Foreign Policy July - August 2016

From a miracle scientific discovery on the putting green to water-purifying light bulbs, innovation is par for the course in Japan Every breakthrough starts somewhere. For Nobel Laureate Satoshi Omura, it was on a golf course in Japan where he collected a soil sample that would contribute to the development of Avermectin, a medicine that helps millions of people in the developing world. Discoveries like Omura’s have helped position Japan as a leader in innovation, especially in global health. Twenty-three Nobel Laureates have come from Japan, and six of these awards are a shared honor with the U.S. When it comes to 21st century Nobel winners in the natural sciences, Japan ranks second only to the U.S. But more important than these numbers are what the scientists have been able to accomplish…

HOLLY ANDRES “My most recent personal photo project, ‘The Fallen Fawn,’ is a fictional narrative that chronicles two sisters discovering a woman’s belongings strewn throughout the woods behind their house. The young, naive girls unearth a treasure trove, potentially containing a sinister secret, but the whereabouts of the woman remain a mystery. I tried to achieve a similarly chilling tone for the cover of FOREIGN POLICY. The photos were shrouded in shadows, but they also nodded to a more complex story, the full details of which are yet to be discovered. While my stylistic approach for FP was very much influenced by ‘The Fallen Fawn,’ the fact that I was simulating an incredibly tragic—and true—story profoundly impacted my process. I found myself thinking a lot about the victim, Dahlia Yehia, how…

Iran’s Lake Urmia once boasted flocks of flamingos and swarms of tourists eager to swim in salty waters that covered an area more than twice the size of Luxembourg. Today, it more closely resembles a desert, littered with rusted cruise ships and beached docks (right). According to a 2014 report by an international consortium of scientists, Urmia has shrunk by a staggering 88 percent since the 1970s. Droughts are partly to blame, but the primary culprits are dams and irrigation projects that divert the lake’s water sources. President Hassan Rouhani’s government pledged $5 billion for conservation efforts in 2014, but Iranian photographer Solmaz Daryani, whose family lives near Urmia, worries that may be too little, too late. Her photography of the desiccated landscape aims “to investigate the impact on [people] around…

1 ID badge The picture is of me on holiday in Greece. I joined IRC when I was deployed with another organization in South Sudan. The Internet there was too weak to send an official photo so the team took a photo off of my Facebook page. 2 Converse sneakers They’re my field shoes—they’re light and closetoed. Working in a cholera clinic in Haiti, I got sprayed with chlorine a lot. They got spotted and discolored, but they held up. After a pair gets worn out, I always buy a different color. 3 iPod When I’m stressed or need to focus at work, I listen to jazz or blues. When I’m tired or having a bad day, I listen to something upbeat or with a fast tempo. I also like folk music. I usually listen…

“Not so long ago, extremists in Europe seized power violently. In Spain, my country, Francisco Franco ushered in his dictatorship with a war; Adolf Hitler, long before he started conquering other countries, employed racist propaganda and intimi dation tactics to become Germany’s chancellor. Today, though, wolves don sheep’s clothing to enter the flock: Far-right politicians climb to power using the trappings and tools of democracy. They camouflage themselves as mere ‘conservatives’ and espouse platforms that imply progress but in reality are retrograde. They garner votes by promising employment that would come at the poor’s expense, national unity based on dominance and submission, and security that overrides freedom. They exist beyond Europe, too, yet Western countries seem not to see the Trojan horses rolling in. We live in a time of…

According to the World Bank, 12 percent of humanity lives in Africa, yet it produces only about 1 percent of global research output. This gap persists because governments don’t emphasize science and technology, says 2015 Global Thinker AMEENAH GURIB_FAKIM. As president of Mauritius, the trained chemist has prioritized “science diplomacy” and helped establish a scholarship for local intellectuals. 2010 Global Thinker ORY OKOLLOH has built a career determining how technology can improve lives; she’s currently at the Omidyar Network, previously worked for Google, and co-founded Ushahidi, a crowd-sourced platform for crisis reports. Gurib-Fakim and Okolloh recently connected to discuss harnessing the energy of the world’s youngest continent and whether “African solutions to African problems” is a dated trope. AMEENAH GURIB_FAKIM: To me, the Global North and Global South divide today is…