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Desalted Water Abounds While Aquifers Run Dry
The Hassyan plant in Dubai produces desalted water at $0.37 per cubic meter as part of an IWP offer of 180 MIGD. This technical achievement masks an asymmetry that deepens each year: Gulf States hold approximately 60% of global desalination capacity and produce approximately 40% of its volume, while
The Semiconductor Battle Against a Backdrop of Massive Public Subsidies
The United States aimed for approximately 20% of global advanced logic chip production by 2030, compared to 0% at the time of the 2024 announcement. The CHIPS Act appropriated approximately $52.7 billion in total, of which $39 billion was dedicated to production incentives; Commerce reported nearly
How China Is Capturing Green Textiles
China represents a significant share of global textile production, and it is accelerating. Green textile technologies are the subject of R&D activities and industrial deployment in several regions. MERICS and Rhodium Group have analyzed Chinese investment, clean industry, and certain value chains, b
The Institutional Horizon Can Determine the Fate of Ecosystems
Since 1978, China has been implementing the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program in the North, Northwest, and Northeast of the country to combat desertification, among other objectives. The Three-North Shelterbelt is presented by Chinese authorities as the largest afforestation program designed to
Book Review. "Moral Ambition" by Rutger Bregman
Graduates from the world's best universities are overwhelmingly going into finance, consulting, and tech. In Moral Ambition, Rutger Bregman makes this a political matter: the allocation of talent results from a collective choice disguised as individual destiny, and this choice costs humanity enorm
Merchant Progress in an Impoverished World
Over several decades, certain indicators of material accessibility have improved, while scientific assessments have documented degradation of ecological systems and growing risks to production; however, the scale and causalities depend on which indicators are selected. According to Human Progress, b
Fifty Years of Concrete, Ten Years of Certainty: Coastal Infrastructures Are Obsolete
A port designed today will operate in a climate with significant uncertainties, especially locally and for extremes. Global projections to 2050 are relatively well constrained: according to IPCC AR6, the average global rise in sea level by 2050 is on the order of 0.15 to 0.30 m compared to 1995-2014
Urban Heat as an Economic Solvent
Under the SSP5-8.5 scenario, the study projects that the number of major cities exceeding 29 °C average annual temperature would increase from 17 in 2011-2040 to 217 in 2071-2100. This leap concentrates risk in cities with varying response capacities. - **Between 2071 and 2100, 320 million residents
Climate Adaptation Plans Stop at the Next Budget
France is warming twice as fast as the global average. Its third National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNACC-3), published in March 2025, sets out 52 measures over a seventy-five-year horizon and guarantees no funding beyond 2027. Democracies plan on the horizon of electoral cycles, while the cli
Governing Aging Before It Becomes Unaffordable
The Gulf is aging slowly, for now. Dubai and Saudi Arabia have chosen to make it a public policy matter now, while demographics still give them the upper hand. This moment of anticipation is rare in the history of health systems and deserves to be examined as a laboratory worth monitoring. - **State
Housing Sorts Students Before School
A child who moves twice during primary school does not arrive at secondary school under the same conditions as a child who has grown up in the same apartment. European national longitudinal studies, notably in the United Kingdom, find concerning associations between repeated mobility and school resu
African Pay-as-You-Go Finds Buyers Beyond the Continent
Africa has long imported economic models designed elsewhere. It also exports them. Fractional payment systems adapted to irregular incomes and low banking penetration can also be offered in other markets. M-Pesa, initially launched in Kenya, was also deployed in India; this deployment illustrates th
Who Adopts Post-Quantum Encryption First Will Control Information
Encrypted data intercepted today can be stored and decrypted tomorrow, once a sufficiently powerful quantum computer becomes available. In 2024, the NIST finalized three post-quantum cryptography standards, corresponding to ML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA; a standard based on FALCON was still in preparat
Private Capital Buries Itself in Bricks at the Cost of Growth and Innovation
The eurozone has accumulated approximately €902 billion in net savings over one year at Q1 2026, or roughly €2.5 billion per day. A significant portion of this savings exceeds domestic investment, while another portion finances investment. The OECD forecasts growth of 0.8% for the eurozone and appro
Changing Seas, Fixed Rules
The state of Atlantic North sea bass stocks has evolved between 2015 and 2025. France has built one of Europe's densest marine protection architectures. Species displacement can create a gap with historically fixed quota distribution keys, despite annual revision of many TACs. - **Classical regulati
US: The Constitutionalization of Two States in One Country
In 2026, certain states are considering tightening the rules for constitutional initiatives: South Dakota is examining a 60% threshold, while Missouri proposes a majority in each congressional district. Colorado and Florida already apply thresholds of 55% and 60% respectively. In 2024, voters in Was
Spain Is Booming, Germany Seeks Its Model
For thirty years, European prosperity had a home address: the North and center of the continent. Germany exported machines, Sweden innovated in services, the Netherlands managed global trade from Rotterdam. The South fixed its public finances and the rest of Europe watched. This geography is changin
Having Its Own Language Model Is Not Enough to Counter Cultural Domination
On February 10, 2026, CENIA announced the first version of LatamGPT, a project bringing together more than 65 institutions from 15 countries from academia, the public sector, civil society, and specialized organizations. LatamGPT was pre-trained on a corpus of 296.5 billion tokens, primarily in Span
Arenas Without Crowds, Crowds Without Arenas
The 2022 World Cup took place in eight stadiums. The occupancy rate of 30 to 40% outside major events lacks accessible primary sources. The IMF documents infrastructure's contribution to non-hydrocarbon growth, but their capacity to support autonomous private growth remains to be established. Saudi
Trucks Roll on the Promises of Europe's Green
In 2022, transport accounted for 28.9% of GHG emissions in the EU-27, including international bunkers, and remained the only major sector where emissions had not declined since 1990. The EU has set ambitious targets, but between countries investing in common infrastructure and those relying on marke
Who Produces the Molecule, Who Cashes the Patent: China Captures the Rent That the Rest of Asia Produces
In 2025, China generated $137 billion in out-licensing in biotechnology, compared to $14 billion in 2021. This leap—a tenfold multiplication in four years—says more than just that China has become a leading scientific actor: it says who captures value when innovation succeeds. While Seoul, Singapore
The Geography of Risk Becomes a Geography of Inequalities
In the regions most exposed to climate change, the costs linked to risks can weigh on households before disasters occur. Insurance, cooling, and flood protection can increase household spending in risk zones. In areas with high anticipated claims rates, insurers can raise prices, limit coverage, or
How to Slow the Exodus of South American Graduates to Asia
Approximately 14.8 million international migrants reside in Latin America and the Caribbean according to UN estimates cited, a figure distinct from people originating from the region living abroad. The region is currently passing through a favorable demographic window, the fruit of decades of declin
Women's Sports Franchises Are Worth Hundreds of Millions, Women Players Less
Deloitte projects that global elite women's sports revenues will reach at least $3 billion by 2026, representing a projected 340% increase between 2022 and 2026. The New York Liberty franchise ranks among the most valued WNBA franchises. For 2026, the WNBA projects an average salary of $583,000 unde