Foundations of the Future examines the geo-economic and geo-strategic implications of a growing global 'battle' to promote infrastructural connectivity across and between continents of the world. In this context, it highlights the importance of China's Belt and Road Initiative and of corresponding initiatives by the United States, Japan, India and Australia, among others.This book argues that many of the world's most advanced economies have neglected investment in basic infrastructure in recent decades, at a potential cost to their future economic and social development. It examines some of the financial and ideological constraints behind this neglect and argues that advanced economies in general need to adopt fundamental reforms in their approach to infrastructure. By emphasising the 'battle' elements of emerging infrastructure competition among major powers, the book sets out to alert policymakers to the danger of some of these powers losing out in what is becoming a race to stay ahead or even abreast of others in the bid to achieve global physical connectivity.Related Link(s)
Infrastructure resources are the subject of many contentious public policy debates, including what to do about crumbling roads and bridges, whether and how to protect our natural environment, energy policy, even patent law reform, universal health care, network neutrality regulation and the future of the Internet. Each of these involves a battle to control infrastructure resources, to establish the terms and conditions under which the public receives access, and to determine how the infrastructure and various dependent systems evolve over time. Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources devotes much needed attention to understanding how society benefits from infrastructure resources and how management decisions affect a wide variety of interests. The book links infrastructure, a particular set of resources defined in terms of the manner in which they create value, with commons, a resource management principle by which a resource is shared within a community. The infrastructure commons ideas have broad implications for scholarship and public policy across many fields ranging from traditional infrastructure like roads to environmental economics to intellectual property to Internet policy. Economics has become the methodology of choice for many scholars and policymakers in these areas. The book offers a rigorous economic challenge to the prevailing wisdom, which focuses primarily on problems associated with ensuring adequate supply. The author explores a set of questions that, once asked, seem obvious: what drives the demand side of the equation, and how should demand-side drivers affect public policy? Demand for infrastructure resources involves a range of important considerations that bear on the optimal design of a regime for infrastructure management. The book identifies resource valuation and attendant management problems that recur across many different fields and many different resource types, and it develops a functional economic approach to understanding and analyzing these problems and potential solutions.
Infrastructure is at the heart of China's presence in global development and is also central to larger debates about Chinese influence. This Element provides a comprehensive account of major, Chinese government-financed infrastructure projects in the Global South since 1949. Using new datasets, it demonstrates that Chinese global infrastructure is distinct in terms of its historical tenacity and massive contemporary scope. But this does not imply that contemporary Chinese global infrastructure or the Belt and Road Initiative should be studied in a vacuum. Historical and comparative perspectives show that contemporary projects often emerge based on similar political logics to those that shaped infrastructure investment in earlier periods of Chinese history and other international contexts. The Element then examines how infrastructure projects have created both purposeful and unintended sources of influence by serving as valuable but risky political capital for host country governments as well as the Chinese government.
The challenge in teaching an introductory course on sustainability is there are many ways to teach it, and many issues to cover. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals offer a cohesive and interconnected set of topics to help address this problem – indeed the SDGs are now the guiding framework for planning and implementing sustainability through 2030. They are the focus of international development efforts, and the lingua franca of sustainability as a field of study, the international consensus on “what is sustainability?” As such, the UN SDGs present an ideal framework for an introductory level textbook because taken together, they integrate the “Three Es”—environment, economic development, and equity—that are the core definition of sustainability. This book introduces students to sustainability structured around the 17 UN SDGs. Through a global perspective, with attention given equally to how sustainability challenges the highest income countries of the Global North, as well as to the moderate- and low-income countries of the Global South, Benton-Short synthesizes basic environmental science, policy, and interdisciplinary perspectives while investigating key challenges to developing a more sustainable future through the SDG framework. Readers will easily tackle this complex set of topics through an accessible writing style, comprehensive scholarship, and diverse perspectives. Guided by a lush art program, complete with numerous maps, figures, and photos to enliven the presentation, students will develop a greater understanding of the important trends in sustainability in the twenty-first century. The broad arguments highlighted through numerous case studies and boxes prepare global citizens to grapple with the environmental, social, economic, and political challenges that face our collective future. Features of this exciting, brand-new text include: Chapter opening learning objectives to guide students’ course goals Helpful study aids such as key terms—bolded in the text and compiled both at the end of each chapter and in a comprehensive glossary End-of-chapter questions for discussion and activities to promote active learning A stunning art program, with detailed maps, figures, tables, and photos, to engage students as visual learners Critical Perspectives and Expert Voice boxes to present the diverse perspectives in sustainability Interconnections boxes to help students tie together ideas across the issues Key Terms and Concepts and Understanding the Issue boxes to go in-depth on important topics Making Progress and Solutions boxes that show students hopeful trends toward seemingly intractable problems SDGs and the Law boxes that provide a legal and governance context.
NEW YORK TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2015 One of the world’s leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes readers deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you—and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined. Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services. Yet, as ubiquitous as technology seems today, just over the horizon is a tidal wave of scientific progress that will leave our heads spinning. If today’s Internet is the size of a golf ball, tomorrow’s will be the size of the sun. Welcome to the Internet of Things, a living, breathing, global information grid where every physical object will be online. But with greater connections come greater risks. Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt of electricity and a car’s brakes can be disabled at high speed from miles away. Meanwhile, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bioterrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders. With explosive insights based upon a career in law enforcement and counterterrorism, Marc Goodman takes readers on a vivid journey through the darkest recesses of the Internet. Reading like science fiction, but based in science fact, Future Crimes explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow, including robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. These fields hold the power to create a world of unprecedented abundance and prosperity. But the technological bedrock upon which we are building our common future is deeply unstable and, like a house of cards, can come crashing down at any moment. Future Crimes provides a mind-blowing glimpse into the dark side of technological innovation and the unintended consequences of our connected world. Goodman offers a way out with clear steps we must take to survive the progress unfolding before us. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late.
The little-known story of the systems that bring us our drinking water, how they were developed, the problems they are facing, and how they will be reinvented in the near future
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
Global Trade in the Emerging Business Environment explores global trade dynamics in the emerging business environment. Globalization, technological advancements, Industry 4.0, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the COVID-19 pandemic are changing the global trade ecosystem. Companies and countries need to evaluate these rapid changes and adjust their respective business strategies and policy formulations. This book discusses such strategies and how firms and countries can reposition themselves within the current environment.
