Compounded Crises: The Wider Atlantic Taking Stock

December 14, 2022

Since 2020, the international community has been witnessing seismic changes in several spheres. COVID-19 has disrupted global production and its supply chains. The war in Ukraine has sparked an energy crisis, induced food insecurity, resulting in acute effects for the most vulnerable. The multilateral system has been profoundly challenged, and climate change and nuclear war threats are on the table. In the context of these compounded crises, the Wider Atlantic has emerged as a crucial element of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis in world affairs. The session will discuss the prospects of cooperation in the Wider Atlantic that would make it possible for states to collectively tackle common issues. It will also investigate the extent to which such cooperation might shift the gaze from Asia and the Pacific into a Wider Atlantic.

- What are some of the features characterizing the impacts of these compounded crises?

- What are the security, political and economic drivers of the Wider Atlantic—being at the intersection between the Americas, Europe and Africa—in the current global context?

- Would a Wider Atlantic unified strategy be useful as an attempt to quell the crisis?

- What is the role of Africa and Latin America in (re)shaping the Wider Atlantic dynamics?

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    Jim Kolbe
    February 13, 2014
    Launched with great fanfare at the G20 summit last June, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has alternately been proclaimed the historic joining of the world’s two largest economies and ridiculed as a desperate lifeline being thrown to the same two economies. By most economic measurements, TTIP should be seen as a clear winner on both sides of the Atlantic. And greater economic cooperation could forge stronger political links leading to greater political, dipl ...
  • Authors
    Neal Peirce
    Adam Freed
    Anthony Townsend
    June 24, 2013
    This policy paper examines the importance of cities as global policy actors, innovators, and collaborators. While a global phenomenon, the authors of this paper identify specifically how the evolution of the importance of cities as global policy actors, innovators, and collaborators unfolds in the cities of the Northern Atlantic Basin versus the cities in the Southern Atlantic Basin. Despite the important differences between the cities of the Atlantic Basin, technology and the impa ...
  • Authors
    John B. Richardson
    Armando Marques Guedes
    Xavier de la Gorce
    Anne-François de Saint Salvy
    Paul Holthus
    November 29, 2012
    This paper examines the challenges posed by human activity on the Atlantic Ocean itself, and around its coasts, looking at it not so much as a vast expanse separating the Americas from Africa and Europe but rather as a shared resource and an important connector. All littoral states face a common challenge in maintaining its value as a foundation for sustained “blue growth” in the years to come. In Chapter 1, Armando Marques Guedes traces the evolution of the economic activities that ...
  • Authors
    François Gemenne
    March 1, 2011
    This paper analyzes the future of migrations related to climate changes and environment degradations. He shows how the dominant public reasoning remains inappropriate for addressing these issues, because of the Western/Northern countries' misconception of the relation between migration and environmental changes, including the cultural and political biases these countries show in the solutions they propose. The discrepancy between public policies and the actual reality of climatic an ...