Politics

Hot and humid climates tend to promote a kind of right-wing, slightly authoritarian politics — because hot and humid environments are also pathogen-rich, and over thousands of years, societies in those climates have developed what scientists call behavioural immunity.

Conservatives and liberals are wandering around with different brains. They have different tools with which to apprehend the world, and therefore they are seeing different worlds — which inform the politics that emanate from that experience.

Most studies today show that our political leaning is at least 50 per cent genetic in origin — genetics is as important, if not more important, to how you vote than your cultural context, your economic context, and all the evidence you engage with in the world.

There are plenty of reasonable, moderate, reformist, liberal leaders who just don’t quite know what to do. Our book ideally will help them make that choice. That is my hope.

We have the technological means to deal with climate change. We have the technological means to deal with pandemics. This is not a technical problem. It is mostly a political problem. If we get our politics under control, the rest is fun and games.

It is the job of the prime minister or the president to persuade people that we are all in it together, and that if you fall behind, we will lend you a hand.

Monetary support for development in itself will not accelerate growth in the real economy to artificial or unsustainable levels. It is how the finance is used – or misused.

The essence of the evolving global economic system is that all countries are dependent on one another in some way, and this includes finance. Emerging and developing countries are dependent on capital inflows from developed regions. But developed regions are also dependent on funds from the developing world!

The media often diverts attention when parties need to be focussed on the actual process. It can often create expectations and momentum which forces parties to break from processes to deal with situations back home defending positions.

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We are now living with a great deal of uncertainty, which will increase. As a society, we have to be prepared for threats we cannot conceive, we must build resilience not just in developed countries, but particularly in conflict areas.

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I think that inequality within societies and between regions has become a key cause for conflict, exacerbated by rapid information dissemination, as people are now more aware of inequalities.

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Our strategy is to try and find elements which can create a common ground, a common agenda, which can then build confidence for sides to work together. Often, a common-agenda comes from issues outside the source of the conflict, such as economic and social well-being.

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Concepts like democracy and human rights will always remain fairly abstract if you cannot feed your family. It is therefore important to ensure that job creation, and protecting livelihoods occurs early on in the process.

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The fundamental starting point is to acknowledge that outside actors can rarely create peace, local ownership in resolving the conflicts is vital. You cannot import peace, it is created within society.

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From about 2000, Africa has come into an economic renaissance: Between 2000 and 2008, we saw a marked improvement in macro-economic stability, with inflation falling and interest rates hitting single digits even in areas like Nigeria. We have seen robust GDP growth, 17% in Angola and 5.5% in Ghana and Nigeria in 2008 for example, combined with increases in FDI, which was up 25% year on year between 2000 and 2005.

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Historically, Africa has been viewed by many countries as a 'burden,' whereas the BRIC's see it as an enormous opportunity. To put this in context, Europe has twice as much trade with Africa as does even China, so Europe must wake up to the fact that Africa is an important and relevant opportunity, not a burden.

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