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11012. An Electricity Grid for the 21st Century
- Author:
- Linda Stuntz and Susan Tomasky
- Publication Date:
- 10-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- For many years, electricity transmission has been designed to provide enough interconnection to provide affordable, reliable supplies of electricity. Recent developments in market mechanisms, technologies and policy goals have begun to pose different requirements on the existing grid system. To meet the needs of all beneficiaries of transmission enhancements, new planning, siting and cost allocation strategies must be implemented.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Energy Policy, and Industrial Policy
11013. U.S. Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan
- Author:
- Richard L. Armitage and Samuel R. Berger
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Al-Qaeda's attack on September 11, 2001, was the deadliest terrorist assault on the United States in history. In the hours and days that followed, Americans learned more about the perpetrators and their links to bases and networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Less than a month later, President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom. Much changed nearly overnight as the United States focused military, economic, and diplomatic attention squarely on the region for the first time since the end of the Cold War. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime—al-Qaeda's sympathetic host—was toppled. In Pakistan, the Pervez Musharraf regime was drafted into Washington's Global War on Terror.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Afghanistan, and United States
11014. Catalyzing Support for Small Growing Businesses in Developing Countries: Mapping the Policies of International Development Donors Investors
- Author:
- Estera Barbarasa
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- This report depicts the landscape of development organizations that fund and support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries: multilateral development banks, bilateral government donor agencies, and development finance institutions (DFIs). The report is a new contribution to both the development community, as well as the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Advocacy and policy work is a strategic priority for ANDE, and the report's findings will enable the Network to understand the international development community and to be more strategic in its approach as it seeks to influence and shape the international development SME agenda.
- Topic:
- Development, International Trade and Finance, Third World, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
11015. Innovations in Cooperation: A Guidebook on Bilateral Agreements to Address Health Worker Migration
- Author:
- Robert Kapp, Ibadat S. Dhillon, and Margaret E. Clark
- Publication Date:
- 05-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- There is limited international structure to manage the ever important phenomenon of human migration and its associated challenges. This is particularly true with respect to the international migration of health workers, where bilateral agreements between sending and receiving nations have been repeatedly and urgently called for in the context of a global health workforce crisis. There remains, however, significant lack of clarity on the precise role, form, and content bilateral agreements should take to serve a health-related purpose. This Guidebook, including presentation of two model bilateral agreements, aims to provide guidance to further international cooperation around the critical and highly sensitive area of health worker migration.
- Topic:
- Health, International Cooperation, and Health Care Policy
11016. Congress and National Security
- Author:
- Kay King
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Much has been written, blogged, and broadcast in the past several years about the dysfunction of the U.S. Congress. Filibusters, holds, and poison pill amendments have become hot topics, albeit intermittently, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have increasingly exploited these tactics in pursuit of partisan or personal ends. Meanwhile, such pressing national issues as deficit reduction, immigration reform, and climate change have gone unresolved. To be fair, the 111th Congress has addressed many significant issues, but those it has addressed, such as health-care reform and economic stimulus, exposed Americans to a flawed process of backroom deals that favors obstruction over deliberation, partisanship over statesmanship, and narrow interests over national concerns. Although partisan politics, deal making, and parliamentary maneuvering are nothing new to Congress, the extent to which they are being deployed today by lawmakers and the degree to which they obstruct the resolution of national problems are unprecedented. This may explain why Congress registered a confidence level of only 11 percent in July 2010, marking its lowest rating ever in the annual Gallup institutional confidence survey and ranking it last among sixteen major U.S. institutions.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and War
- Political Geography:
- United States
11017. Madagascar : la crise A un tournant critique ?
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- En mars 2009, acculé par des manifestations, ainsi que par une mutinerie de l'armée, l'ancien président Marc Ravalomanana remet le pouvoir à un directoire militaire, qui le transmet immédiatement au maire de la capitale de l'époque, Andry Rajoelina, meneur des mouvements de contestation. 1 A la tête de l'Etat depuis lors, la Haute au- torité de la transition (HAT) monopolise le pouvoir, alors qu'une opposition structurée en « mouvances » représen- tant les anciens présidents du pays réclame une gestion inclusive et consensuelle de la transition defait, ouverte par la chute de Ravalomanana et l'installation au pouvoir de la HAT. 2 Ce mode de gestion av ait fait l'objet d'accords en 2009 à Maputo et à Addis-Abeba entre les quatre chefs de mouvances, mais ceuxci ont été annulés de manière unilatérale par le président de la HAT.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Politics, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Africa
11018. Energy Innovation: Driving Technology Competition and Cooperation Among the U.S., China, India, and Brazil
- Author:
- Adam Segal, Elizabeth C. Economy, Michael A. Levi, and Shannon K. O'Neil
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- If governments are to respond effectively to the challenge of climate change, they will need to ramp up their support for innovation in low-carbon technologies and make sure that the resulting developments are diffused and adopted quickly. Yet for the United States, there is a tension inherent in these goals: the country's interests in encouraging the spread of technology can clash with its efforts to strengthen its own economy of particular importance is the spread of low-carbon technologies from the United States to the major emerging economies—China, India, and Brazil. Washington's strategy to promote the spread of low-carbon technologies to these countries must combine efforts to grow and open markets for low-carbon technologies with active support for accelerating the innovation and diffusion of these technologies. Its strategy will also need to reflect the unique challenges presented by each of the three countries.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Energy Policy, International Cooperation, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States, China, Washington, and Brazil
11019. Congo : Pas de stabilité au Kivu malgré le rapprochement avec le Rwanda
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Le plan de résolution du conf lit au Kivu consistant à pri-vilégier la solution militaire s'avère être un échec. Deux années après le début du rapprochement entre le président Congolais Joseph Kabila et son homologue rwandais Paul Kagame, les soldats gouvernementaux sont encore aux prises avec des miliciens pour le contrôle des terres et des zones minières. Bien qu'aucune des deux parties n'ait réellement les capacités de pr endre un ascendant définitif, elles ont toutes deux les ressources suffisantes pour prolonger la lutte. Dans le même temps, les civils subissent des violences extrêmes et la situation humanitaire se dété-riore. Les tensions ethniques se sont aggravées à l'annonce des plans de rapatriement de dizaines de milliers de réfu-giés congolais qui ont fui au Rwanda durant les années 1990. Le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies a observé la situation se dégrader à l'est du Congo sans s'opposer aux décisions de Kagame et Kabila.
- Topic:
- Civil War, Diplomacy, Economics, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, War, and Peacekeeping
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo
11020. Hydropolitics in Pakistan's Indus Basin
- Author:
- Daanish Mustafa
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- Water problems in Pakistan result largely from poor management, but the consequences of management failures are accentuated, both materially and politically, by international and subnational hydropolitics. There is enough water in the Indus basin to provide for the livelihoods of its residents for a long time, provided that the water is managed efficiently and equitably and that additional water is made available not just through storage but, more importantly, through higher efficiency and intersectoral transfers. The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) seems to moderate the worst impulses of India and Pakistan toward each other, and perhaps therein lies IWT's greatest strength. Pakistani engineers typically interpret the IWT's extensive technical annexures very literally, whereas the Indian engineers tend to emphasize the treaty's criteria for techno-economi¬cally sound project design. No single completed or proposed Indian project on the three western rivers of the Indus basin alone has the potential to significantly limit flows of water to Pakistan. But the long list of proposed Indian projects on the those rivers will in the future give India the cumulative storage capacity to reduce substantively water flows to Pakistan during the low-flow winter months. The IWT, by performing an amputation surgery on the basin, made matters simple and allowed India and Pakistan to pursue their nationalist agendas without much need for more sophisticated and involved cooperation in the water field. This lack of cooperative sharing of water leaves the ecological and social consequences of the treaty to be negotiated and contested at the subnational scale. The interprovincial conflict over water distribution in Pakistan has potential—albeit entirely avoidable—repercussions for stability, at both the subnational and international levels. Instead of constructing very expensive, environmentally damaging, and economically dubious water-storage megaprojects in Pakistan, enhancement of the existing infrastructure's efficiency, coupled with better on-farm water management and more appropriate irrigation and farming techniques, would perhaps more than make up for any additional water that might be gained from megaprojects. Since the drought in southern Pakistan in the latter half of the 1990s, the single-minded focus of the Pakistani water bureaucracy on water development has made the issue of the construction of the Kalabagh Dam project a surrogate for a litany of Sindhi grievances against the Punjabi-dominated political, military, and bureaucratic system in Pakistan. The emphasis on maximizing water withdrawals and on greater regulation of the Indus river system contributed to accentuating the very high flood peaks in 2010. Although the floods are being used by the pro-dams lobby to call for construction of more storage on the Indus, the tragedy ought to inspire a more nuanced and comprehensive reevaluation of the water-management system in the basin. The IWT is a product of its time and could be fruitfully modified and renegotiated to bring it more in line with contemporary international watercourse law, the Helsinki rules, and emerging concerns with water quality, environmental sustainability, climate change, and principles of equitable sharing. But that renegotiation, if it ever happens, is going to be contingent upon significant improvement in bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. India could be more forthcoming with flow data and be more prompt and open in communicating its planned projects on the Indus basin to Pakistan, particularly in the western basin. Pakistan can engage with India within the context of the IWT more positively than defensively, and also educate its media and politicians so as not to sensationalize essentially technical arguments by presenting them as existential threats.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Water
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, South Asia, and India