what's new?

Will China Surprise the U.S. on Climate Change? IGCC Director Susan Shirk and SIO Director Tony Haymet point out trends in Chinese environmental policy that may leave the United States sitting on the climate change sidelines. Link to article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

New Funding from the Ford Foundation: IGCC has received a grant from the Ford Foundation in the amount of $100,000 to organize and co-host a conference on the impact of foreign aid and development in Africa. Led by IGCC Director Susan Shirk, the Spring 2009 conference will set a research agenda for collecting new data on the impact of foreign aid on economic and political development in Africa. The conference is a collaborative effort between IGCC, the School of International Studies at Beijing University, and the Centre of Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University. More.

An alarming increase in expected Chinese CO₂ output: The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases much more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. Based on their findings, co-authors Maximillian Auffhammer (UC Berkeley) and Richard Carson (UC San Diego) find current global warming forecasts are "overly optimistic," and state that action is urgently needed to curb greenhouse gas production in China and other rapidly industrializing countries. The study was funded in part by IGCC. More.

Envisioning a Multilateral Security Mechanism for Northeast Asia: As part of a broad multi-year effort to explore the contours of Asian institution building, the Stanley Foundation, in collaboration with IGCC, convened a workshop on February 12, 2008, to explore the way forward for a future multilateral security and peace mechanism in Northeast Asia and the near-, medium- and long-term implications for the United States. This workshop built on an earlier IGCC-Stanley Foundation meeting on envisioning the future security and peace mechanism for Northeast Asia held in November 2007 in Moscow. A new policy memo, drafted following the San Diego workshop, provides a brief overview of the issue and factors at play for U.S. policymakers. More.