The reduction of CO2 emissions be possible? / Robert Douglas Cairns, Professor, McGill University

The start of 2022 has been marked by drought, with countries around the world experiencing abnormally low levels of precipitation and dryness over the last few months. On the African continent, the intensity and duration of the droughts is wreaking havoc on economies already struggling because of the pandemic. In the eastern part of the continent, drought threatened to put countries in the Horn of Africa “on the brink of catastrophe” as late as February. In the north, Morocco is exp ...

The 2021 German federal election brought about a historic reshuffle of the political parties’ hierarchy in Europe’s biggest economy. The Social Democratic Party are back in control of the Chancellery for the first time since 2005, as part of a three-party coalition at the federal level with the Greens and the Liberals, a first in Germany’s post-war history. Now, the federal government has turned its gaze towards its founding mission: more progress. The first 100 days of the three-pa ...

The war in Ukraine is bringing substantial financial, commodity price, and supply chain shocks to the global economy. Sanctions on Russia are already having a significant impact on its financial system and its economy. Price shocks will have a global impact. Energy and commodity prices—including wheat and other grains—have risen, intensifying inflationary pressures from supply chain disruptions and the recovery from the pandemic. The push toward relative deglobalization received fro ...

The pros and the cons of regional market integration are well exemplified by the experience of Uruguay, a small, open economy in MERCOSUR, which is a highly protectionist trade bloc, dominated by Argentina and Brazil. With access to such large markets, Uruguay did raise its growth rate during the first decade of MERCOSUR, the 1990s. However, market integration as implemented in MERCOSUR was also problematic in that Uruguay suffered from the high protectionism of Argentina in the for ...

S’il est commun de catégoriser les matières premières en fonction de leur réalité physique et de distinguer, en cela, produits agricoles, énergie et métaux, on se saurait oublier que ce sont les caractéristiques économiques qu’elles partagent qui justifient le regroupement de ces produits de base sous le terme commun de « commodities ». Une analyse en profondeur révèle toutefois la mise en œuvre, par les producteurs, de stratégies de différenciation par la qualité visa ...

The contrast between Argentina’s rich natural resource endowment and its poor economic performance has been the focus of much socio-political and economic analysis. When it created MERCOSUR with its immediate neighbors, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay in 1991, it had access to a trading bloc with a combined GDP of US$ 419 trillion (2019), making it the 5th largest economy in the world. Joining the MERCOSUR was a break from its protectionist past. But it did not last. Argentina greatl ...

Known for being a climate change hotspot, Morocco is at the forefront of a climate disaster. Consequences are already being felt, whether in the form of increasing temperature or a downward trend in precipitations, which directly threaten the water security and, by extension, the social-ecological systems of the country. The systems by which food, energy, and water are produced, distributed, and consumed heavily depend on one another. Their implicit feedbacks and links are not linea ...

The Russian-Ukrainian war will have major economic and political repercussions. In this note, we focus on the war’s economic short and long term implications on the African economy. This conflict comes at very arduous context, where Africa is still struggling to set its economy on the recovery path, amid global inflationary pressures and highly uncertain context. While natural resources countries, especially energy exporters, are sensing opportunities from the crisis, other countrie ...

La guerre russo-ukrainienne aura des répercussions économiques et politiques dans les années à venir. Dans cette note, nous nous intéressons aux implications économiques de la guerre sur l’économie africaine à court et à long terme. Le conflit survient alors que l’Afrique s’efforce de mettre son économie sur la voie de la reprise, dans un contexte de pressions inflationnistes mondiales et de volatilité des marchés financiers et des matières premières. Alors que les exportateurs d’én ...

Phénomène inédit depuis 2014, le prix du baril de Brent a dépassé le 24 février 2022 le seuil de 100 USD/bbl, à la suite de la déclaration par la Russie de la guerre contre l’Ukraine. Il atteignait même 105 USD/bbl en séance, avant de se replier légèrement. Nul ne pouvait en être surpris, et ce pour deux raisons principales. En premier lieu, le pétrole est, à l’instar de l’or, l’un des baromètres des tensions géopolitiques mondiales et il ne fallait guère être devin pour savoir que ...