Three topics dominate the formulation an international greenhouse-gas regime as part of an effective global environmental policy. Efficiency, equity, and uncertainty. And three major policy instruments are discussed as regards the implementation of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate...

Im Bericht der Weltkommission für Umwelt und Entwicklung von 1987, der zu einer weltweiten Diskussion über zukunftsfähige Entwicklung (sustainable development) geführt hat, finden sich zwei Definitionen dieses Konzepts: „Entwicklung zukunftsfähig zu machen heißt, das die gegenwärtige...

Wasser ist unabdinglich für das Wohlbefinden der Menschen und das Wohlsein der Natur. Die Verfügbarkeit über sauberes Trinkwasser entscheidet über Leben und Tod, die Verfügbarkeit über wirtschaftliches Nutzwasser bedingt Prosperität oder Verelendung. Und deshalb kann Wasser auch Anlass...

With the beginning of the new millennium, the longstanding need for reform of the United Nations system has gained new momentum. Efficiency gains and better coordination are desirable, though not sufficient to bring about improvement in international relations. There is need, therefore, to look...

When in 1998 ECOSOC decided to reconstitute the previous Committee for Development Planning under name Committee for Development policy, it mandated the new CDP, among other tasks, to „… continue the triennial review of the status of least developed countries“, with the next review to be...

In Europe, the recent debate on globalisation of the economy has - ironically - given a notable push for various concepts of regionalisation. Regions always played a strong role in people's perceptions of a good life, but regions were predominantly understood as political boundaries of states,...

In political terms it all started with the World Commission on Environment and Development which in its 1987 report Our Common Future stated that ...humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of...

Global environmental policy certainly could gain strength if the management of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) or of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) were made more efficient. However, such a minimalist strategy of efficiency improvement is no panacea: it can...

Questions of international distributive justice are certainly not new. We need only think of the demand made by the developing countries in the 1970s for a New World Economic Order, which aimed at a more equitable distribution of the benefits derived from the international division of labor....

Fragen der internationalen Verteilungsgerechtigkeit sind beileibe nicht neu. Man denke nur an die Forderung der Entwicklungsländer aus den siebziger Jahren nach einer Neuen Weltwirtschaftsordnung, die auf eine gerechtere Verteilung der Vorteile aus der internationalen Arbeitsteilung abzielte....