23rd December 2015
Paris, France
With considerable justification, COP21 has been widely hailed as a success. It reached a legally-binding agreement that aims to keep global warming well below 2 degrees, with a review-mechanism towards ever more ambitious targets, and financial commitments to support developing countries on their path towards environmental sustainability. This agreement is far better than most could […]
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8th October 2014
Yaounde, Cameroon
If we can for a moment forget about today, tomorrow or next month’s problems and think about where we are heading in a hundred years, what the cities of Cameroon will look like is a key question. Will the cities of tomorrow become ungovernable, choked by ever increasing numbers of cars, ripe for crime and […]
Read more on Cities: threat or answer to our future? | Reply (5)
11th February 2014
Paris, France
We are now in the Bicentenary year for the Residence – 200 years ago, the Duke of Wellington bought this house from Pauline, the sister of Napoléon. To celebrate that, we are running a series of events through the year, highlighting both the past and the future of UK-French relations.
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1st March 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
The chocolate flows down in an endless stream, pouring like a waterfall over the freshly-baked crispy wafers. Further down the production line, individual sticks are wrapped and packed in boxes. Lucky visitors are invited to taste the delicious end-product, fresh from the ovens. I’m at the “Roshen” chocolate factory in Vinnitsa, a city of 370,000 […]
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11th June 2010
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Many people are talking about India’s ‘Second Tier’ cities. The phrase doesn’t strike me as the kindest, with the hint that they haven’t quite made the grade. But it is commonly used, to differentiate the large number of growing two million plus cities from the huge metropolises like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. I visited briefly […]
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