The Water Wheel November-December 2017

Abstract

Research, development and innovation: Armoury for a new world order We are meeting in the time of a new world order. This is illustrated by the 2015/16 El Niño – globally the worst in 20 years that plunged America, Africa and Asia into some of the most challenging dry conditions in recent times; and South America into some of its most devastating floods. While the hot air rhetoric and conflict across the Atlantic divide continues around the future of the global agreements on climate change – Paris and its predecessors; Mother Nature herself, Gaia, shows little consideration for the theatricals of humans. We have seen some of the most devastating Atlantic hurricanes barrelling through the Caribbean through the Gulf of Mexico into the North American mainland, mirrored by tropical storms and typhoons ripping through East Asia and the Far East in the Pacific border. South Asia has seen the return of the monsoons with a vengeance, with annual precipitation being delivered in weeks, if not days with dire consequences.

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