Dispatches
Forging a new strategic partnership
Canada and Mexico, living alongside and often in the shadow of the colossus of the 20th Century, have long seen their place in the world as deeply coloured by the reality that they are of the Americas, but not Americans. The two countries have benefited from their proximity to the largest economy on Earth and […]
From the Arctic to the Usumacinta
Mexican Ambassador Francisco J. Barrio Terrazas celebrates the astonishing successes of the North American Free Trade Agreement, now approaching its 20th year. But he finds the world’s most vibrant free-trade agreement has now “fallen short” of meeting the next-generation needs of the Mexican, Canadian and U.S. peoples. Here, Ambassador Barrio Terrazas calls for fundamental reform […]
Mexico on the rise
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, in his mid-February tour of Latin American countries, succinctly explained Canada’s strategic interest in a more economically integrated partnership of the Three Amigos in the NAFTA free-trade agreement — and most urgently with Mexico, the poorest of them all. “Mexico, in our lifetime, is going to be a Top-10 […]
The top 10 hot spots plus 5 runners-up
The wars and rumours of war that will shape 2013 By Wolfgang Depner This piece opens with a proviso. Efforts to predict the future course of human events, no matter how sophisticated they might be, enjoy a less-than-satisfactory record, notwithstanding the recent accomplishments of poll aggregator Nate Silver in forecasting the outcome of the presidential […]
A sobering report on UN goals
Jon Lane is the former executive director of the UN’s Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. WaterCan presented him with the Michael Lubbock Award in October in Ottawa for his contributions in the field of international water and sanitation. The following are excerpts from his acceptance speech. I started work in water and sanitation in […]
Biodiversity in a bottle
Utterly unperturbed, Lili Ana Rodrigues gently pries open the roof of a handmade wooden bee box, slices off paper-thin peaks of miniature mountains made of charcoal-coloured parchment, and carefully inserts a plastic syringe into what should be the dangerous, inner domain of several hundred wild bees. The inner hive is, in fact, pulsating with tiny […]
Arctic sovereignty: Who owns what?
By Laura Neilson Bonikowsky The Arctic is a stable region of eight nations that generally exhibit mutual trust and co-operation. The key body concerned with the dialogue among these states is the Arctic Council, whose members include, in addition to the eight Arctic nations (Canada, U.S., Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia and Iceland), permanent participants […]
The Arctic, country by country
Our eight-country primer takes you to each of the council’s member states and offers a breakdown of their Arctic territory, interests and claims. By Laura Neilson Bonikowsky CANADA Area: 9,984,670 sq km Population: 34,476,688 (2012) Canada’s frigid Arctic is definitely something to get hot and bothered about. It makes up more than 40 percent […]
Norway and Russia: high North, low tension
By Else Berit Eikeland In September 2010, Norway and Russia signed the treaty on maritime delimitation and co-operation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The treaty was an historic milestone. It resolved what for several decades had remained the most important outstanding issue between Norway and Russia: the maritime boundary between the two […]
Women at the wheel
The world’s top-10 most powerful female politicians By Wolfgang Depner Why do so few women enter politics? This familiar, yet frustrating question looms large behind this list of the 10 most powerful female leaders currently holding office around the globe. Some have blamed the absence of women in politics on pervasive patterns of social […]
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