THE LANCET This journal Journals Publish Clinical Global health Multimedia Events About COUNTDOWN • Online first, October 28, 2025 The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change Marina Romanello, PhD &ª EJ . Maria Walawender, MSPH a • Shih-Che Hsu, PhD b • Annalyse Moskeland, MScC • Yasna Palmeiro-Silva, PhD a • Daniel Scamman, EngDo • et al. Show more Affiliations & Notes V Article Info V

In their 2025 report on #ClimateChange, @thelancet.com finds that millions of people are already dying every year from the causes & effects of climate change.

In the past decade, an average 546,000 people have died per year from increased heat alone — roughly one person every minute.

With Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam operational, debates over the future of the Nile are entering a new phase

In his open-access book, @tomlavers.bsky.social reveals how dam building has shaped Ethiopia’s international standing and unpacks the promises and perils of megaprojects

- bit.ly/3Vk2yeB

Dams, Power and the Politics of Ethiopia’s Renaissance - Global Development Institute Blog by Dr Tom Lavers, Reader in Politics, Global Development Institute More than 13 years after Ethiopia’s former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid its foundation stone, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam...

blog.gdi.manchester.ac.uk/dams-power-a...

As #Ethiopia finally gets ready to inaugurate the #GERD, read about the history of Ethiopian dam building and the story of the GERD in this open access book (download link below) or a shorter thread below.

Tuition fees are rising again and nobody is happy – it’s time to actually fix our broken university sector | Zoe Williams The figures simply don’t add up for higher education in England and Wales. Yet delusional politicians from all parties seem intent on avoiding the issue, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🇨🇳 China installed 464 GW of solar capacity in the 12 months to June☀️

That's more than the total EU solar capacity as of 2024 (338 GW) and DOUBLE the total US solar capacity (229 GW).

...in just 12 months

www.avfchistory.co.uk/aston-villa-...

#avfc

📣 REMINDER: @globaldevinst.bsky.social are hiring a permanent lecturer in the politics of development (open to subfield and regional specialisation)
⏰ Deadline is TOMORROW 28 May
www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

There is still time to apply to join us as our new Lecturer in Politics and Development 👇

We are looking for candidates who can make significant contributions to research and research-informed teaching at GDI.

Link: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/internal/Job...
Deadline: 28/05/2025

GDI is seeking to appoint a new Lecturer in Politics and Development to further enhance our teaching and research.

We would particularly welcome applications from academics with expertise on the politics of gender in the global South.

For more information and to apply: bit.ly/3YyAUwm

There’ll be no activity on this account for a couple of weeks.

So I’ll leave you with my favourite Thunderbastard of all time, courtesy of Cheito Ramirez in 2004.

Imagine getting the ball that far out and thinking: “I fancy my chances from here…”

33 years ago at White Hart Lane:

Is that a peak Diego Maradona - or fleet-footed Aston Villa winger Tony Daley?

Thames Water selects KKR as preferred bidder Private equity interest comes as UK’s largest water utility is fighting to avoid renationalisation

What sort of owner might KKR be?

The following (from Our Lives in their Portfolios) is what happened when KKR took over the municipal water network of Bayonne New Jersey.....

"The world has never truly undergone an energy transition... Instead, the world has experienced a series of energy additions, where new fuels build atop the old, rising like a skyscraper under construction for more than 200 years." media.rff.org/documents/RF...

Tigray’s Power Struggle: From the Pretoria Agreement to the Current Crisis-Events’ Flow After exactly two years of a genocidal war, the TPLF and the Federal Government signed a ceasefire agreement in Pretoria in November 2022. As part of the agreement, both parties agreed to establish an...

The TPLF Office view Getachew Reda’s faction’s actions as an intraparty coup within the TPLF, comparing it to what Abiy Ahmed and his OroMara coalition did to the EPRDF in 2017–2018. From their perspective, what they are doing now is a counter-intraparty coup. 1/2
www.linkedin.com/pulse/tigray...

USAID Funding Freeze Leave Over 85pct Of Ethiopian Nonprofits Crippled Gov’t suspends work permits for foreign NGO staff

The impacts of #USAID cuts in #Ethiopia:

- 85% (!) of CSOs have paused operations
- Food assistance for 1 million people & clean water supply to IDPs in Tigray suspended
- Termination of 5,000 workers focused on HIV & malaria prevention, vaccinations etc.

www.thereporterethiopia.com/44011/

If that piques your interest, download a free copy, with contributions from Fana Gebresenbet
Biruk Terrefe Emanuele Fantini Luca Puddu & Edegilign Hailu fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

Delays and inefficiency meant that many infrastructure projects failed to deliver promised benefits. Moreover, the political crisis of the past decade and the civil war since 2020 have left Abiy Ahmed’s government battling political and debt crisis to finally complete the GERD

Related problems affect distribution, with the result that industrial and domestic users lack reliable connections, while the majority of the population lack any electricity connection. Indeed, grid expansion and connections are likely to lag behind generation for many years

This reflects a general process since the mid-2000s whereby the political leadership pressed for ever larger dams and electricity generation capacity in line with growing developmental ambitions and industrial plans, but in doing so bypassed technical input into decision making

But there is insufficient water in the annual flow of the Blue Nile to run all the GERD's turbines at full power for more than about one-third of the time. The result is a rather expensive means of generating electricity

2. the political nature of Ethiopia's dam planning that largely bypassed technical input. Repeated Ethiopian dams (GG3, Beles, Koysha) have maximised installed capacity at the insistence of political leaders. The GERD is only the largest and most high profile example

1. the adversarial hydropolitics of the Nile. Egypt has repeatedly sought to block upstream dam development. The Ethiopian hope was that one massive dam capturing as much water as possible would put an end to endless negotiations with downstream riparians

The GERD combines all the water storage and electricity generation capacity of a three-dam cascade into one massive dam located close to the Sudanese border, at the last possible location within Ethiopia. Why? Two main reasons

When Egypt and Sudan withdrew, Ethiopia was in a position to act unilaterally and began to plan a Nile dam. Yet when the GERD was announced in 2011 it was a very different dam from those proposed by the US study in 1964 or the NBI studies more recently

Yet plans for a joint project unraveled over negotiation of the Cooperative Framework Agreement's clause 14b in 2009. While the upstream countries demanded ‘equitable utilisation’ of the Nile waters, Egypt and Sudan insisted on securing their ‘historic rights’

The NBI updated old US studies of the Nile Basin and proposed a three-dam cascade aimed at 'benefit sharing': dams in Ethiopia would provide water regulation downstream in Egypt and Sudan, eliminate flooding in Sudan and provide cheap electricity to all three countries

By 2011, Ethiopia had the political cohesion, financial and technical capacity required to launch a Blue Nile dam. But prior to this Ethiopia had pursued a cooperative strategy with Egypt and Sudan through the World Bank sponsored Nile Basin Initiative

Third, the EPRDF focused on internal political cohesion as the basis of a foreign policy focused on securing close ties with global powers and an upstream coalition pushing for change on the Nile

Second, C5 shows how the Gibe-Omo cascade enabled close ties to develop between politicians and Salini. While Salini had been working in Ethiopia for years, it was through construction of GG1 and its proposal of GG2 that it came to be the go-to contractor for the EPRDF's dams