The Complexities of Mediating African Conflicts: Insights from Paul-Simon Handy

For over six decades, Morocco has largely equated the achievement of food self-sufficiency (FSS) in ‘strategic’ food commodities to achieving food security. Successive governments have succeeded in guaranteeing the availability of and access to these commodities for the poor and vulnerable. In so doing, they have maintained social stability by fulfilling a basic social contract with the people. This is a major achievement, but the financial, economic, and environmental costs of this ...

This paper explores the impact of commodities financialization on crude oil prices and their volatility. While some commodities have been market movers for centuries, introducing others, such as oil, to the financial markets is more recent. The increase in investors' appetite for commodity investing has led to commodities’ financialization, which is often considered an amplifier of commodity price volatility. This paper focuses on the relationship between crude oil prices and the fi ...

Recent initiatives and policy moves by China and other countries to extend the reach of use of the renminbi in the international monetary system, while the U.S. dollar share in global reserves has slightly shrunk in relative terms, have sparked frequent discussions about a hypothetical “de-dollarization” of the global economy. We approach here what that would mean in terms of global currency functions as means of payment and store of value. While we point out a relative decline of ...

It is estimated that $1 trillion to $6 trillion per year (up to 2050) needs to be invested globally if the world is to stay below the 2°C global warming ceiling of the Paris Agreement and to meet its adaptation goals. Currently, investments stand at about $630 billion per year, way below the original target. And although great efforts have been made in the climate-finance area, more than 70% of the funds deployed have gone to one sector, renewable energy, followed by the transportat ...

After decades of globalization and integration, the world seems to be fragmenting again, epitomized best, perhaps, by the return of geopolitical crisis, protectionism, unilateral sanctions, treaty withdrawals, and even military and economic coercion. Designed to foster cooperation among states, the multilateral system put in place after the Second World War grew quickly to encompass economic development, international security, global health, human rights, and environmental issues. ...