COMMENT125-The Factors Driving Asia’s Sand Crisis
Newspaper articles around the world have issued a dramatic call to arms regarding what many consider a new global environmental crisis – a sand crisis. While it is true that commercially recoverable sand is outstripping demand in some areas of the Asia-Pacific, that hardly amounts to a global crisis of the world's most...
COMMENT 124 – Digital Silk Road: Internet Connectivity or Internet Captivity?
The importance of digital connectivity - in addition to physical connectivity - was realised by China as it carefully created the concept of the Digital Silk Road and enmeshed it within its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Digital Silk Road has been spurred into action with the...
COMMENT 123 – Asian Connectivity: Finance, Influence and Collaboration
New Connectivity
Asian connectivity is undergoing fundamental changes. Large-scale, ambitious projects linking territories, markets and communities across borders are coming up rapidly across the continent. Nothing symbolizes the burst in connectivity more than the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Other initiatives such as the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) are...
POLICY BRIEF 7 – Persecution of Christian Minorities in Pakistan: Roots, development and present-day...
‘Minorities, to whichever community they may belong, will be safeguarded. Their religion or faith or belief will be secure. There will be no interference of any kind with their freedom of worship. They will have their protection with regard to their religion, faith, their life, their culture. They...
COMMENT 122 – Pakistan’s tribal areas are brought in from the cold
An important domestic development occurred in Pakistan last month which went largely unnoticed externally: the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, with the neighbouring province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). This merger is a crucial moment for the almost...
FOCUS 38 – Between law and practice: Reflections from sealing drive across New Delhi
Shivkrit Rai and Purvi Kaya conducted the primary interviews and authored the paper. Deepanshu Mohan has been acknowledged in conceptualising the study and reviewing the paper.
Abstract
This paper provides a brief coverage of the on-going sealing drive in Delhi which massively disrupted the trading activities...
COMMENT 121 – Strategic Alternatives to Life-Threatening Salts
This paper sums up a communication which will be presented at the Regional Science Association International’s World Congress taking place from 28 May to 1 June in Goa, India.
1. The destruction of life through salinization
The issue I am highlighting today, salinization, is hardly a novelty; it has been around...
WORKING PAPER 10- ‘South Asia at the crossroads: Connectivity, security and sustainable development’
Special Issue
Edited by Dr Siegfried O. Wolf
This Special Issue of the SADF Working Paper Series is an outcome of a conference on ‘South Asia at the Crossroads: Connectivity, Security and Sustainable Development’, organised by the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF) on 21 November 2017, European Parliament, Brussels (Belgium).
Contents
1. Preface
Geoffrey...
COMMENT 120 – The Boao-Forum for Asia and China’s reforming of global governance: Why...
In the shadow of the growing US-China trade tension and the North Korean imbroglio, China is preparing for the 2018 annual meeting at the ‘Boao-Forum for Asia’. Not silently, but hardly noticed by the international media, especially the once in the West and some Asian regions, like South Asia....
COMMENT 119 – The Tashkent Forum: a new hope for Afghanistan’s future
‘The Tashkent Forum’ was first presented in a joint initiative by Uzbekistan and Afghanistan during the UN Security Council session in New York on January 19, 2018. The Tashkent International Conference named “Peace Process, Security Cooperation and Regional Connectivity” will be held in Tashkent on the 26 and 27...