Remaking the world in our own image: vulnerability, resilience and adaptation as historical discourses

A warming climate and less predictable weather patterns, as well as an expanding urban infrastructure susceptible to geophysical hazards, make the world an increasingly dangerous place, even for those living in high‐income countries. It is an opportune moment, therefore, from the vantage point of the second decade of the twenty‐first century, to review the terms and concepts that have been employed regularly over the past 50 years to assess risk and to measure people's exposure to such events in the light of the wider geopolitical context. In particular, it is useful to examine ‘vulnerability’, ‘resilience’, and ‘adaptation’, the principal theoretical concepts that, from an historical perspective, have dominated disaster studies since the end of the Second World War. In addition, it is valuable to enquire as to the extent to which such discourses were ideological products of their time, which sought to explain societies and their environments from the stance of competing conceptual frameworks

Enhancing Europe’s global power: a scenario exercise with eight proposals

In the present context of intensifying competition between the major trading economies and potentially game-changing technological developments, the European Union is generally seen as the weaker party. Lacking the ‘hard power’ derived from military capabilities, it has laid claim to a ‘soft power’ of normative influence externally, yet even that is only partially utilised. Nor has Europe been able to exercise the power to coerce – ‘sharp power’ – commensurate with its economic weight as a trading bloc equivalent in size and reach to the US or China, its most prominent global competitors. How can Europe strengthen its position, and in what fields? Through a scenario exercise, we develop eight policy proposals aimed at countering Europe´s vulnerabilities and enabling it to assert its sharp and soft power more effectively. Specifically, we consider the feasibility, means and scope for their realisation. Together, they provide a transformative agenda for the EU’s position in the world