In South Asia, a region facing rapid economic growth, immense population pressure, and high climate vulnerability, the circular economy (CE) has become a critical imperative for sustainable development. This study provides a comparative overview of the CE landscape across eight South Asian countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The analysis reveals the CE transition is nascent region-wide, though India has advanced its policy landscape through a comprehensive suite of rules and missions and Pakistan is developing a national policy. The primary focus remains on waste management, evidenced by programs like Bhutan’s ‘Zero Waste by 2030’ vision, the Maldives’ Single-Use Plastic Phase-Out Plan, and Sri Lanka’s Clean Sri Lanka Programme. While Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is emerging for plastics and e-waste in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, a significant “policy-practice gap” persists, undermined by weak enforcement and governance fragmented across priority sectors like plastics, food systems, and textiles. Most major CE initiatives are catalyzed by international development partners, with regional programs playing a key role in funding innovation. Finally, while the informal sector is the backbone of material recovery, ensuring a just transition that improves working conditions and secures livelihoods remains a critical challenge. The absence of a cohesive regional framework limits collaboration. Scaling the circular economy in South Asia requires integrated national strategies, prioritizing a just transition for the informal sector, and establishing a regional platform for policy harmonization to create self-sustaining system through multi-sectoral involvement, including the business sector.

Booking for the EIG 2026 Conference in Liverpool is now open: https://www.eigconferences.com/ There will be the usual plenary opening session, including an introduction to the geology of North West England by Professor Peter Burgess, University of Liverpool, and the Ansel Dunham Memorial Lecture by Fiona McEvoy of NWS. This will be followed by parallel sessions, from a variety of geotechnical and quarry design case studies and overviews of professional practice to prospecting, geomorphological quarry restoration, low carbon resources and the water environment. Conference programme can be downloaded here: https://www.eigconferences.com/s/EIG-2026-Liverpool-Programme-May6th.pdf Delegate booking, trade stands and sponsorship opportunities are here: https://www.eigconferences.com/2026-conference NB Delegate Early Bird deadline 30th June 2026.

Pharmaceutical residues enter the environment worldwide through excretion after use and improper disposal and can cause significant ecotoxicological effects while also contributing to the pollution of water resources used for drinking water production and food production. Although pharmaceuticals are indispensable for public healthcare, their environmental impacts are rarely considered during prescribing or dispensing. A newly developed Environmental Pharmaceutical Index (EPI) aims to integrate environmental information systematically into pharmaceutical and medical decision-making. The objective is to balance therapeutical needs and environmental impacts by supporting the selection of therapeutically equivalent medicines with lower environmental impacts without compromising patient care. A practical environmental information, classification and dissemination system The proposed Environmental Pharmaceutical Index consists of three interconnected components: an environmental information system, an environmental classification system, and a dissemination system. The information system is designed to collect substance-based environmental information, primarily from Environmental Risk Assessments (ERA) conducted during the European marketing authorisation process. The authors propose using the German Environment Agency's ChemInfo database as the central information platform. Based on the outcomes of the ERA risk assessment and hazard assessment, the system introduces a practical traffic light classification with the categories red, yellow, green and grey. This classification enables healthcare professionals to compare active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) within the same indication group and to identify substances of environmental concern while maintaining transparency regarding the underlying scientific evidence. International experience informed the German concept The concept builds on an evaluation of existing environmental information and classification systems in Sweden, Finland and Scotland. The study combined scoping literature reviews, qualitative stakeholder interviews, expert panel meetings, stakeholder workshops, and a feasibility analysis. The results demonstrate that environmental information is most effective when it is integrated directly into existing therapeutic decision-making processes rather than requiring additional information searches during routine clinical practice. Accordingly, the proposed dissemination strategy includes integration into pharmacy and doctors' office management software, therapeutic guidelines, formularies, and other established healthcare information systems to support environmentally informed prescribing and dispensing. Supporting eco-directed pharmaceutical prescribing The Environmental Pharmaceutical Index is intended to complement established therapeutic decision-making rather than replace it. Environmental aspects should only influence the choice of treatment where multiple therapeutically equivalent treatment options are available. Therapeutic efficacy, patient safety and clinical appropriateness remain the primary considerations. In the long term, the authors identify opportunities to integrate environmental information into market authorisation, reimbursement decisions, discount agreements of health insurance companies, labelling, and therapeutic guidelines. By combining a scientifically robust environmental information system with practical dissemination approaches, the proposed concept aims to facilitate eco-directed pharmaceutical prescribing and reduce the environmental burden of pharmaceuticals in Germany. The study "Environmental Pharmaceutical Index – a practical information, classification and dissemination system for medication in Germany" was carried out by researchers from Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA), the Ecologic Institute, and Augsburg University.

Introduction Jia Hui Tee Australia’s Response to Changing Geoeconomics: Are We Making Australia More Secure? Jenny Gordon The Carney Doctrine: Canada’s Strategy for Navigating the Rupture Dan Ciuriak India’s Strategy for Economic Security: Deny, Indigenize, and Diversify Tanvi Madan Beyond Supply Chains: Japan’s Expanding Economic Security Vision Shihoko Goto From Structural Vulnerability to Strategic Resilience: How South Korea Built an Integrated Geoeconomic Strategy Seungjoo Lee Indonesia’s Geoeconomic Statecraft and the Future of Southeast Asia’s Economic Order Arianto A. Patunru Malaysia’s Strategic Importance in the Geoeconomic Landscape in 2026 and Beyond Ong Kian-Ming The Geoeconomic Statecraft of Small and Middle Powers amid Great-Power Rivalry: Singapore’s Leverage and Challenges Chin-Hao Huang, Scarlet Xu Ni, and Mae Chow Introduction Jia Hui Tee In response to growing fragmentation in the global political and economic landscape, Asia-Pacific middle powers have emerged as important players in shaping the regional, if not global, geoeconomic order. Their exposure to Chinese economic leverage, dependence on U.S.-led security arrangements, and role in strategic supply chains—especially semiconductors and critical minerals—imbue them with both vulnerability and influence under intensifying U.S.-China rivalry. This Asia Policy roundtable brings together eight essays examining how Asia-Pacific middle powers—Australia, Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore—are each building geoeconomic toolkits to navigate, and in some cases leverage, these structural shifts in the global order. Although these strategies are varied and still evolving, three broad trends emerge: diversifying trade and investment links, using industrial policy to strengthen national resilience, and selectively aligning, balancing, or hedging along specific nodes of geoeconomic competition. Australia, Canada, and India show how middle powers outside East Asia are recalibrating under different constraints. Jenny Gordon points out that Australia’s economic security depends less on self-sufficiency than on positioning the country as a valuable, reliable trading partner amid weakening global rules. Dan Ciuriak casts Canada’s approach as one of diversification, domestic capability-building, and pragmatic management of dependence on Washington. India is adopting a more explicit hedging strategy. Tanvi Madan examines India’s effort to de-risk from China, strengthen self-reliance, and diversify partnerships to enhance supply chain resilience as it grapples with Chinese economic rivalry and U.S. tariff pressures. Japan and South Korea illustrate sharper dilemmas as U.S. allies that also have significant trade ties with China. This dual exposure raises the costs of overt alignment, but economic and national security pragmatism has increasingly drawn both countries closer to the United States. Shihoko Goto argues that Japan’s pursuit of technological competitiveness at the core of its economic security vision necessitates strategic alignment with Washington to avoid ceding technological dominance to China. Seungjoo Lee writes that South Korea’s efforts to reduce structural trade vulnerabilities and overdependence on the Chinese market have made U.S.-led initiatives central to its foreign trade strategy. Export-oriented Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, are embedding themselves in critical supply chains and global trade networks to manage U.S.-China competition without compromising on autonomy. Arianto A. Patunru highlights Indonesia’s use of critical minerals to strengthen bargaining power. Ong Kian-Ming presents Malaysia as an “indispensable middle” in contested semiconductor supply chains and, increasingly, in data center infrastructure. Chin-Hao Huang, Scarlet Xu Ni, and Mae Chow argue that trade agreements and institutions underpin Singapore’s outsized diplomatic and economic capital. Collectively, the essays show that Asia-Pacific middle powers are not peripheral to geoeconomic competition. While their strategies vary by geography, alliance commitments, and economic exposure, they converge on a shared objective to preserve strategic autonomy while managing trade dependency. Through diversification, industrial policy, supply chain positioning, and institutional engagement, these states are building toolkits that can shape the region’s emerging geoeconomic architecture by influencing trade governance and forging coalitions that help preserve flexibility across competing partnerships. Jia Hui Tee is Senior Trade Policy Analyst in the Trade Policy Program at the Hinrich Foundation (Singapore). Jenny Gordon is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute (Australia). Dan Ciuriak is a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (Canada). Previously, he had a 31-year public-service career, retiring as deputy chief economist at Global Affairs Canada. He writes on international trade, the economics of the data-driven economy, and Asia-Pacific trade and economic issues. Tanvi Madan is a Senior Fellow in the Center for Asia Policy Studies in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (United States). Shihoko Goto is Vice President of Programs and Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia (United States). Seungjoo Lee is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Chung-Ang University (Republic of Korea). Arianto A. Patunru is a Fellow in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics and Policy and Engagement Manager at the ANU Indonesia Project in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (Australia). Ong Kian-Ming is an Adjunct Professor at Taylor’s University (Malaysia). Chin-Hao Huang is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (Singapore). Scarlet Xu Ni is a Research Assistant at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (Singapore). Mae Chow is a Research Assistant at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (Singapore).

Abstract Stratocumulus (StCu)-topped boundary layers exhibit complex mesoscale cellular convection that remains a primary source of climate radiative forcing uncertainty and a persistent challenge for models. While daytime snapshots have established a characteristic aspect ratio (AR) – the ratio of cell size λ to boundary-layer depth – of 30–40, its evolution over the full diurnal cycle remains poorly constrained. Here we use high-resolution infrared observations from GOES-East (2020–2025) over the South-East Pacific during August–September to provide a continuous day-to-night characterization of StCu spatial metrics. Using a brightness temperature difference framework (ΔTb=Tb12.3µm-Tb10.3µm ), we reveal a robust, universal four-phase diurnal cycle: morning growth, early-afternoon plateau, rapid late-afternoon downscaling, and a stable nocturnal regime. We demonstrate a striking decoupling between metrics: while λ varies significantly across years, the AR curves collapse into a nearly identical diurnal signal across 2020–2025, filtering out interannual variability. However, this invariance is modulated by cloud-fraction regimes, controlling the cycle's amplitude and the timing of its growth and decay phases. This allows us to establish a nocturnal AR of about 25, with a transient daytime maximum of about 31. These typical values can be slightly sensitive to methodological choices, but in any case, the diurnal tendency remains the same. These results suggest a fundamental compensation between horizontal and vertical scales, with AR acting as a dynamical attractor of stratocumulus organization. Its persistence raises a key question: why is the mesoscale organization of stratocumulus so constrained?

Abstract India experiences some of the highest fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations globally. Understanding the spatiotemporal variations of PM2.5 and its source attribution requires robust air quality modeling supported by up-to-date emission inventories. Here we present the first WRF-Chem model evaluation and source attribution analysis for India for 2022, supported by updates in sectoral emission inventories and model parameterizations. We have incorporated an updated residential emission inventory reflecting recent transitions to cleaner fuels in Indian households and develop a plant-level inventory for Indian coal-fired power plants. Further major improvements include model updates to the secondary organic aerosol scheme and an improved representation of near-surface pollutant mixing. Collectively our improvements result in a simulation with annual PM2.5 bias of only 0.2±16.9 µg m−3 (0±31 %) across 288 surface monitoring sites in South Asia. We simulate an annual population-weighted (PW) mean PM2.5 concentration of 47.4 µg m−3. Compared to earlier studies, in 2022 India's residential sector remained the dominant source of PM2.5 in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but ranked second nationally in PW mean PM2.5 concentrations (15 %, 7.3 µg m−3). Industrial emissions emerged as the largest domestic contributor to national PW mean PM2.5 (18 %, 8.6 µg m−3), with urban hotspots including Delhi and Mumbai. Power sector contributions ranked third nationally (13 %, 6.1 µg m−3) and were particularly influential in central India. Transboundary transport contributed more than any individual domestic source nationally (27 %, 12.8 µg m−3) with largest impacts in western India. These findings highlight the benefits of India's partial residential sector transition toward cleaner fuels, while underscoring the future benefits of controlling industrial and power sector air pollutant emissions.