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.
This article is about three significant events that occurred on the same day in 2025 across three different parts of the world. The events all contain messages of despair and resignation, as well as of hope and optimism. As such, these events can represent, in a way, the work carried out in 2025, as well as the hope we have for 2026 and beyond. With this, I would like to wish, from all of us at the Stakeholder Forum, a better new year than the one we sent to the archives of history, and invite you to work together towards the world we all want to live in and leave to future generations. Irena Zubcevic, Director, Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future.
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.
Even though the COP21 meeting in Paris concluded on a positive note, the implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures remains based on non-binding proposals and promises made by the countries who took part in COP21. In addition, the solutions discussed so far are based on the assumption and hope that new technologies will be developed that can help generate the needed abatement of Green House Gases (GHG) and that such new technology could be developed, sold and used based on “business as usual” in regard to protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs). This publication proposes instead an alternative way to halt climate warming. The author suggests that the treaty power of the WTO could be used to create the incentive system needed to transform “business as usual- IPR” to a “green oriented trade and development system” turning green high technology into a common resource that could give low-income developing countries access to green high technology goods and services which would enable them to contribute to the effort of stopping global warming at a global level. Finally, this publication proposes three green agreements within the WTO agreement framework that could generate the green investments and green production needed to successfully implement climate change mitigation and adaptation at global level and in the public interest.
ISBN Number 9788894170108
FEEM Press, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Series, 2/2016
Radical new approaches are urgently needed to reverse climate warming and to prevent the world from committing “ecocide” through environmental destruction. The radical new solutions proposed in this policy study go beyond the incremental change of current policy practice and instead suggest the need for a discontinuous change as the only means of halting the pervasive “tinkering along” approach of mainstream policy making which have not been able to bring about a halt to climate warming. This policy paper assesses the various attempts of state and non-state actors to cope with climate change and argues that a radically new approach is needed within the WTO agreements to generate solutions that have sufficient weight and treaty power to bring about a new and credible approach towards halting and reversing of climate warming.
Building on previous analysis and recommendations, this policy study discusses the interface between multilateral agreements on trade and on climate change and suggests that the WTO is the only multilateral institution which can effectively generate legal constraints and political will to stop climate warming. This policy study proposes an intra-regime solution within the WTO agreement in order to elicit the green investments and green production needed to successfully implement climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The following questions are addressed by this policy study: Which are the international economic governance options to effectively stop climate warming? Which are the main disciplines within the WTO Agreements addressing environment, trade, investment and intellectual property? What can be changed within the WTO Agreements to foster a green economy in developed and developing countries? What does the WTO case law say about disputes involving environment, trade, and investment?
This book titled « Environmental conflicts in Latin America” offers in –depth analysis of environmental conflicts from a multi-stakeholder perspective in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Columbia, Chile-Argentina and Columbia-Ecuador. The case examples offer analyses based on established negotiation theory and show actors such as governments, transnational companies, NGOs and civil society engage in negotiations covering water rights, gas and oil extraction, natural reservations (indigenous people rights versus enterprises’ construction projects). (The book is in German)
Negotiations at WTO and UNFCCC are both in limbo putting at risk international cooperation in key sectors of world development. International governance options are urgently needed to strengthen multilateral negotiations at the WTO and UNFCCC to avoid full deadlock and possible major trade and environmental conflicts. This policy brief written in June 2011 offers solutions which are not “WTO-UNFCCC speak” but rather based on “out of the box thinking”.
This contribution focuses on the drivers, determinants and policy implications of low-carbon FDI, with particular attention to developing countries. Parts of this paper served as an input to Chapter IV of the World Investment Report 2010, which examined the issue of TNCs and Climate Change. The authors are however free to use all of the reflections presented below for their own publications.
“Levers to Enhance TNC Contributions to Low-Carbon Development- Drivers, Determinants and Policy Implications ; CSEND/DiplomacyDialgoue/Geneva/May 2011
