News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
First up, I can’t do what Marie Kondo does. Discard. In her new Netflix series, people who have accumulated clothes over time are seen decorously breaking down and seeking the help of Marie to check whether their shopping sparks joy. If not, the alternative is one: discard. Discarding is so […]
At the beginning of Chinese Lunar New Year of the Pig, a purely “made-in-China” domestic science fiction film ‘The Wandering Earth’ rocked the global box office igniting people’s imagination and passion. This hardcore style sci-fi film quickly topped global box office and received praise at home and abroad. It also […]
How can countries step up climate action to meet the goals they set for themselves in Paris? A big part of the answer lays in building stronger links to local governments, the private sector, and civil society. In 2018, an international effort to increase climate action and raise ambition has […]
Cities, states, provinces, and other subnational governments are taking a leadership role in fighting climate change. But how will they pay for it? New mechanisms are starting to fill the gap. Global investment in addressing climate change totalled $437 billion in 2015 and $383 billion in 2016. Despite these volumes, getting […]
Deepening interdependence, due in part to the success of the postwar order, has contributed to an anti-global backlash across the world. Beyond Gridlock (Polity Press, 2017), seeks pathways of change through the gridlock. Can we manage the globalised world we have created? Every day seems to bring new evidence to the […]
With the Trump administration thinking about taking the US out of the Paris Agreement and already rolling back domestic climate policies, all eyes have turned to China and whether the world’s largest emitter can occupy the leadership void left by the US. President Xi Jinping has called the 2015 Paris […]
The Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action marks growing integration between the intergovernmental climate regime and cities, businesses, and other actors. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the UN climate conference that finished in Marrakech last week was how little the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump slowed the negotiations between […]
In December 2015, the 21st conference of the parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had made a decisive turning point in the world’s endeavour to avert dangerous changes in our climate. 195 nations pledged to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the […]