Resources Archive

China’s restriction of global access to its deposits of rare earth elements starting in 2010 changed the status of these materials in the global economy, creating new diplomatic alliances across Asia and increasing the importance of mining in trade agreements. A series of trade agreements in Central and Southeast Asia, announced over the past month, reveal the ways manufacturers and mining conglomerates are coping with potential shortages two years after China’s rare earth consolidation. Nevertheless, difficulties inherent to extraction and processing mean that delays will hamper access to new sources of rare earth supplies even when supported by strong investments. […]

A rare earth plant that is a joint venture between Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. and Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazatomprom opened in Kazakhstan last week. In an email interview, Timur Dadabaev, an expert on Central Asia at Tsukuba University in Japan, discussed Japanese relations with Central Asia. WPR: What is the recent history of Japan’s diplomatic and trade relations with Central Asia? Timur Dadabaev: Japanese engagement in Central Asia has evolved from former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1990s-era Eurasian diplomacy toward the formation of the current Central Asia Plus Japan (CAJ) initiative. Hashimoto’s policy of engagement was continued by his successor, Keizo […]

On Tuesday, a Chinese court sentenced four members of a Myanmar drug gang to death for hijacking two Chinese cargo boats and kidnapping and killing 13 Chinese crewmembers on the Mekong River last year. The defendants, including two other gang members who received lesser sentences, were charged with “intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and ship hijacking,” as reported by the Associated Press. Richard P. Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the court decision raises more questions than it answers, especially about the nine Thai soldiers who were also accused of involvement in the attack […]

A meeting in Hobart, Australia, of countries charged with protecting marine life in the waters around Antarctica closed last week without a vote on a joint proposal by New Zealand and the United States to create a marine protected area in the Ross Sea.* In an email interview, Alan D. Hemmings, an environmental consultant and specialist on Antarctic governance and environmental management, discussed the bid to protect the Ross Sea. WPR: What is at stake in the discussion over creating a protected area in the Ross Sea? Alan D. Hemmings: At stake is, critically, the Ross Sea ecosystem — what […]

This summer’s drought in the U.S. has triggered the third major food price spike in the past five years, leaving the world’s poor to wonder if global leaders learned anything from the first two. To judge by their actions so far, they haven’t. The food crisis of the past five years has indeed energized food and agricultural policymakers, bringing long-overdue attention to chronic problems, from underinvestment in smallholder agriculture to overreliance on high-input industrial production. It has seen welcome new institutions brought into being and existing ones revitalized, stimulating new investment in agricultural research and serving as a reminder that […]