- DETERRENCE: Japan’s Radical Energy Technocrats: Structural Reform Through Smart Communities
- DPRK: Elite volatility and change in North Korean politics: 1997 – 2010
- GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: China has broken Hong Kong agreement, say British MPs
- CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Better Growth Better Climate: The New Climate Economy Report
- CLIMATE CHANGE AND SECURITY: The security implications of geoengineering: blame, imposed agreement and the security of critical infrastructure
DETERRENCE: Japan’s Radical Energy Technocrats: Structural Reform Through Smart Communities, Andew DeWit, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 12:47:2, December 1, 2014.
Feed-in tariffs, municipal business, power-sector deregulation, fiscal and financial policy are activating a massive wave of bottom-up reindustrialization around renewable energy technology. Microgrids are already established in cities around Tokyo. Resilience underpins security.
- Bay Area can learn from Japan’s natural disaster precautions, David Baker, San Francisco Chronicle, November 30, 2014
- The Path from Fukushima: Short and Medium-term Impacts of the Reactor Damage Caused by the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on Japan’s Electricity Systems, Nautilus Institute, NAPSNet Special Reports, April 11, 2011 [PDF, 1,8MB]
- 2050 scenarios: The Dark Age of the Mega — City, From Gulag to Garden, Green Gold Giga-City, Jaws, Nautilus Institute, ‘Will East Asia Mega‐Cities Be Secure and Sustainable by 2050?‘, in Global Scenarios 2010, (Hanshin University Center for Peace and Public Integrity, Seoul, Korea, 2010 [PDF, 0.2MB]
DPRK: Elite volatility and change in North Korean politics: 1997 – 2010. John Ishiyama, Journal of Asian and African Studies. (28 August 2013). [subscription required]
North Korea remains mostly outside and only sometimes at the margins of the international community, preferring asymmetry to generally accepted normative behavior. Analytic models indicate Kim is altering his circle of advisors to include a slightly younger crowd more quickly than expected. However, it is nearly impossible to discern whether Kim and his new advisors have the internal networks, technocratic skills or even desire to reform North Korea in ways that would bring them into the international community.
- Political change in North Korea: mapping the succession. Stephan Haggard, Luke Herman, Jaesung Ryu. Asian Survey (July/August 2014) [subscription required]
- North Korea: beyond charismatic politics. Heonik Kwon and Byung-ho Chung, Rowman and Littlefield. Rowman and Littlefield Publisher (2012)
- Kim Jong-un’s sister gets key party post. Chosun Ilbo. (28 November 2014)
GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: China has broken Hong Kong agreement, say British MPs, Rowena Mason, The Guardian (2 December 2014).
Senior British MPs believe China has broken its agreement to allow Hong Kong to govern its own borders amid ongoing clashes between demonstrators and police, following China’s refusal to allow a delegation visit to Hong Kong. Leaders of the Occupy movement in Hong Kong have decided to surrender to police and called for protestors to surrender, citing fears of increasing violence.
- Hong Kong Occupy founders tell students to retreat amid fears of violence, Michelle Chen and James Pomfret, Reuters (2 December 2014)
- Hong Kong police are lone protest enforcers with silence from government, Fiona Law and Chester Yung, Wall Street Journal (1 December 2014)
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Better Growth Better Climate: The New Climate Economy Report, Global Commission on the Economy and Climate (September 2014) [3.44 MB, PDF]
A major assessment (commissioned by governments of seven countries including: Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom) considered how best to achieve prosperity and development at the same time as reducing carbon emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. There is the opportunity for all economies, regardless of current economic status, to grow while still moving to a low-carbon and climate adapted future.
- Global Warming: Improve Economic Models of Climate Change, Richard L. Revesz et al., Nature News & Comment (2014) [2.09 MB, PDF]
- Seeing is Believing: Creating a New Climate Economy in the United States, Working Paper, Nicholas Bianco et al., World Resources Institute and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate (October 2014) [3.54 MB, PDF]
CLIMATE CHANGE AND SECURITY: The security implications of geoengineering: blame, imposed agreement and the security of critical infrastructure, Paul Nightingale and Rose Cairns, Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Paper 018 (12 November 2014)
Perennial appraisal optimism aside, thinking about the costs of geoengineering soon reveals security aspects of global consensus-formation, governability, allocation of blame, and military control of securitised climate management that will “make geoengineering untenable as a policy option”. Deeper arguments about whether to research geoengineering now, or, to remain, counter-intuitively, intentionally ignorant, reveal alternative rational judgements and choices about modes of science, values, and human capacity.
- To know or not to know? A note on ignorance as a rhetorical resource in geoengineering debates, Steve Rayner, Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Paper 010 (2 may 2014)
- Costs and economics of geoengineering, Gordon MacKerron, Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Paper 013 (9 July 2014)
- Anyone can geoengineer: should we try to stop them? David Hodgkinson, The Conversation (2 March 2013)
The Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report captures multiple perspectives on six threats to global security. Our contributors select items that highlight the links among these themes.
Subscribe to NAPSNet to receive free weekly email reports.
Contributors:
- Deterrence: Peter Hayes
- DPRK: Roger Cavazos
- Governance and Civil Society: Dyana Mardon
- Climate Change Adaptation: Saleem Janjua
- Austral Peace and Security: Richard Tanter
- Climate Change and Security: Richard Tanter
NAPSNet Editor: Rebecca Pollack
I have followed Peter Hayes’s work via NBSNet since it’s beginning. Thanks.
K.C. Kim