Published by American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Cambridge, MA 02138, 2014
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Preface

In 2006, with the adoption of the document “Strategy for Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy up to 2020,” Vietnam’s government officially announced its long-term plan to meet rising domestic energy consumption by including nuclear energy in its energy portfolio. The following year, another document, “Strategy Implementation Master Plan,” was released to provide further details on the roadmap that the Vietnamese government intended to follow to develop a nuclear energy program. According to the latter document, Vietnam’s nuclear program would include the construction of two 1,000 megawatt of electrical power (MWe) reactors in Phuoc Dinh in the southern Ninh Thuan province by 2015, originally scheduled to be in operation by 2020. Following this, another 2,000 MWe nuclear power plant (with two reactors) is set to be built in Vinh Hai, a seaside community 40 kilometers from Phuoc Vinh, and scheduled to come online by 2021.

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Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton argues against giving aid to poor countries

Federal Nigerian troops walk along a road to the frontier with Biafray, Oct. 13, 1968. On the roadside two emaciated Nigerian boys suffer from starvation and malnutrition. (AP Photo/Dennis Lee Royle

Washingtonpost – It sounds kind of crazy to say that foreign aid often hurts, rather than helps, poor people in poor countries. Yet that is what Angus Deaton, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has argued.

Deaton, an economist at Princeton University who studied poverty in India and South Africa and spent decades working at the World Bank, won his prize for studying how the poor decide to save or spend money. But his ideas about foreign aid are particularly provocative. Deaton argues that, by trying to help poor people in developing countries, the rich world may actually be corrupting those nations’ governments and slowing their growth. According to Deaton, and the economists who agree with him, much of the $135 billion that the world’s most developed countries spent on official aid in 2014 may not have ended up helping the poor.

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Eco-business – Anna Simpson, curator of Forum for the Future’s Futures Centre discusses two mutually reinforcing pressure points that urge sustainable change in the Asia Pacific region.

Vietnamese farmers harvest peanuts. Food and job security are among Asia’s most pressing development concerns. xuanhuongho / Shutterstock.com

By Anna Simpson  – Wednesday 10 June 2015

The forest fires that raged across Chiang Mai in March may have dissipated, but the cancer risk for those who breathe in the dust particles year on year has not. Nor has the pressure on contract farmers to meet growing demand for animal feed and ethanol: a factor contributing to illegal slash-and-burn practices. According to one resident, an area more than six times that of Bangkok (which occupies 1,569 square kilometres) of dry corn stalks is set alight after the harvest to make way for the next crop.