Climate Policy Brief, February 2013

The annual United Nations climate conference held in 2012 in Doha concluded on 8 December with low levels of commitments by the developed countries in two crucial areas -- emission cuts by them, and provision of climate financing for developing countries.

Policy Brief, January 2013

Since at least the early 1990s, countries that sought to regulate the capital account risked self-inflicted stigma in the international investment arena, even in the face of uncontroverted analytical reasons for their appropriateness.Subsequent events, including the Asian financial crisis in 1997, have not eliminated the stigma risk from capital account controls but the analytical discussion has shifted to when, not if, such controls are warranted.

Policy Brief, December 2012

A fundamental question raised by recurrent financial crises in mature and emerging economies is how to ensure that the financial markets and institutions serve growth and development rather than being a constant source of instability and disruption in pursuit of self-interest.

Climate Policy Brief, November 2012

Developing countries have long been at the frontlines of climate change and bearing the brunt of its impacts on sustainable development prospects and even, in many cases, physical survival and territorial integrity. These underscore the need for global cooperation and action on climate change.

Policy Brief, November 2012

Because of the absence of a multilaterally agreed legal system for debt workouts, the practice tends to be ad hoc and disorderly, generally favouring creditors. Often the IMF is involved in coordinating and resolving debt servicing difficulties, be it due to solvency or liquidity problems, based on an adjustment programme agreed with the debtor country.

Policy Brief, November 2012

An arbitral tribunal is expected to issue soon a decision on jurisdictional matters in a case brought by Philip Morris against the government of Uruguay. The claim, based on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between that country and Switzerland, challenges packaging and labeling requirements for cigarettes adopted by Uruguay to reduce tobacco’s consumption.

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.

Climate Policy Brief, September 2012

Since January 2012, aviation has been included in the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The Aviation ETS requires aircraft operators to surrender one allowance per tonne of carbon-dioxide emitted on a flight to and from (and within) the EU. This covers passenger, cargo and non-commercial flights and applies no matter where an aircraft operator is based. Each such airline would have to comply with a benchmark set by the EU on the basis of its average annual emissions in respect of flights to and from the EU. One of the most controversial aspects of the EU measure is that it calculates an airline’s emissions from the point of take off; this means that a flight from New Delhi to London, which flies within the EU only for a few hours, would have to account to the EU for its emissions from New Delhi itself. EU’s rationale in putting in place the system, evidently, is to ensure that its own operators are not at a competitive disadvantage.

Policy Brief, June 2012

The South Centre's Chief Economist, Dr. Yilmaz Akyüz, took part as a speaker at the UN General Assembly's two-day Thematic Debate on the State of the World Economy, held in New York on 17-18 May 2012. Below is the statement he presented to one of the four roundtables at the conference.

Policy Brief 8, April 2012

The current incentive-based model of pharmaceutical R&D has failed to make needed medicines available to a large number of people, especially those living in developing countries. This Policy Brief recognizes the urgent need of shifting from the incentive-based model of R&D to a model that effectively promotes not only innovation but more importantly access to medicines, particularly for diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries.

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.

Climate Policy Brief, November 2011

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has recently issued a report that examines four recent detailed studies of countries’ mitigation pledges under the Cancun Agreements, for the purpose of comparing developed (Annex 1) country pledges to developing (non-Annex 1) country pledges. It finds that there is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges. That conclusion is robust, in that it applies across all four studies and across all their various cases, despite the diversity of assumptions and methodologies employed and the substantial differences in their quantification of the pledges.  

Policy Brief, November 2011

The Declaration on the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health was adopted on 14 November 2001 by the 4th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting at Doha, Qatar. The declaration was made by the highest decision-making body of the WTO, with the aim of promoting a balanced interpretation and implementation of the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement in a manner that is supportive of a WTO Member’s right to protect public health and promote access to medicines for all.

Policy Brief, May 2011

A cursory read of the FSB’s report on progress in the implementation of G20’s reform agenda indicates how vast the agenda has become. Agreement on the international agenda is being accompanied by measures implementing this agreement at national level and at the level of the EU. The focus attention of policy makers and regulators concerns not merely the effectiveness of reform measures in reducing financial risks but the need perceived by national authorities for a reasonably high degree of convergence of reform to prevent frustration of the reform’s objectives by regulatory arbitrage in the form of firms’ search for locations in which activities will be most lightly regulated.

Policy Brief, April 2011

Pathogens are clearly within the scope of the Nagoya Protocol (NP). Preamble 16 of the NP makes clear that pathogens are within the scope of the NP. Further the preamble does not exclude the application of the benefit sharing provisions of the NP. Indeed it cannot do so in the face of the express objective of the NP for the sharing of benefits. Also there is nothing in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 4 that makes the NP inapplicable to pathogens. Article 8(b) also does not establish a special benefit sharing regime for pathogens.

Climate Policy Brief, March 2011

The 2010 climate conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which took place in Cancun (Mexico) on 29 November to 11 December was complex in both process and content, and in both aspects it will have an importance and ramifications that will take several years to unfold.

Climate Policy Brief 4, December 2010

In the quest for an international climate agreement on actions to address the climate change crisis, three aspects have to be the basis simultaneously: the environmental imperative, the developmental imperative, and the equity imperative. This EDE formula requires that the different pieces of the climate negotiations be seen and addressed as a whole, in a holistic way.  In particular, setting the global goal for emission reduction has to take account of the environmental imperative, and also deal with the emission reduction of Annex I and non Annex I parties.  A global carbon budget of how much more emissions should be allowed between now and 2050 should be fixed, and also how that budget should be allocated especially between developed and developing countries.  

Climate Policy Brief 3, 30 November 2010

The South Centre released a new Policy Brief addressing some key issues on Cancun Climate Conference, including the lowering of expectations; the Fate and Shape of the Global Climate Regulatory Regime; Disastrous Projection of Pledges; the Obligations Proposed for Developing Countries; and  Cancun  New Structures in Finance, Technology and Adaptation.

Policy Brief 20, November 2009

This paper provides an overview of the state of play in the GATS negotiations, both covering the market access negotiations, as well as the rules negotiations.

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Policy Brief, November 2009

This policy brief summarises the research the South Centre has conducted on the Special Safeguard Mechanism, and particularly the conditionalities suggested in the current draft agriculture texts that limit the usage of the instrument.

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Policy Brief, November 2009

As trade ministers prepare to assemble November 30 in Geneva for further WTO talks, they are hearing another round of new and refurbished projections of how much wealthier the world might be after liberalizing trade.  The upcoming ministerial is no different, and neither, fundamentally, are the projections, notwithstanding one recent claim that an ambitious Doha deal could deliver $300-$700 billion in global welfare gains, with the benefits "well-balanced" between developed and developing countries.

These recent projections, from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, contrast with the World Bank's widely publicized 2005 estimates of global gains from a "likely Doha scenario" of less than $100 billion, with just $16 billion going to developing countries.  Did economists find another $150-$350 billion in benefits for developing countries that the World Bank missed in 2005?  Is development back in the Doha Round. The answer, of course, is no.  The purpose of this policy brief is to look behind the press releases to examine the recent economic projections, review previous estimates, and put these seemingly large numbers in their proper context.  As before, the claims that developing countries will be the big winners from Doha rest on shaky assumptions, controversial economic modeling, misleading representations of the benefits, and disregard for the high costs of Doha-style liberalization for many developing countries

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Policy Brief, January 2010

This Policy Brief looks at the process leading up to and the substantive provisions of the Copenhagen Accord. It identifies key issues in the Accord that would be important to consider for developing countries in light of their potential implications for the UNFCCC negotiations.

South Centre Policy Brief 15, December 2008.

The ability of governments to procure from firms of its own choice can be an important development tool and can also be an instrument for macroeconomic management. Providing preferences to local producers of goods and suppliers of services and set-asides may be part of an industrial policy or an instrument to attain social objectives and can have immense implications for national development, local business and job creation.

This Policy Brief analyses the scope of international trade rules governing government procurement in the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with developing countries, the key provisions of EPAs regarding this topic and its potential implications for development.

The financial crisis has shown how dysfunctional the current international financial architecture is to manage the global economy of today, with its myriad of interconnections through which financial turmoil spreads across the world and with its revealed and significant regulatory deficit. In the 1980s, the debt crisis in Latin America, Africa and other parts of the developing world, and in the late 1990s the succession of the Asian, Russian and Latin American crises, had already revealed that something was deeply wrong with that architecture. The industrial world did not understand the need for serious rethinking of the governance of global finance.The fact that this time developed countries are at the center of the storm may now lead them into action.

Press ReleaseOctober 29, 2008  

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Policy Brief 14 - March 2008

Executive Summary

With the multilateral trade negotiations at an impasse, with the rising concern on climate change and energy insecurity, rising international food prices which disproportionately affect the poor, the time is ripe for all concerned on development to start taking concrete actions to address the plight of the commodity crisis. The time is high for translating pledges and action plans on commodities into concrete actions. Given UNCTAD’s historical role, there is no better framework other than UNCTAD XII for gathering the steam for this.

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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.

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Policy Brief No. 9 - August 2007

Executive Summary

The new digital environment offers both opportunities and challenges for developing countries. New international legal requirements with respect to the protection of technological measures that can be used by copyright owners to control access and use of their works can hinder the ability of developing countries to promote access to knowledge for development. This policy brief explains the current international legal framework for their protection and national experiences in their implementation. It highlights that developing countries should use the flexibilities available to narrowly implement anti-circumvention obligations in such a way that can reduce the threat they pose on access to knowledge.

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Policy Brief No. 8 - June 2007

Executive Summary

Discussions for a new treaty to protect broadcasting and cablecasting organizations against signal theft at the WIPO are closely linked to the information evolution. Member States must carefully balance between granting increased protection to certain segments of broadcasting media to protect their commercial interests with safeguarding the public interest in access and use of the content that is broadcast. Accordingly, the proposed treaty should narrowly focus on signal theft, excluding any intellectual-property type rights and technical mandates. If rights are included, these must be balanced by a robust regime for limitations and exceptions.

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T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief No. 1

Executive Summary

This T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief of the South Centre discusses the concept of “policy space” and its role in promoting the development of the South. This is founded on the principles of the equal sovereignty of States, the right to development, and the provision of special and differential treatment to developing countries. The “one size fits all” economic approaches of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO have not worked. It hence argues that policy space is needed so as to provide developing counties with the freedom to choose the best mix of policies possible for achieving sustainable and equitable economic development given their unique and individual social, political, economic, and environmental conditions.

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T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief No.1

Executive Summary

This T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief of the South Centre discusses the concept of “policy space” and its role in promoting the development of the South. This is founded on the principles of the equal sovereignty of States, the right to development, and the provision of special and differential treatment to developing countries. The “one size fits all” economic approaches of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO have not worked. It hence argues that policy space is needed so as to provide developing counties with the freedom to choose the best mix of policies possible for achieving sustainable and equitable economic development given their unique and individual social, political, economic, and environmental conditions.

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T.R.A.D.E. Policy Brief No.2

Introduction

International aid to assist developing countries in their efforts to implement economic reforms is not new. However, aid has rarely been a simple transfer of resources from rich to poor countries. Often, aid comes to developing countries attached to a development “toolbox” in the form of aid conditionality. This toolbox traditionally involves neoliberal macroeconomic and trade policy prescriptions in the form of structural adjustment programmes that are more often a reflection of the political and economic ideology of donors than of the economic development priorities of aid-receiving countries. A report by the World Bank states that “[d]onors use aid to advance their values, their commercial interests, their cultural aspirations and their diplomatic and political objectives.” 

Aid for trade is a reflection of the fact that trade liberalization in itself does not automatically.

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