Challenges to states
SOME 70 sovereign states existed before World War II. Today, some 195 are UN member states. Globalisation, modern technology, climate change, political instability, social media and changing values pose challenges…
COP-out
ANOTHER COP, another blow to the planet. The annual UN conference increasingly seems a ritual designed to accept planetary demise rather than an opportunity to course-correct. For Pakistan, this year’s…
Rural realities
HERE is a sobering reality: we often speak of poverty as a lack of resources, but rarely as a lack of trained human capital. Money can be raised, infrastructure can…
Mutirao: post-COP climate test
I experienced this fragility firsthand when the fire broke out inside the COP30 venue. Delegates who moments earlier were debating commas and brackets were suddenly united by vulnerability, coughing in…
Bluewashing
The personal care industry has mastered the art of marketing eco-consciousness – evolving beyond familiar labels like “green,” “clean,” and “natural”–into a new wave of sea-inspired branding that claims to…
The future of work
Internal Amazon documents reveal plans to replace more than half a million warehouse workers with robots by 2033. Executives call it innovation. Investors call it efficiency. The workers who made…
India’s nuclear restraint is the real fiction
When India’s Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi,declared during the Chanakya Defence Dialogue that “Operation Sindoor was just a trailer” and that India is preparing for a long war,…
Endangered earth
The days grow dark here in the North as the year winds down. Friends slowly return from COP30 in Brazil, the frontline of the fight for our climate future, with…
Climate disaster lessons
THE timing of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s lament that Pakistan has not drawn any lessons from previous climate-triggered disasters coincides with the launch of the 11th National Finance Commission on the distribution of resources…
Call to action
JANE Goodall graces this world no more. Her seminal research revolutionised primatology by revealing that chimpanzees use tools, are omnivorous, have complex social structures with strong emotional bonds, and engage…
