Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. The impacts of a drastically warming climate are already being felt in Mongolia, where air temperatures have risen at three times the global rate since the 1940s. Average precipitation is declining and extreme weather disasters are more frequent, posing challenges for the country’s agriculture sector, which accounts for one-tenth of GDP and employs one-third of the labor force. In an interview with WPR, Tungalag Ulambayar, the research director of Saruul Khuduu Environmental Research & Consulting in Ulaanbaatar, discusses the threat that climate change poses [...]
As 2018 draws to a close, U.S. President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, are sounding remarkably optimistic about the future of the Korean Peninsula, a marked contrast to the hostile rhetoric of potential “fire and fury” that reflected heightened tensions following a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea just one year ago. Most experts and analysts, however, are skeptical that the current approach will yield the positive outcomes the two leaders predict, noting that no concrete actions toward denuclearization, much less the process by which they might be taken, have been discussed with [...]
Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, suffered a historic defeat in local elections last weekend that were overshadowed by an extensive Chinese interference campaign. Taking responsibility for her party’s midterm drubbing, President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as DPP leader on Saturday night, casting doubt on her prospects for winning a second term in national elections set to take place in early 2020. Many observers had expected the opposition Kuomintang, or KMT, which favors closer ties with China, to make a comeback after losing both the presidency and a legislative majority in 2016. Anti-incumbency was in the air in the months [...]
