History was made last month when 175 countries, including Pakistan, signed the Paris Climate Change Agreement—the largest single-day signing of an international agreement, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The agreement pledges to collectively limit global temperature rise ...

International borders are designed to control the people, goods and even the information moving across them. Among these resources, water stands as one of the most critical, and least cooperative. In the Caucasus region, transboundary water resources shared by Armenia ...

An important aspect of the negotiations at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) was the financing of climate-adaptation projects in less-developed countries. Climate change poses a more severe threat to stability in developing countries, where government resources are scarce ...

Around a month ago, the 21st iteration of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Participants (UNFCCC COP21) in Paris concluded. Shannon Gibson, an international relations professor at the University of Southern California, was a participant in ...

Behind the landmark climate deal that came out of Paris almost a month ago, one negotiator’s success deserves reflection. Izabella Teixeira was in a complicated position. As Brazil’s environment minister, she was tasked with a mediating role despite environmental negligence ...

Anbar Aizenman The success of the Paris deal must be looked at  relative to the shortcomings of previous attempts at agreements. While it is an improvement from Copenhagen, it is sorely lacking in certain respects, making it challenging to forecast ...

Though we are well into the 21st century, the infrastructure and design of most of the world’s cities still reflect the zeitgeist of 20th century modernist urban planning. Urban planning is struggling to keep up with the new, progressive values ...

While most countries are still discussing ideas of how to curb carbon emissions, last March, Costa Rica made a groundbreaking announcement—their state-run utility company reported that they had powered their country’s electricity through renewable energy sources for a record-breaking 75 ...

Years of legal and regulatory battles, protests pitting environmentalists against “Big Oil” and over $7 billion spent – and just a month and a half after receiving final drilling permits – Shell announced its intention to pack up its Arctic ...

At the G7 summit in Germany this past month, world leaders from developed nations pledged to completely phase out fossil fuels by 2100 in an attempt to mitigate climate change. If this weighty goal is to be reached, a transition ...