Have you ever wondered why business schools do not teach the proper way to whip a worker to obtain maximum effort without damaging the asset? Had business schools existed before the American Civil War, one can conceive of at least a lecture, if not a full course, on the subject.

Next month, the Global Climate Action Summit – one of the largest international gatherings on climate change the world has seen – will be held in San Francisco. The event, whose theme is “Take Ambition to the Next Level,” aims to serve as a launchpad for accelerated action that will enable the world to meet the goals set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

China’s currency has started falling again. The last major depreciation of the Chinese renminbi began in the second half of 2015, triggered by a surge in capital outflows. Despite repeated interventions by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), markets remained frenzied for more than a year. The currency’s value fell to nearly CN¥7 per United States (US) dollar, before stabilizing in early 2017.The latest decline has been even sharper.

Shares in strongman leaders seem to be falling. The market has not yet turned bearish, but autocrats have little reason to feel bullish.Consider China. The internal power games of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are notoriously opaque, and rarely does political infighting reach the level at which it cannot be covered up. And yet rumbles of disquiet can clearly be heard.

Asia’s future is inextricably tied to the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range and the source of the water-stressed continent’s major river systems.

It is becoming increasingly clear that globalization progresses not steadily, but through ups and downs. Currently, it appears to be in a downswing, hindered by a growing number of irresponsible political leaders who describe it as the root of all evil.

For most of the world’s poor and vulnerable people, secure property rights, including land tenure, are a rarely accessible luxury. Unless this changes, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be impossible to achieve.Land tenure determines who can use land, for how long, and under what conditions. Tenure arrangements may be based both on official laws and policies, and on informal customs.

While much of the world’s attention is focused on the economic damage being wrought by United States (US) President Donald Trump’s trade wars, global trade’s twin – foreign direct investment (FDI) – has largely been neglected.

With newspapers full of stories about the challenges migrant families face, it might be tempting to assume that the causes of displacement are also being addressed. In most cases, however, such an assumption would be wrong. Today, solutions to forced migration focus almost exclusively on aiding refugees after they flee, rather than targeting the reasons for their flight.

One of the more ambitious targets of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the commitment to end preventable deaths of newborns and children over the next decade. If this target is met, by 2030 no country will have a neonatal mortality rate above 12 deaths per 1,000 births – a quarter of the current rate in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.Given the magnitude of the challenge, huge investments will be needed in health-care infrastructure and planning.