Space International

There have been demonstrations in European cities, a petition by 2.5 million people and resignations by officials involved with the passage into law of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The opposition is growing. Several countries (Germany, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Netherlands) have expressed their concerns. And now the European Commission, once a supporter, has withheld its signature and referred the draft law to the European Court of Justice to rule on whether ACTA could deny fundamental freedoms.

The European Union continues to be Africa’s most important strategic commercial partner, yet a failure to turn policy rhetoric into action in Brussels could leave it struggling to adapt its cooperation model to new realities on the continent

The report, Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? (PDF), documents the dawning of a new worldwide industry—clean energy—which has experienced investment growth of 230 percent since 2005. Demonstrating its strength, the clean energy sector declined only 6.6 percent in 2009 despite the worst financial downturn in over half a century. In 2009, $162 billion was invested in clean energy around the world. Rebounding from a sharp downturn in the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, clean energy investments in the G-20 averaged a robust $32 billion in each of the last three quarters of 2009. In an encouraging sign for the future, many governments prioritized clean energy within economic recovery funding, the bulk of which will reach innovators, businesses and installers in 2010 and 2011. Clean energy investments are forecast to grow by 25 percent to $200 billion in 2010.

Accounting for more than 90 percent of worldwide finance and investment, G-20 countries dominate the clean energy landscape. As the country profiles in this report demonstrate, virtually all G-20 countries have seen investments grow by more than 50 percent over the last five years.

THIS was supposed to be a stress-free year for the global economy. By January the financial crisis had faded and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis seemed less acute. America’s economy was resurgent. Investors piled into equities and sold some of the government bonds they’d bought for troubled times. If there was a worry, it was that emerging economies would grow too quickly, inflating commodity prices.

The year without crisis is not to be. First, Arabian upheaval put oil markets on edge. Then earthquake, tsunami and a nuclear accident clobbered the world’s third-largest economy. How much of a setback to growth do these twin crises represent? And how should economic policymakers react to them?

The revolutionary democratic movements that have spread across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) like wildfire have reminded the world of how profoundly it is changing.  New global economic leaders are emerging in the face of China, India, Brazil and Russia; the focus of global politics is moving away from the West; and the US has become wary of playing global policeman.  Faced by these changes, doubts have been emerging that the European Union’s political and economic influence is in decline and that it has reached its limit.  Yet, the cause and the solution for these is the same: unity.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just released the final report of his High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF). As the two private-sector members of the AGF, we are proud of our work. The report lays out the available options for mobilizing $100 billion annually for climate-change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, and establishes the conditions that would make it possible to achieve this goal by 2020.