The writing on the wall is here to stay: Human civilisation will undermine its own foundations if we, the citizens of the Earth, do not change the course of our development paths. The limits to growth, predicted by the Club of Rome in the 1970s, are becoming only too evident. The combination of a growing population and worldwide increasing standards of living threatens to overstretch the carrying capacity of our planet at both ends: in the use of finite energy and non-renewable natural resources and in the capacity to absorb the polluting effluents of human activities. The impact of past and present carbon dioxide emissions is now felt around the world in turbulent weather conditions, melting glaciers, progressing deserts and rising sea levels. The recent update of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (February 2007) confirmed that human activities were a driver of global warming. Even the U.S. President has acknowledged, if late, that climate change needs action. Europeans have been more aware that this threat could not be met by a single country or even a group of countries alone. They are strongly committed to the Kyoto Protocol and to bringing developing countries - and the United States - into the process. If climate change is the worst - and fatal - market failure, there is a need for government action, and if the actions of individual governments do not suffice, there is an urgent need for international co-operation and effective global governance.

"The scientific evidence that climate change is a serious and urgent issue is now compelling. It warrants strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world to reduce the risk of very damaging and potentially irreversible impacts on ecosystems, societies and economies. With good policies the costs of action need not be prohibitive and would be much smaller than the damage averted. Reversing the trend to higher global temperatures requires an urgent, worldwide shift towards a low-carbon economy. Delay makes the problem much more difficult and action to deal with it much more costly. Managing that transition effectively and efficiently poses ethical and economic challenges, but also opportunities (�)"
Nicholas Stern, Review on the Economics of Climate Change, 2006

Climate change and other environmental disasters affect all countries whether developed or developing. Poorer countries and the poor in all countries will be the most affected as they have fewer resources to protect themselves against the new risks of global warming, rising sea levels, desertification and declining agricultural productivity resulting not only from more irregular rainfalls and other adverse weather conditions, but also from the loss of biodiversity. The loss of biodiversity and fertile soils can undermine the food production needed to improve nutrition standards and living conditions of the poorest around the world. Therefore they will need more assistance from the outside to meet those interconnected challenges.

Of course, people in developing countries have more immediate concerns than climate change. They are facing a host of acute risks from general insecurity related to extreme poverty to contagious diseases, political oppression, civil wars and terrorism. With modern air traffic, contagious diseases can spread around the world faster than the supply of vaccines can be built up to prevent a global pandemic. If effective development co-operation would help to alleviate poverty and contain the everyday risks of life for ordinary people in developing countries, it would contribute to make them more aware of future global risks and willing to contribute their share to the protection of global commons.

On the other hand, the rapid industrialisation of the giants China and India, but also of the next tier of developing countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and many others is accelerating climate change through rising global carbon dioxide emissions from industries and increasing numbers of motor vehicles. Understandably, the latecomers claim the right to industrialise just as Europe, North America and Japan have done over the past centuries. However, it can no longer be denied that if all emerging economies reached the living standards and the consumption patterns that the developed countries enjoy today, and were producing the same level of per capita pollution, climate change would accelerate and its destructive effects would exceed the capacity of poor countries to adjust. Emerging economies may be willing to take the issue of climate change on board but they consider that the presently industrialised countries have the primary responsibility to deal with a problem which they have created.

Thus the challenges of sustainable development are multiple: How can the more advanced countries be persuaded to accept their responsibility for the protection of global public goods? Can a grand bargain between the developed and the rapidly developing countries give the latter an opportunity to raise their living standards without compromising the future development of all countries? And how can the poorest countries of all be protected against the impact of climate change and the depletion of natural resources? Only more effective global governance can tackle those multiple challenges. More than ever since the foundation of the UN System and related international organisations at the end of the Second World War, developing countries have a stake and must have a say in global governance.

Climate change is not the only threat to human civilisation that needs to be contained through collective and coordinated action. A world war carried out with modern weapons of mass destruction could lead to the self-extinction of the human species. The increasing demand for energy and other resources from prosperous economies both in the North and in the South is triggering off a nervous scramble for resources in commodity-rich regions in the Near East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. For some time, commodity-producing countries have enjoyed the rising demand for their exports and now have more choice when looking for development assistance and other favours from developed countries. But in the long run, rising prices for commodities needed for industrialisation can prevent them from catching up with the developed world and leave them as rent-seeking countries that are dependent on the volatility of commodity prices and the success or failure of exploration for additional resources on their territories. Few developing countries have been able to invest their commodity rents in infrastructure development, education and industrial diversification to stimulate a healthy development.

The scramble for resources makes the happy few who control those resources very rich and powerful, whereas people and countries dependent on imported essential resources become poorer and more vulnerable. Increasing asymmetries in power and inequalities in living standards are a fertile ground for violent conflicts within and between states and for international terrorism. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were only the most spectacular symbol of these new security challenges. The subsequent terrorist attacks in Bali, London, Madrid and Mumbai revealed that the superpower is not the only target, but that any country and any community in the world can become a victim of international terrorism. Again, the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction cannot be met by one country alone, not even by the only superpower left after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.

Effective global governance is required for the management of economic globalisation as well. In the aftermath of World War II, the IMF and the World Bank played their part in preventing the recurrence of a world economic depression like that of 1929. After the developing countries gained independence from their former colonial powers they became members of the Bretton Woods institutions and thus shared responsibility for global economic management. The weighted voting according to the shares in the international financial institutions (IFIs), however, limited their impact on decision-making. There is a need to take account of the newly gained economic weight of the rising giants in decision-making of the IFIs. The Bretton Woods institutions were supported by the GATT - converted into the WTO in 1995 - and a series of eight rounds of multilateral trade negotiations. In the GATT and the WTO, developing members formally have the same vote as the developed countries. However, the OECD countries have, until recently, played a leading role in GATT negotiations. This was not only due to their better organisation, human resources and leverage in terms of market access concessions, but also a result of the benign neglect most developing countries showed for the GATT as long as they were following import substitution strategies and were not prepared to negotiate with the developed countries' reciprocal market access concessions. Those developing countries, however, which opted for an export-oriented industrialisation strategy benefited from the relative openness of markets in the United States and the EU thanks to the successful rounds of GATT negotiations. The East Asian economic miracle and the staggering growth rates of the giants China and India over the past few decades would not have been possible without secure access to the markets of the developed world. Yet, there is an urgent need to improve economic global governance.

The rising criticism of the international financial institutions and the WTO, including from laureates of the Nobel Prize in Economics, seems to be justified when one considers the shortcomings of the current wave of economic and financial globalisation, i.e. rising inequalities in and between nations and the neglect of the destructive effects of unfettered economic growth. While new opportunities have been created, the outcomes are widely seen to be unbalanced.

"The multilateral system responsible for designing and implementing international policies is under-performing. It lacks policy coherence as a whole and is not sufficiently democratic, transparent and accountable. These rules and policies are the outcome of a system of global governance largely shaped by powerful countries and powerful players. There is a serious democratic deficit at the heart of the system. Most developing countries still have very limited influence in global negotiations on rules and in determining the policies of key financial and economic institutions. Similarly, workers and the poor have little or no voice in this governance process.
The developing countries face other handicaps in making their influence felt in global governance. Global governance now spans a wide range of issues and many of these are of increasing technical complexity. This makes it extremely difficult for most poor countries to be even present at all negotiations, let alone represented at an adequate technical level. In addition, the increasing differentiation among developing countries adds to the problem of collective action among them at the global level to compensate for their individual weaknesses."
World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization (ILO) 2004

The principle of sustainable development, combining environmental protection and efficient management of depletable natural resources with poverty alleviation and decent living conditions for the people in developing countries, has been approved by all nations present at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio in 1992. Yet, translating this imperative into effective economic and environmental policies for both developed and developing countries seems to be an arduous task.

"Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits - not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth."
World Commission on Environment and Development (Gro Harlem Brundtland): Our Common Future, 1987

If the rich countries do not adjust their mass consumption patterns to the carrying capacity (resources and effluents) of "Spaceship Earth", how can they ask developing countries to suppress their longing to catch up with the rich countries and be happy with the frugal life that the remaining resources and the sink capacity of the atmosphere allow? Will a reduction of increasing inequalities only be possible without further environmental damage and depletion of exhaustible resources if the rich in both the developed and the developing world accept a redistribution of their wealth and income? Are the existing UN and Bretton Woods institutions prepared to spell out what these quandaries mean and how they should co-operate in order to find viable solutions?

The credit for putting these questions on the global agenda goes to far-sighted research and to international civil society, which has become a player in global governance to be taken seriously. Western governments have accepted the role of NGOs and civil society as watchdogs for neglected problems and groups, albeit more or less grudgingly, but in many authoritarian countries in the East and the South the role of civil society is still precarious. Supporting the capacity of civil society movements in developing countries through international co-operation and pressure on these governments to give room to advocacy groups is an important activity on the road toward more effective democracy and inclusive global governance.

Among non-state actors, multinational corporations have increasingly acquired the ability to influence the processes of global governance. But stakeholders are many (shareholders, employees, unions, consumers, communities) and the creativity of private business in finding new technologies and new solutions for sustainable development must be harnessed. Companies exposed to the scrutiny of an environmentally and socially concerned public take these challenges seriously and can draw advantages from being socially and environmentally responsible.

Finally, the search for more effective and more inclusive forms of global governance cannot underrate the role of culture and religion. With the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the international discourse on culture and development has become obsessed with the "clash of civilisations" and possible remedies to prevent and transform it into a peaceful and constructive dialogue aiming at a universal ethic for sustainable development. In view of the enormous diversity of growth performances in Asia, Africa and Latin America, it is difficult to deny the role of culture in general for development and good governance. How can the positive elements of each culture and civilisation be identified and mobilised for peaceful international co-operation and global governance?

"Development divorced from its human or cultural context is growth without a soul. Economic development in its full flowering is part of a people's culture. (�) Governments cannot determine a people's culture: indeed, they are partly determined by it. But they can influence it for better or worse, and thereby affect the path of development."
World Commission on Culture and Development, Our Creative Diversity, 1995

Sustainable development begins at home: Every citizen, every organisation and every company has to contribute to the common good. Governments have to design and implement policies that prevent free-riding producers and consumers. Therefore good governance of nation-states is part and parcel of global governance. Development assistance that aims at improving the governance capacities of developing countries contributes to the effective functioning of global governance. Free-riding of national governments in the international arena must be avoided as well. Consequently, policies of developed countries that affect other countries must be scrutinised for their impact on developing countries. The imperative to make economic and other policies with international repercussions coherent with (sustainable) development goals has been enshrined in the EC Treaty since 1993, and in the Millennium Development Goals adopted by all UN members in 2000.

Global Governance for Sustainable Development: The Need for Policy Coherence and New Partnerships will be the focus of the 12th EADI General Conference to be held in Geneva from 24 to 28 June 2008. How can development research contribute to the theme? A first answer would be: by providing the intellectual means to improve the living conditions of people in developing countries. Poverty alleviation reduces the pressure on local natural resources and with rising living standards people become more aware of their interconnectedness with the regional and global environment. However, improved living standards go hand in hand with rising demand for other and more distant resources (e.g. oil and gas instead of fuel wood). Therefore, development research and policy advice to developing countries must always evaluate projects, programmes and policies in terms of their contribution to the objective of sustainable development. In addition, development research must adopt a broad perspective and include the long-term impact of economic and social development on the global eco-systems and, vice versa, include the long-term impact of changes in the global eco-systems on economic and social development. Responsible development research must provide development assistance with the tools for assessing its impact on sustainable development both in partner countries and humanity as a whole. This will become even more relevant in view of the steep increase in Official Development Assistance (ODA) pledged by the donor community at the Monterrey Conference in 2002.

The 12th EADI General Conference to be held in Geneva in 2008 will be an opportunity for European development researchers and their associates in the developing regions (ICCDA) to present and debate their perceptions of the dramatic global challenges and to explore policy options and governance models to meet those challenges at the global, regional, national and local levels. Geneva is a choice venue to host a conference on global governance for sustainable development. It is the headquarters of a vast array of international, governmental and civil society organisations plus an internationally oriented academic community. Benefiting from this privileged location, the EADI conference will offer an opportunity for dialogue and stronger co-operation between research and the international organisations located in Geneva that are involved in development assistance and global governance.

Bonn (DIE) / Geneva (IUED) March 2007

Introduction to the Conference Topic