Global Accord


Book Description

A holistic approach to a complex set of environmental issues.




International Monetary Cooperation


Book Description

In September 1985, emissaries of the world's five leading industrial nations—the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan—secretly gathered at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and unveiled an unprecedented effort to correct the largest set of current account and exchange rate imbalances that had ever threatened the world economy. The Plaza Accord is credited with sharply realigning exchange rates, significantly reducing current account imbalances, and countering protectionist pressures in the United States. But did the Accord provide a foundation for ongoing international financial stability and policy coordination? Or was it simply a unique one-time coincidence of national interests? The Plaza experience continues to inform today's debates about the limits and possibilities of international monetary cooperation. In late 2015, leading policymakers and economists—including those who were involved in the Accord's design, negotiation, and implementation—held a Plaza Retrospective conference at the Baker Institute for Public Policy to evaluate the Accord's legacy and how its collaborative spirit can be applied today. This volume presents their views and analyses to provide guidance for a time when the world again faces the prospect of currency disequilibria, growing imbalances, trade policy reactions, and thus uncertainty for both the global economy and world politics.




Information Systems and the Environment


Book Description

Information technology is a powerful tool for meeting environmental objectives and promoting sustainable development. This collection of papers by leaders in industry, government, and academia explores how information technology can improve environmental performance by individual firms, collaborations among firms, and collaborations among firms, government agencies, and academia. Information systems can also be used by nonprofit organizations and the government to inform the public about broad environmental issues and environmental conditions in their neighborhoods. Several papers address the challenges to information management posed by the explosive increase in information and knowledge about environmental issues and potential solutions, including determining what information is environmentally relevant and how it can be used in decision making. In addition, case studies are described and show how industry is using information systems to ensure sustainable development and meet environmental standards. The book also includes examples from the public sector showing how governments use information knowledge systems to disseminate “best practices” beyond big firms to small businesses, and from the world of the Internet showing how knowledge is shared among environmental advocates and the general public.




Environmental Impacts of Globalization and Trade


Book Description

An analytic exploration of whether trade hurts or helps the environment.




Argument in the Greenhouse


Book Description

How can greenhouse gases be controlled and reduced? Will it be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into `real world' applied economic analysis, the authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological taxt reform, developing countries, and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on eissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies, likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels. be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into 'real world' applied economic analysis, the book's authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological tax reform, developing countries and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political economy context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on emmissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies which are likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels.




Mapping Sustainability


Book Description

This book focuses on three interdependent challenges related to managing transitions toward sustainable development. These are: mapping sustainability for global knowledge e-networking, extending the value chain of knowledge and e-networking, and engaging in explorations of new methods and venues for further developing knowledge and e-networking. While each of these challenges constitutes fundamentally different types of endeavors, they are highly interconnected. Jointly, they contribute to our expansion of knowledge and its applications in support of transitions toward sustainable development.




International Regimes in China


Book Description

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, more than 80% of world’s fish stocks are fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion. Although several international agreements have promoted more responsible fisheries, coastal states have usually maintained national policies that enable higher harvest levels rather than greater conservation of fish stocks, and international agreements for more responsible fisheries have generally experienced a weak domestic implementation. Among the major coastal fishing states, China constitutes the largest fish producer and main exporter in the world, and therefore presents a fascinating case-study for the domestic implementation of international fisheries agreements. This book investigates the degree to which China has complied with the international agreements it has signed, and asks why it is failing to meet expectations. Crucially, it calls for greater emphasis on the political, rather than technical, issues involved in the implementation of international regimes. In turn, it examines how understanding the case of China can help us to develop solutions for improved international compliance in the future. Providing an improved understanding of the implementation of international regimes, alongside an in-depth study of China’s political system, policy-making and compliance, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, international relations, public policy, and international law and environmental studies. It will also be useful for policy makers working in the fields of environmental regulation and fisheries management.




The Environment and International Politics


Book Description

This new study shows how environmental issues represent a deep problem in conceptualising the relationship between human beings and nature. This key relationship grounds the implicit ethical and political concerns of International Relations and our understandings of environmental politics. It demonstrates that the core theoretical orientations of the study of International Relations are not only incapable of understanding and responding to contemporary problems, but are profoundly complicit in creating the ecological problems in the first place. This major book develops a sense of these realities based on the thinking of Martin Heidegger. It forwards new ways of rethinking the environmental questions and addresses crucial issues such as sovereignty, the International Law of The Sea, the Kyoto Protocol, Northern Alaskan oil exploration and exploitation and the impact of the United Nations Convention on the Law of The Sea III. This is essential specialist reading for readers concerned with the environment.




Countering Mainstream Narratives


Book Description

Faced with the startling and blaring unity of global Western mainstream messaging, the public has become ever more distrustful of the MSM narratives—and with good reason. Authoritative sources have begun pushing back and offering cogent challenges to these proclaimed truths—and in turn, the digital gatekeepers have been increasingly cracking down on what they regard as unwelcome alternative views—irrespective of the stature of the persons providing them. In this collection of essays, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, Professor Alfred de Zayas, takes mainstream disinformation, fake news, censorship and self-censorship head-on. Stressing the importance of access to information and to a genuinely pluralistic spectrum of views as indispensable to every functioning democracy, de Zayas provides an insightful counter-narrative, shedding light on the key issues facing humanity today. This collection of essays spans a broad spectrum of issues, including • the need to overhaul the human rights apparatus, • the weaponization of human rights against geopolitical rivals, • the instrumentalization of domestic and international law for purposes of “lawfare”, initiatives for world peace, • disarmament for development, • the sustainable development goals, • the information war, what and whom to believe, • the democratic function of whistleblowers, • the persecution of human rights defenders like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, • the destructive role of the military-industrial-financial complex, • the elevation of NATO to cult status, so that we must believe its narratives as a matter of faith, • the demonization of Russia and China and the consequences of incitement to hatred in escalating tensions world-wide • the evidence-free allegations of “genocide” in Xinjiang, and not least, • the war in Ukraine. The essays also explore moral, legal and philosophical questions on law and justice, law and punishment, and the rule of international tribunals. Drawn from de Zayas’ recent contributions to the respected online news journal, Counterpunch, Countering the Mainstream Narratives provides an exceptional guide to unwinding the fakery that engulfs us. De Zayas’ essays and op-eds have also been published in the Guardian, The Independent, Inter Press service, Truthout, Counterpunch, as well as in the Tribune de Genève, Le Courrier, die Welt, die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other newspapers.




Medical Trade, Public Health, and the Law


Book Description

Faced with evolving trade and health dynamics, this book presents a historical, conceptual, and empirical examination of public health and medical procurement in international trade law at a time of emergency. The work argues that the current trade framework is outdated and must be redesigned to suit the new needs of the 21st century. It identifies critical problems within the current international trade system that prevents it from effectively responding to pandemics, as well as to the emerging digital economy. Based on the analysis, the study puts forward specific suggestions to upgrade the current trade rules framework to prepare for future international public health emergencies and further digitalization of health services. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of International Trade Law, Public Health Law and Medical Law.