The lives of billions of people are at stake at this month’s COP26 Summit, as regional and national leaders meet to mitigate the worst case scenarios of climate change. Against this backdrop, we know that thousands of lives are already being lost every year – but what about the climate survivors? What are the long-term psychological effects at play? ...
Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, we negotiate in every aspect of our daily lives - whether it be persuading a child to eat its vegetables, haggling over a property price, or discussing the terms of a job offer. Negotiation can be viewed as “back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed”....
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) aims at “Uniting the World to Tackle Climate Change”. While the technical aspects to addressing climate change is more evident in the goals of COP 26, it is time attention is equally paid to the governance of climate change at the metropolitan scale, made up of our major cities. Due to rapid urbanisation, the world is increasingly becoming metropolitan. Cities have expanded outwards and have become more interdependent with their immediate...
Bruno Martorano, United Nations University; Francesco Iacoella, United Nations University; Laura Metzger, Harvard Kennedy School, and Marco Sanfilippo, Università di Torino Chinese investment in Africa has helped spark economic growth and improve social outcomes across the continent. Yet Chinese projects often seem to go hand in hand with civil protests. We wanted to find out whether these were isolated incidents or signalled broader discontent among the population. In new research, we show that...
MAASTRICHT. As of January 2019, researchers [and other staff] from the UNU-MERIT institute pay a flying tax when they book a domestic flight or a flight abroad. The tax is deducted from the project budget. “I was slightly apprehensive for the reactions,” says director Bart Verspagen, “but the plan went down well.” At UNU-MERIT, which has more than 100 researchers, there is a lot of flying, says Verspagen. “We calculated that our members of staff emitted approximately 450 tonnes of CO2 in 2018. I...
A joint post by Prof. Shyama V. Ramani and Maria Tomai The many varied possibilities of the ‘Circular Economy’ are starting to enter the public consciousness. But what is it exactly? “Looking beyond the current ‘take, make and dispose’ extractive industrial model, the circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design. Relying on system-wide innovation, it aims to redefine products and services to design waste out, while minimising negative impacts. Underpinned by a transition to renewab...
The APPAM International Conference 2017 lived up to its theme of ‘Public Policy and Governance Beyond Borders’ – not least thanks to the academics, analysts, practitioners and students who joined from all around the world. I had the opportunity to present a paper on ‘Metropolitan Governance Cooperation and CO2 Transport Emission’, which I’m currently working on with Dr. Tatiana Skripka....
Researchers from China and Europe met in Maastricht on 24 April 2017 to discuss research related to the SINCERE project, or ‘Sino-European Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency’. The workshop was hosted by UNU-MERIT researchers Prof. René Kemp and Dr. Serdar Türkeli and participants included Yong Geng from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; Beijia Huang from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China; Raimund Bleischwit...
On Earth Day, Saturday April 22 2017, scientists will descend from their ivory towers in more than 500 cities across the globe to stage a huge March for Science. The scientists are coming out en masse to champion “robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity”....
I heard about the 2017 APPAM Conference through my university network. At the time, I had just finalised a paper on environmental policy in the Water-Food-Energy Nexus of the Mekong Region, which became the foundation of my current thesis. When I saw the conference themes, I thought it would be a good venue to present my work and explore options for future research collaboration with other academics and practitioners. ...