Our Papers and Publications New Approaches to Trade Governance. The WTO and sustainable development. The UNEP That We Want. The Development Dimensions of the UN Global Compact. Sustainable Development Opinion Papers RING/IIED Briefing Papers for WSSD Report: Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards a Southern Agenda - Adil Najam RING/IIED Report: Financing for Sustainable Development edited by Tariq Banuri and Tom Bigg RING Statement for WSSD Report: EU Informal Seminar: World Summit on Sustainable Development RING Statement to the Global Compact Strengthening Demand: A Framework for Financing for Sustainable Development Developing Countries and Multi-lateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs): A RING 'Pooled' Research Paper, by Adil Najam

New Approaches to Trade Governance.

New Approaches to Trade Governance By Mark Halle

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The WTO and sustainable development.

The WTO and sustainable development By Mark Halle

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The UNEP That We Want

The UNEP That We Want By Mark Halle

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The Development Dimensions of the UN Global Compact

The Ring have published a report titled "The Development Dimensions of the UN Global Compact." The report focuses on the relationship between business and development in the context of the Global Compact's activities and presents a number of recommendations to reinforce the development dimension of the Global Compact.

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Report: Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards a Southern Agenda - Adil Najam

On Wednesday 1 May 2002 the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) convened a roundtable for participants at the WTO Public Symposium presenting possible elements of an "Emerging Southern Agenda on Trade and Environment". The event was a great success with approximately 130 participants. Discussions took point of departure in the WTO Doha mandate on trade and environment -- in particular Para. 31 & 32 -- and focused on that developing countries should be pursuing a "proactive" agenda, rather than a "defensive" approach in the WTO negotiations on trade and environment. Further more participants underlined the need for further capacity building in this area, particularly at the domestic level. The Southern Agenda Project will now move to Phase 2. The Ring members will be involved in the shaping of Phase 2 as it will also involve activities on the national level of developing countries.

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RING/IIED Report: Financing for Sustainable Development edited by Tariq Banuri and Tom Bigg

The goal of sustainable development is a difficult one to begin with. With inadequate sources of financing it will remain an elusive one as well. At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) financing and technology transfer were the two 'cross-cutting issues' pressed by the South. A decade later, in 2002, these two continue to provide central themes for the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) process. In addition, the UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) is being convened in Monterrey - again, reputedly at the behest of developing countries - to focus directly on financing. This new report states that discussions surrounding both the WSSD and the FFD process indicate an absence of creative thinking on the issue of financing, and on the challenges of globalisation. It argues that there is a crisis of legitimacy confronting the agencies.

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RING Statement for WSSD

For those who take sustainable development seriously, the period since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit has proved disappointing. Even accounting for the naive optimism invested in the Rio process and outputs, the track record since then has been dismal: governments have refused to invest the new resources that had been promised or implied; civil society continues to be distanced from the locus of global decision making, in spite of the fact that it has grown in size and achieved many successes at the local level. The hopes that sustainable development would build new bridges between North and South or between governments and civil society remain largely unrealised. The much-celebrated Rio compact - the supposed understanding between South and North that environment and development needs to be dealt with as an integrated complex set of concerns within the context of current and future social justice and equity - lies bruised and neglected.

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Report: EU Informal Seminar: World Summit on Sustainable Development

The Swedish Presidency of the EU arranged an informal seminar in Stockholm on 28 - 29 May 2001 for EU officials engaged in the preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The main objective was to contribute to the process of refining thinking within the EU on the possible agenda and desired outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit. The event was of a purely informal nature and provided an opportunity for off the record discussions for later possible use in established channels.

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RING Statement to the Global Compact

The RING applauds the Secretary General's bold initiative to establish a global partnership between the UN, governments, businesses, and NGOs and other civil society institutions. We have long advocated a partnership approach at national levels and welcome the innovative extension of the idea to the global domain. Besides this, the GC fills a major lacuna in the discussions and evolution of global governance by asserting the significance of corporate implementation of a set of universally accepted principles for human rights, labour and environment. We are especially appreciative of the attention that the GC has drawn to core ethical values, values without which no system of governance can be viable or sustainable.

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Strengthening Demand: A Framework for Financing for Sustainable Development

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of financing for sustainable development from the above perspective. The key insight in this paper relies on a distinction between what we call the traditional "supply side" approach, preoccupied with the mobilization of concessional resources, and an alternative "demand side" approach that focuses instead on creating capacity, especially of smaller- and medium-scale entities to access and deploy financial resources on commercial terms. While the conventional approach is concerned directly with identifying new sources of funds, shoring up existing ones, and encouraging the redirection of others, the alternative proposed here seeks to accomplish all this by increasing the legitimacy of the process and reducing the risk of alternative scale investment.

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Developing Countries and Multi-lateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs): A RING 'Pooled' Research Paper, by Adil Najam

This report seeks to pool together the research on Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) undertaken by RING partners. Although most of the research that is reported here was undertaken separately by individual institutions, there are many commonalties in the areas and approaches reflected in the research. Moreover, there is a shared direction and thrust to the research that makes it amenable to 'pooling together'. The purpose of this report is more than merely summarizing the research on MEAs conducted by RING partners. The hope is that the process of pooling it together will help identify areas of alternative thinking on sustainable development emerging from institutions with a Southern perspective. This report is also a first step towards formal collaborative research amongst RING partners and will set the context for such research.

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