The Duck of Minerva

Thursday Morning Linkage

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by Josh Busby

2 May 2013, 0024 EDT

Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage. Back on the Africa theme from a couple of weeks ago, here are some good reads from the week:

  • More reports on the elephant poaching crisis in CAR
  • Last rhinos in Mozambique killed by poachers with the help of park rangers; time for Kruger fences to come back up
  • Alex de Waal trolls celebrity activists like Enough, Kony 2012, faults them for insufficient consultation with local actors on the ground
  • Nigerian military over-reacted and killed a bunch of citizens in the north: Boko Haram recruitment advertisement
  • Abuamerican, American jihadi gone to Somalia, apparently about to be dead because of a falling out with Al Shabab
  • Zuma, ANC, and Mandela’s family cashing in on Madiba in a highly distasteful way
  • Estimate of 2011 Somalia famine deaths is 260,000, half 5 and under
  • Hey, CGD mapped subnational income levels for everywhere, except most of Africa

climate_clubs_landscapeOn the energy and environment front, here are some good ones from the week:

  • WRI asks: can climate clubs deliver transformational change? (full disclosure: I think so – I am teaching a year long class on the topic next year)
  • OMG!, the USG spent a ton on disaster relief in recent years ($136 billion between 2011 and 2013)
  • Fracking methane losses may be coming down in the US
  • Did the US meet its commitments on Fast Start Finance after Copenhagen?
  • Will China’s environmentalists turn the country’s pollution around?
  • China’s finless porpoise maybe has 10-15 years before it will go extinct, after having been around for 300,000
  • Interim climate meetings this wek in Bonn: what to watch

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

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