter @FletcherForum, and tweet using #2014RiskForum.

Outside of our Global Risk conversations, we have additional recent content that may interest you as well — ranging from the role of Hezbollah in the Middle East to the impact of Artificial Intelligence technology on state power.

You can read more of our recent content here:

Metastasizing Menace: Hezbollah as a Regional Player, by Massaab Al-Aloosy

On Artificial Intelligence and Meta-Geopolitics, by Nayef Al-Rodhan

Reevaluating Ethopian-Saudi Ties Amid Migrant Worker Crackdown, by Alemayehu Weldemariam

Happy reading!
-The Fletcher Forum Online

I trust that all these articles and op-eds will more than take the place of whatever I might have written today.  I’ll do my best to create some interesting content for tomorrow.