Events from the Brookings Institution

On January 14, the Brookings Institution's Africa Security Initiative and Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors hosted a panel discussion exploring the following questions: What have the effects of COVID-19 been on conservation in Africa and poaching and wildlife trafficking as well as legal wildlife trade? What effective response measures have been adopted or need to be developed going forward? And has the COVID-19 become an impetus for radically intensified protection of biodiversity and led to genuine transformation toward "One Health," or has it become not only a tragedy, but also a wasted opportunity for biodiversity conservation and human security?

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On January 13, the Center for Middle East Policy hosted Ayman Safadi, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and expatriates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, for a keynote address. In his remarks, Minister Safadi addressed Jordan's current regional outlook and its foreign policy approach towards the Middle East.

Minister Safadi has held office since January 2017. Prior to his appointment, he was a member of the Jordanian Senate. He has also served as an adviser to His Majesty King Abdullah II, minister of state, and the Jordanian government's official spokesperson.

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On January 11, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center hosted an event on this divergence between economic and taxable income and its implications for tax policy. Results from new research using the Survey of Consumer Finances will be presented with an eye towards understanding which forms of income do not show up on tax forms, where in the income distribution that divergence is occurring, and the revenue implications of broadening the business income tax base.

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Multilateral relations between the European Union (EU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) remain stuck, despite recent announcements by the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, that the two groups should pursue greater engagement to capitalize on the important role played by the GCC countries on the regional and the international stage. What are the obstacles and the opportunities to revitalize EU-GCC cooperation? Which areas hold the greatest potential? How can bilateral relations between individual countries in the two blocs be leveraged to open up new paths for future multilateral engagement?

On January 11, the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) addressed these and other questions, further examining how EU-GCC relations can be concretely revamped at the political, economic and security levels, also taking recent changes in regional and international geopolitics into account. The event drew on the recently published volume, "The European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council: Towards a New Path" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited by CMEP Nonresident Fellow Adel Abdel Ghafar and Silvia Colombo from the Istituto Affari Internazionali.

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On Monday, January 10, the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy brought together a panel of experts to discuss policy initiatives that can more effectively and humanely address behavioral health crises.

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On January 6, 2022, an expert panel reflected on the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot and discussed its lasting effects. What have Americans learned over the last year about the causes of the riot and the people who attended and engineered it? How have government institutions responded—or failed to respond—to the violence? And how should we understand what January 6 means for the health of American democracy going forward?

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On December 15th, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted Donald Jensen, former foreign service officer in Moscow and current director of Russia and Strategic Stability at the United States Institute of Peace, and Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history the London School of Economics and Political Science and author of "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union."

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Education initiatives to advance progress on U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.7 on global citizenship education—focused on ensuring learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, and a culture of peace and nonviolence—have never been more critical in today's interconnected world, particularly given the global health, social, and environmental challenges. Countries' initiatives to transform education in this direction represent hopeful steps toward creating a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. A particular conundrum, though, is how to report and measure country efforts in global citizenship education across diverse cultures and systems to ensure successful classroom implementation. What steps can governments take to devise appropriate indicators—or metrics—to monitor progress toward global citizenship and other aspects of Target 4.7, especially in resource-constrained education settings?

On December 15, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) hosted the final virtual event in a three-part series centered around the assessment of 21st century skills. Building off the previous events on measuring 21st century skills in mainstream education and at the household level to help advocate for education policy change, this last event examined the pilot of a monitoring initiative involving Gambia, Bhutan, and Costa Rica, and discussed approaches to creating appropriate definitions and descriptions of global citizenship skills in the Asia-Pacific region as a possible precursor to the development of indicators for assessing their implementation in schools and classrooms. After short presentations on the value of regional platforms for monitoring initiatives, the emergent "transformative education" perspective, and work supported by the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), the panelists discussed the implications of developing a regional assessment framework for global citizenship.

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On December 13, Anton Korinek, the David M. Rubenstein fellow at the Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, sat down with Acemoglu to discuss the complexities of the impact of new AI technologies and how AI could be regulated to achieve its promising and wide-reaching potential.

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On Dec. 9, 2021, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings hosted an expert discussion on the politics of education. Panelists discussed recent events and what they mean for students, schools, and society, as well as how education might factor into the 2022 elections.

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