India, Pakistan Join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Quotes and Quotas is a weekly digest of phrases and facts that help explain Asia’s infrastructure push.
Geography
36 Items, Page 4 of 8
Strategic Infrastructure
Our “Big Questions” series brings together leading scholars, former policymakers, and top industry experts to tackle critical questions. In the sixth part of this series, we asked a group of experts the following:
Economically Connecting the Arctic
Welcome to the world’s newest blue water ocean: the Arctic Ocean. You are forgiven if you think the Arctic is a mostly frozen and forbidding place covered in darkness for most of the year. It still is. But this ocean is rapidly changing: since 1979 Arctic sea ice maximum extent has dropped by an average of 2.8 percent per decade; in the summertime, the ice cap declined at 13.5 percent per decade; and the Greenland Ice Sheet lost an estimated 9,103 gigatons or over 9 trillion tons of ice since 1900 and between 25 to 35 gigatons annually. On land, the near-surface permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere is projected to decline by 20 percent relative to today’s area by 2040, and it could be reduced by as much as two-thirds by 2080 under a scenario of high greenhouse-gas emissions. We may be at the dawn of a new Arctic Age.
Arctic Maritime Connections
The twenty-first century maritime Arctic is experiencing extraordinary change. Profound climate change and globalization, and the connection of Arctic natural resources to world markets are shaping new opportunities for the global shipping enterprise in this once remote region. The Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover, responding to regional and global warming, has been dramatically changing in ice extent, thickness, and character during more than four decades. In turn, these physical changes in sea ice provide for greater marine access and potentially longer seasons of navigation throughout the Arctic Ocean.
Special Report: Asian Infrastructure and Trade
Asia’s fast growth rates could falter without massive investment in infrastructure, while China — which looks set to benefit from the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact — is readying more lending firepower, the Financial Times reports in a special series on Asian infrastructure and trade. As part of the series, FT emerging markets editor James Kynge explains how infrastructure finance could create new alliances across the region and draws upon Reconnecting Asia’s maps. Read his piece here, and explore the infrastructure ambitions of regional powers through Reconnecting Asia’s “Competing Visions” map series here.