Research Library

The global financial cost of Covid-19 could top $15 trillion. But governments could prevent future pandemics by investing as little as $22 billion a year in programs to curb wildlife trafficking and stem the destruction of tropical forests, according to an international team of scientists including Baker Institute Faculty Scholar Ted Loch-Temzelides.

The author shows that mosque construction in Islamic states increased after 1979, when political elites adopted a strategy of Islamic nation-building. Mosques visually manifested a regime’s religious authority. The findings have implications for understanding the use of symbolic religious structures as tools for nation-building — a goal that is often overlooked due to the tendency to associate nationalism with secular visions of modernity.