Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu

The five legacy papers, Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future (2022), The People’s Environ-ment Narrative. pp 647-685, Utrecht, the Netherlands

This chapter provides an assessment of the current relation, interaction and importance of Science for the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, as a key enabler of its mandate to catalyze environmental policies, strategies and actions for the benefit of world citizens and the planet.

This review is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with renowned international experts about their views on UNEP’s role and contributions to the international multilateral environmental system and on the emerging challenges and needs of knowledge production through science. Highlights will be given to exemplify the impact of proposed policy choices, the monitoring mechanisms created to track scientific knowledge - how it got translated and popularized - since UNEP’s inception in 1972. Observations made by these experts on UNEP’s challenges and shortfalls will also be reported. The authors conclude with recommendations on how UNEP could strengthen its science-policy-society interface and strengthen its role as key international advocate and custodian of sustained environmental development through effective science-policy-society dialogue and mutual learning.

Saner, R.; Grimm, J, (2011); “Umweltkonflikte und Nachhaltigkeit in Lateinamerika: Verhandlungen zwischen Unternehmen, NGOs und Regierungsstellen” (Environmental conflicts and sustainable development in Latin America: Negotiations between enterprises, NGOs and Governments); Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften SHV; Saarbrücken, (283 pp).

Greening the World Trade Organization
by Raymond Saner
Environmental and Climate Change Economics

The research programme on “Climate Change and Sustainable Development” addresses the two inter-related issues of climate change and sustainable development and a corollary of key topics in the field of environmental economics. The programme builds upon over twenty years of successful FEEM research in the field. In the specific area of climate change, FEEM has achieved a leading position in the international research community, as a result of the in-house development and application of several methodologies for the economic analysis of climate and energy policies. FEEM models address world-wide vulnerability to changes in climatic conditions, and investigate the economics of mitigation and adaptation to these changes. In the specific area of sustainable development, FEEM research covers a variety of issues: sustainable management of natural resources, the economics of natural hazards and extreme events, and the use of indicators to measure sustainability and growth beyond GDP. FEEM can also rely on a strong research team of applied economists who investigate the economic performance of various environmental and climate policy instruments. The twofold goal of this research programme is to contribute to science while guiding policies and informing the public debate.

Stakeholder engagement for sustainable development : replacing hierarchies of failures with hierarchies of solutions.

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