Ben Shread-Hewitt

As low-lying island states face the loss of their territory, new legal and political strategies are emerging to sustain nations in exile. Whether they can preserve sovereignty, identity and cohesion without land remains an open question.

From rising GDP losses to ecosystem collapse, climate reports are stacking up fast. The problem is we have no language for the difference between a bad situation and a civilisational threshold.

This is the paradox both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now navigating. The grey war they are waging — economically, culturally, through regional proxies — is a race to secure the post-oil future before the other does.

Like Russia’s frontline blood banks, the Venezuelan bond trade signalled that the preceding furore was headed in a specific direction. And in the increasingly chaotic, ill-defined mess of multipolar politics and climate chaos, reliably finding which ‘weak signals’ matter—and which signals are just noise—will be vital for navigating what comes next.

Climate abandonment can be avoided, or put off, in only so many cases. The culprits of this crisis may be water barons, but it is just one early punctuation point on a much longer, much steeper trendline.

So, what have we got? A global economy staggering amongst geopolitical tension, a bubble to beat all bubbles, and the twin shocks of a (potentially permanent) oil price crash and the EV subsidies ending — and all with the backdrop of worsening climate change driving up inflation and inflicting constant disasters.