Infrastructure

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa defended his legacy last month in his last state of the nation address, saying that the current recession is the result of a perfect storm of falling oil prices and a strengthening U.S. dollar. In an email interview, Diego Grijalva, a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco of Quito, discusses Ecuador’s economy in the wake of the commodities bust. WPR: How important are commodities for Ecuador’s economy, and what impact [...]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on countries’ risk exposure, contribution and response to climate change. During his visit to Washington last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to formally ratifying the Paris climate change agreement by the end of 2016. In an email interview, Neil Bhatiya, the climate and diplomacy fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, discusses India’s response to climate change. WPR: What is India’s risk exposure to climate change, what effects of climate change are already apparent, and what sorts of mitigation approaches will it have to adopt or [...]

Against a broader backdrop of regional turmoil, Mauritania has remained surprisingly, if delicately stable. This feat is especially noteworthy given that just a few years ago the country was considered at significant risk of destabilization. Its politics and society have been perennially buffeted by the storms of racial tensions, ethnic cleavages and political volatility. Since its independence from France in 1960, Mauritania has wavered precariously between this state of fragile stability and state collapse. Its record of successive coups and attempted coups between 1978 and 2008; major ethnic clashes in 1989 and 1990; and terrorist attacks between 2005 and 2011 [...]