On the Highway to Climate Hell

On the heels of the hottest month ever recorded, Foreign Policy’s coverage of the climate crisis continues to examine new and ongoing impacts of the warming planet, underscoring the urgency of increased cooperation toward new solutions. “It’s the kind of extreme weather that we climate scientists have been warning about for decades—it just now seems to be happening everywhere, all at once,” climate scientist Peter Gleick told FP’s Christina Lu and Brawley Benson in their report on how the infrastructure systems underpinning global development weren’t constructed to withstand this increasingly extreme climate reality.

Even more modern supply chains are not immune to that reality. Michael Ferrari and Parag Khanna caution that despite Arizona’s Maricopa County leading the United States in foreign direct investment from global tech giants, “Phoenix is neither the next Rome nor the next Detroit. The reasons boil down to workers and water.” 

In Central Asia, “some experts fear that the first shots of long-predicted ‘water wars’ may already have been fired,” writes Lynne O’Donnell, where leaders will meet this month with water scarcity high on their agenda. And activists from across the Mesopotamian Basin—fed by rivers that are heavily dammed by Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq—are sounding the alarm about the accumulating damage of climate change, drought, and pollution to the environment and local populations, Winthrop Rodgers reports in “The Cradle of Civilization Is Drying Up.”

Leaders looking for answers would be wise to focus on local examples, writes David Simon, as urban areas globally have so far made more progress than national governments on climate change—and offer a compelling political roadmap. “Avoiding unintended negative consequences and reducing rather than increasing social inequality are central to achieving just transitions to sustainability and resilience.”

New and Noteworthy

• Ongoing Analysis of the Coup in Niger: Writing that the West African nation’s crisis has created a truly geopolitical moment for intra-African politics, FP’s Howard W. French underscores in his latest column that “the main question asked in the rich world seems to never change: How will the rise of the latest authoritarian government on the block that doesn’t hew closely to Europe or Washington threaten to reduce U.S. or Western influence and power?” And as the world waits to see what follows last week’s decision by the Economic Community of West African States to deploy a “standby force” to Niger to restore its constitutional order, Folahanmi Aina cautions that using troops to dislodge the military junta could spark a refugee crisis and regional war. 
• The Hottest Forest in the World: The Bialowieza Forest between Poland and Belarus has become kindling for a heated election campaign. Reporting from the region, Katie Toth explains that as “Belarus is amping up its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and now hosts Russia’s Wagner paramilitary force … the steady flow of people across its border from Belarus has focused Polish politics on the issues of border protection and migration.” The deterioration in relations between the two nations is only making circumstances more dire for thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants who enter the European Union from Belarus every year.
• ‘The Taliban Turned All My Ambitions Into Dust’: Two years after the Taliban retook Kabul, “Afghanistan’s people are mostly bereft of rights, education, jobs, and hope,” writes Lynne O’Donnell, who reported from the country throughout the war. She has collected first-person accounts from some of those who have endured—former journalists, diplomats, rights activists, and others—both inside and outside Afghanistan, reflecting on their lives since the fall of Kabul. Also: Shaharzad Akbar and Melanne Verveer outline how the world can help Afghan women now.

FP Live

The Ask-Me-Anything Edition

Viewers of FP Live regularly see host Ravi Agrawal quiz world leaders and policymakers about issues such as Russia’s war in Ukraine, the state of the global economy, and competition between the United States and China. Now it’s your turn to interrogate the host. In a special Ask-Me-Anything episode, Agrawal will field your questions in conversation with executive editor Amelia Lester. Anything the magazine regularly covers is fair game, in addition to questions about how FP makes its decisions. Submit your questions.

Inside Manipur’s Ethnic Violence

What is actually going on in Manipur? What should New Delhi do? What are the ramifications for India, Myanmar, and the world? Indian journalist Barkha Dutt, who has reported extensively from Manipur this year, joined FP’s Ravi Agrawal and defense expert Sushant Singh, who has chronicled the conflict for Foreign Policy, for a conversation on these questions and more. Watch on-demand.

Exercise Your Mind

Members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization convened in Brazil on Tuesday for the first time in how many years?

A. 3

B. 6

C. 10

D. 14

You can find the answer to this question at the end of this post. Click here to take the rest of our weekly news quiz.

Is Imran Khan Out for Good?

In the South Asia Brief newsletter, FP’s Michael Kugelman explores how the supporters of Pakistan’s popular opposition leader, who was jailed for three years earlier this month after a conviction on charges related to selling state gifts, are finding a way forward.

Khan and his supporters insist he is the victim of a witch hunt. The fall from grace for the cricket hero-turned-populist politician mirrors that of many other Pakistani leaders who quarreled with the country’s powerful military.

Some Khan supporters hoped he would somehow buck the trend, pointing to the support he retained in the military’s lower and middle ranks and to the Supreme Court’s decision to order his release after a brief detention in May. But this wasn’t Khan’s showdown to win: In Pakistan, the generals always prevail in civil-military tiffs, no matter how popular or resilient a leader may be.

It’s tempting to consign Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to irrelevance. The party revolves around its imprisoned leader; most of its top leaders are also behind bars or—under pressure from the military—have quit PTI or left politics altogether. Thousands of party supporters have been arrested since May. Yet PTI still has a political pulse and, in a country known for political comebacks, Khan may not be done either.

Read more of Kugelman’s analysis, and sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.

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Answer: D. 14 years. Leaders from eight Amazon rainforest nations discussed regional cooperation, climate change, and deforestation, FP’s Catherine Osborn reports in Latin America Brief. Sign up to receive FP’s weekly digest of politics, economics, technology, and culture in Latin America in your inbox every Friday.