Artificial Photosynthesis for Solar Energy Storage: Toward a Sustainable and Equitable Future

Our world is running out of fossil fuels to burn for energy. Therefore, even if we were not concerned with climate change, we need to be able to produce and store energy sustainably from renewable sources. Sunlight is an abundant energy supply, and the blueprint for sustainable energy creation and storage has long been right under our noses – and on our salad forks. This article draws attention to an emerging solar energy storage technology being developed in labs around the world, called artificial photosynthesis. Artificial photosynthesis can be used to make ‘artificial leaves’ that act like ‘solar batteries’, creating and storing fuel. We describe how artificial photosynthesis works and discuss how it may provide a way forward for renewable energy storage, reduce our negative impacts on the planet, and make electricity accessible to our most vulnerable population

Transboundary ‘hydro-hegemony’: 10 years later

This article places the theorization and analysis of hydro‐hegemony in the context of the scholarship on transboundary water conflict and cooperation. We discuss critiques, developments, and debates in this domain over the past 10 years, focusing particularly on the contributions of the London Water Research Group, showing how thinking on the theorization and analysis of hydro‐hegemony—and hydropolitics—has moved beyond the state‐centricity, the tendency to see hegemony as solely negative, and the conceptually hegemonic potential of hydro‐hegemony itself. Various strands of international relations theory (realism, neo‐institutionalism, critical theory) have left their mark on the London School. Intense interaction between analysts and pragmatic practitioners is found to invite (or incite) eclecticism as well as promote vibrancy. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1242. doi: 10.1002/wat2.124

Transboundary water interaction III: contest and compliance

This paper serves international water conflict resolution efforts by examining the ways that states contest hegemonic transboundary water arrangements. The conceptual framework of dynamic transboundary water interaction that it presents integrates theories about change and counter-hegemony to ascertain coercive, leverage, and liberating mechanisms through which contest and transformation of an arrangement occur. While the mechanisms can be active through sociopolitical processes either of compliance or of contest of the arrangement, most transboundary water interaction is found to contain elements of both. The role of power asymmetry is interpreted through classification of intervention strategies that seek to either influence or challenge the arrangements. Coexisting contest and compliance serve to explain in part the stasis on the Jordan and Ganges rivers (where the non-hegemons have in effect consented to the arrangement), as well as the changes on the Tigris and Mekong rivers, and even more rapid changes on the Amu Darya and Nile rivers (where the non-hegemons have confronted power asymmetry through influence and challenge). The framework also stresses how transboundary water events that may appear isolated are more accurately read within the many sociopolitical processes and arrangements they are shaped by. By clarifying the typically murky dynamics of interstate relations over transboundary waters, furthermore, the framework exposes a new suite of entry points for hydro-diplomatic initiatives