NIC 2008-003. November 2008. Global Trends 2025 is the fourth installment in the National Intelligence Council-led effort to identify key drivers and developments likely to shape world events a decade or more in the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. The primary goal is to provide US policymakers with a view of how world developments could evolve, identifying opportunities and potentially negative developments that might warrant policy action.

The global response to climate change will demand unprecedented international cooperation, deep economic transformation and resource transfers at a significant scale. Corruption threatens to jeopardise these efforts. Transparency International's Global Corruption Report: Climate Change is the first publication to comprehensively explore such corruption risks. More than fifty leading experts and practitioners contribute, covering four key areas: governance: investigating major governance challenges towards tackling climate change mitigating climate change: reducing greenhouse gas emissions with transparency and accountability adapting to climate change: identifying corruption risks in climate-proofing development, financing and implementation of adaptation forestry governance: responding to the corruption challenges plaguing the forestry sector, and how these challenges need to be integrated into current international strategies to halt deforestation and promote reforestation. The Global Corruption Report: Climate Change provides essential policy analysis to help policy-makers, practitioners and other stakeholders understand these risks and develop effective responses at a critical point in time when the main architecture for climate governance is being developed.

The emergence of a common security and foreign policy has been one of the most contentious issues accompanying the integration of the European Union. In this book, Michael Smith examines the specific ways foreign policy cooperation has been institutionalized in the EU, the way institutional development affects cooperative outcomes in foreign policy, and how those outcomes lead to new institutional reforms. Smith explains the evolution and performance of the institutional procedures of the EU using a unique analytical framework, supported by extensive empirical evidence drawn from interviews, case studies, official documents and secondary sources. His perceptive and well-informed analysis covers the entire history of EU foreign policy cooperation, from its origins in the late 1960s up to the start of the 2003 constitutional convention. Demonstrating the importance and extent of EU foreign/security policy, the book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and policy-makers.

"Cognisant of the many facets of climate change, this report looks through the lens of economics, that is, the social science that measures the economic impact of climate change and the costs and benefits of trying to mitigate it and adapt to it. From an investment perspective, issues for study include the balance between investment in mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and adaptation to climate change; the urgency and timing of investing in both; obstacles to investment; and policies to remove them and make investment profitable. From a growth perspective, issues of interest include the link between climate action and economic growth; the short-term and the long-term dimensions of this link; and the importance of innovation as an interface between climate action and economic growth. One of the key messages from this report is that there is unexploited scope for making Europe's climate action more efficient, growth-friendly, and in tune with fiscal constraints."--publisher's description.

REDD+ must be transformational. REDD+ requires broad institutional and governance reforms, such as tenure, decentralisation, and corruption control. These reforms will enable departures from business as usual, and involve communities and forest users in making and implementing policies that a ect them. Policies must go beyond forestry. REDD+ strategies must include policies outside the forestry sector narrowly de ned, such as agriculture and energy, and better coordinate across sectors to deal with non-forest drivers of deforestation and degradation. Performance-based payments are key, yet limited. Payments based on performance directly incentivise and compensate forest owners and users. But schemes such as payments for environmental services (PES) depend on conditions, such as secure tenure, solid carbon data and transparent governance, that are often lacking and take time to change. This constraint reinforces the need for broad institutional and policy reforms. We must learn from the past. Many approaches to REDD+ now being considered are similar to previous e orts to conserve and better manage forests, often with limited success. Taking on board lessons learned from past experience will improve the prospects of REDD+ e ectiveness. National circumstances and uncertainty must be factored in. Di erent country contexts will create a variety of REDD+ models with di erent institutional and policy mixes. Uncertainties about the shape of the future global REDD+ system, national readiness and political consensus require  exibility and a phased approach to REDD+ implementation.

"Global governance - the collective management of common problems at the international level - is at a critical juncture. Although global governance has been a relative success since its development after the Second World War, the growing number of issues on the international agenda, and their complexity, is outpacing the ability of international organizations and national governments to cope. Power shifts are also complicating global governance."--Introduction.

Global warming is one of today's greatest challenges. The science of climate change leaves no doubt that policies to cut emissions are overdue. Yet, after twenty years of international talks and treaties, the world is now in gridlock about how best to do this. David G. Victor argues that such gridlock has arisen because international talks have drifted away from the reality of what countries are willing and able to implement at home. Most of the lessons that policy makers have drawn from the history of other international environmental problems won't actually work on the problem of global warming. Victor argues that a radical rethinking of global warming policy is required and shows how to make international law on global warming more effective. This book provides a roadmap to a lower carbon future based on encouraging bottom-up initiatives at national, regional and global levels, leveraging national self-interest rather than wishful thinking.

Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command. Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch "ideas not missiles" into the command's area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC.

Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.