This Economist piece doesn’t mince words: foreign aid, it says, “is a mess in almost every way”. Hard-won transparency in aid over the past decade has actually revealed “just how badly things are going”.
Nigeria doesn’t need bailouts; it needs to change its governance. Lawrence Solomon reports for the National Post.
A USD80-million research project at India’s Koyna dam site will study reservoir-triggered earthquakes (aka reservoir-induced seismicity) and the causes behind them. Dam activity at Koyna was blamed for a powerful earthquake in 1967 that destroyed the village of Koynanagar in western India’s Maharashtra state, left 180 people dead, 1,500 injured, thousands homeless and power cut off to Bombay.
According to this fantastic commentary on corruption by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi for Foreign Policy, “the rule of law and control of corruption are nearly synonymous”. Without rule of law, she says, attempts to reign in corruption through legal mechanisms will only be captured by the corrupt system in place. The way forward? The defeat of corruption, she says, is not achieved “by importing legal silver bullets from abroad,” it is a political process enabled “through a mix of policies advanced by domestic advocates”. Read on!
A Supreme Court decision involving the World Bank and Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin could threaten fair trials for falsely accused Canadians in the future and help corrupt Canadians to escape punishment. Patricia Adams of Probe International for the Financial Post.
The National Law Review breaks down highlights from China’s controversial new Law on the Management of the Activities of Foreign Non-Governmental Organizations Within China into two parts: the first looks at Charity Law, the second, Foreign NGO Law.
Last week’s anti-corruption summit ignored how western governments and international financial institutions fuel corruption through foreign aid, writes USA Today contributor James Bovard.
China seems well placed to trump its competitors in the nuclear export business but buyer concerns about the quality of components, the rigor of the Chinese regulatory system, the risk of dependence on China and the potential leakage of technologies with strategic geopolitical use, may prove a tough sell. China Dialogue reports.
Another deadly landslide at a hydropower construction site in Fujian, south-east China, highlights the growing risks of dam building in mountainous regions of Asia. Chinadialogue.net reports.
The Pak Mun Dam is the only case in the whole Mekong Basin where dam affected people have demanded the decommissioning of the dam.
This three-part article by international water law consultant Rémy Kinna looks at dams in the Mekong. Kinna examines the existing legal framework for regulating dam development in the region and how its legal gaps and ambiguities have led to ongoing disputes (particularly in regard to the Xayaburi Dam in Laos), and how to improve dispute resolution and strengthen water governance across the Mekong River mainstream and its tributaries under the UN Watercourses Convention.
As China continues to embrace a new era of hydropower expansion, demand for dam inspection has outpaced the country’s supply of inspectors, ramping up safety fears for thousands of small- and medium-sized dams in China’s rural areas that have been “ignored”, reports Ecns.cn.
The future looks good for Canadian arms manufacturers, says journalist Paul Christopher Webster in this in-depth look at the sale of Canadian-built light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia — a sale approved by the Conservative government and supported by the Trudeau administration despite concerns the vehicles could be used against civilian populations.
China’s environment minister enlists people power to help clean up the country’s “black and stinky” waterways.
A soft shield of silt that took over 6,000 years to form and which protects the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam against intrusion from seawater, erosion and declining groundwater levels has been seriously stripped by Chinese dams on the Mekong River, say experts. Half of the river’s essential sediment is now trapped upstream and the delta may be in jeopardy of disappearing altogether. Thanh Nien News reports.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
Other News Sources
Probe International 