Rohan D’Souza

By the 1970s, the idea of development had lost much of its swagger and bite. Environmental degradation, in particular, ballooned into a global anxiety. Soon enough, development enthusiasts found themselves in a bind. Could economic prosperity be pursued ‘as if nature did not matter’? The World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission) in a much celebrated report in 1987 sought to overcome the development–environment impasse by talking up the term ‘sustainable development’.

• Published: March 2017
• Strategic Analysis

The standard narrative on modern geopolitics is being re-scripted. Previous ingredients that made up the literature on high politics such as securing resources, rivalries over the control of territory and war plans are increasingly being replaced instead by concerns about the ‘mundane’ politics of global energy plans, food systems, infrastructure and city design. Meaningful geopolitics in the time of climate change, in other words, would now have to grapple with the inescapable urgency for sustaining key ecological, biological and atmospheric indicators at the planetary level.

• Published: November 2015
• Strategic Analysis

Three verities appear to underwrite contemporary environmentalism. We live in an interdependent world. The earth is fragile. And good science is our best bet to ‘save’ the planet. When strung together, these views can speak forcefully for responsibility, restraint and hope. But what appears as today’s clinching common sense had very little intellectual purchase among decision makers for much of the recent past.

• Published: September 2014
• Strategic Analysis