|
Policy Brief, October 2012 As seen over and again during recurrent financial crises in both developing and advanced economies (DEs and AEs), including the recent global crisis originating in the US and Europe, financial instability and boom-bust cycles undermine all three ingredients of sustainable development – economic development, social development and environmental protection. Research Paper 46, July 2012 Whilst the first steps towards Asian trade cooperation stated in 1970s, it was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 that triggered Asian efforts at monetary and financial integration. This paper argues that the conditions for Asian monetary integration are not conducive but that efforts at monetary cooperation should proceed at three fronts – exchange rate cooperation, coordination of capital flows control, and strengthening of regional financial liquidity management as in the Chiang Mai Initiative and regional surveillance. Research Paper 44, March 2012 This paper argues that the unprecedented acceleration of growth in the developing world in the new millennium in comparison with advanced economies is due not so much to improvements in underlying fundamentals as to exceptionally favourable global economic conditions, shaped mainly by unsustainable policies in advanced economies. The only developing economy which has had a major impact on global conditions, notably on commodity prices, is China. However, growth in China has been driven first by a rapid expansion of exports to advanced economies and more recently, after the global crisis, by an investment boom, neither of which is replicable or sustainable over the longer term. To maintain a rapid growth, export-led Asian economies need to reduce their dependence on foreign markets. For Latin American and African commodity exporters, gaining greater autonomy and achieving rapid and stable growth depend on their success in reducing reliance on capital flows and commodity earnings – the two key determinants of their growth which are largely beyond national control. Policy Brief, November 2011 The main framework of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) 1992, its related agreements (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) and its follow-up processes is to place the environment together with development in a single context. This is a unique achievement which has to be preserved and advanced, and not detracted from or diverted from. Policy Brief, November 2011 Twenty years after the Rio Summit 1992, the global sustainable development situation has deteriorated. The environment crisis has worsened. After a period of good development performances in some developing countries, the prospects for the global economy have worsened, with the financial-economic crisis now affecting Europe and the US, which has implications for developing countries. Many developing countries followed an export-led growth strategy; however if the economies of developed countries are stalling, this strategy has to be reviewed. The social dimension is bound to be affected by the environment and economic crises, which has adverse effects on poverty, employment and social services, food security, health, etc. Research Paper 40, July 2011 There are many challenges and obstacles facing developing countries in moving their economies to more environmentally friendly paths. On one hand this should not prevent the attempt to urgently incorporate environmental elements into economic development. On the other hand, the various obstacles should be identified and recognised and international cooperation measures should be taken to enable and support the sustainable development efforts. The conditions must be established that make it possible for countries, especially developing countries, to move towards a “green economy.” South Centre Analytical Note - September 2008 This Analytical Note stresses that both sustainable development and climate change are interlinked. Climate change will have impacts on the pace and progress of developing countries’ efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives, while achieving such objectives form the fundamental premise upon which developing countries are undertaking their actions to address climate change. Sustainable development is a legitimate aspiration of developing countries whose populations are affected by a wide range of poverty- and climate change-related impacts. Special Policy Discussion Paper - November 2007 Introduction: The Need for Urgent Global Action on Development and Climate Change (excerpt)Human-induced climate change is now well recognized as a physical and global reality. Global warming associated with climate change has begun to affect global weather patterns, sea levels, snow cover, ice sheets and rainfall. Regional climate patterns shifts are already affecting watersheds and ecosystems all over the world. The human and financial costs to countries of coping with extreme weather events, crop failures and other emergencies related to climate are growing higher. Developing countries, especially Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), who are already facing difficulties in alleviating poverty as a result of their economic situation, are especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Unless current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are drastically cut and reversed, global average temperatures will rise by at least 2C by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This will result in, among others, the creation of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees mostly from developing countries, acute water shortages of large proportions of the global population (again mostly in developing countries), food shortages as agricultural production goes down all over the world, sea level rise of at least 1 meter1, and the extinction of a third of the world’s species. Even before that, the expected 1C rise by 2020 and the 1.3C rise by 2025 will already have devastating impacts on the lives and livelihood of people, especially the poor and especially in developing countries. South Centre Analytical Note - August 2005 EXECUTIVE SUMMARYMany developing countries are rich in natural resources and in particular mineral commodities. While the extraction and processing of mineral commodities through large scale mining can make a major contribution to the economies of developing countries by providing export and fiscal revenues, it can also raise economic, environmental and social issues that pose policy dilemmas from the Government’s perspective. This paper identifies the limitations derived from the external setting that are faced by developing countries to design, implement and enforce laws and policies intended to foster a developmental strategy based on mineral commodities. The purpose of this paper is to highlight challenges that do not seem to be fully recognized by the “good governance” discourse on decisions related to the extraction and production process of mineral commodities. This paper is structured in four sections. The first one describes the mining production process and the location of mineral resources and specialization patterns. The second section explains the general characteristics of the large-scale intensive mining industry and the operations of Transnational Corporations (TNCs). The final section identifies challenges faced by developing countries to engage in this sector in view of this context and presents policy recommendations. South Centre Analytical Note - June 2003 INTRODUCTIONParagraph 51 of the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration provides a unique but ambiguous mandate for the WTO’s Committees on Trade and Development (CTD) and on Trade and Environment (CTE). It requires that these two bodies “within their respective mandates, each act as a forum to identify and debate developmental and environmental aspects of the negotiations, in order to help achieve the objective of having sustainable development appropriately reflected.” This mandate attempts to implement WTO Members’ desire to ensure that the Doha Round trade negotiations promote the objective of sustainable development. This objective is deeply embedded in the WTO framework. Explicit references to it can be found in the WTO’s constitutional legal instrument – the Marrakesh Agreement to Establish the World Trade Organisation – and in subsequent WTO legal texts, such as the 1994 Ministerial Decisions on Trade and Environment and on Trade in Services and the Environment, and the 1996 and 2001 WTO Ministerial Declarations. The WTO Appellate Body in the US – Shrimps-Turtle dispute also stated that the objective of sustainable development recognised in the WTO Agreement’s preamble “informs” all of the covered agreements. The proper and effective implementation of the Paragraph 51 mandate could be the key to ensuring that the Doha trade negotiations result in a final outcome that promotes the sustainable development needs and priorities of developing countries and is consistent with the earth’s long-term ecological carrying capacity from the local to the global level. South Perspectives - November 2002 FOREWORDThe 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is the third global conference on environment-related issues in the last three decades. It is a further, important stage in the process initially charted and launched by the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) and carried forward by the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Today, as in the past, the same basic issues that have been central to North-South debates on environment and development over these past three decades are once again stirring passions and controversy. The preparatory process, especially the final meeting of the Preparatory Committee for WSSD, held in Bali in May 2002, as well as the Johannesburg Conference itself were characterized by major disagreements between the North and the South, which ultimately proved impossible to bridge. The developing countries were unhappy, in particular, by what they felt was a negative stand of some developed countries and their reneging on earlier commitments and decisions. During the preparatory process, as in the case of the 2002 Monterrey U.N. Conference on Financing for Development, the developing countries experienced some difficulty in articulating and defending their views. Nor did the Draft Plan of Implementation for the WSSD allow much scope for their major concerns to be properly reflected, given the need to be sensitive to the views of the major countries of the North and what their respective governments were prepared to consider. South Perspectives -August 2000 OVERVIEWMany national governments and their international organizations, as well as several non-governmental development agencies, in the 1990s declared “sustainable development” and “sustainable agriculture” to be among their overarching goals. This paper examines the crucial importance of agriculture in “sustainable development” and some of the conceptual ambiguities and practical difficulties that must be faced by developing countries in attempting to approach “sustainable agriculture”. |