Global Governance, Institutions, Institutional Reform Publications and Resources

The Crisis of Multilateralism
September 14, 2024 - Walden Bello, Foreign Policy In Focus
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in trouble. They are running out of money to lend. And, though both institutions are reaching out to civil society, representatives of nongovernmental organizations are banned from their fall meeting in Singapore.

The Fund is searching for a new role and a new governance structure. But proposals such as linking voting weight to GDP are mired in controversy. The Bank, meanwhile, is groaning under the weight of a huge bureaucracy. The crisis of these two institutions combine to make a crisis for multilateralism in general.  Read publication...

The Hijacking of the Development Debate - How Friedman and Sachs Got It Wrong
August 1, 2025 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, World Policy Journal
Just a half decade after protests by citizen groups in Latin America and elsewhere discredited two decades of market-oriented neoliberal dogma, Friedman and Sachs have narrowed the debate with simplistic slogans of “more aid” and “more trade.” They have done so by putting forward myths about the poor, economic development, and the global economy.  Read publication...

High Oil Prices: Undermining Debt Cancellation and Fueling A New Debt Crisis?
July 14, 2025 - Oil Change International and Jubilee USA Network, Oil Change International and Jubilee USA Network
Soaring oil prices are undermining the benefits of debt cancellation and putting serious stress on many of the world's most impoverished countries. This is not the first time that volatile oil prices have played a role in exacerbating debt. The oil shocks of 1973-74 and 1979-80 played a central role in triggering the modern debt crisis and clearly exposed the dangers of oil dependence. Today the stakes are higher than ever. Global warming threatens us all, but it is impoverished countries that are most vulnerable to its impacts. A new energy revolution is needed, one that focuses on promoting a just transition away from oil dependence and towards energy efficiency and sustainable alternatives. We need a global strategy that will take oil out of the debt equation once and for all, including more and faster debt cancellation as well as programs that are focused on overcoming energy poverty in a truly sustainable way. Unfortunately, many governments around the world are once again arguing that the solution to our oil addiction is more oil (that if we increase and protect the supply of oil and gas then prices will fall and all will be well with the world)! This approach, which is in part reflected in the Plan of Action on Global Energy Security that G-8 leaders endorsed at the July 2006 St. Petersburg Summit, will not address the role that oil plays in exacerbating the debt crisis nor will it help lift billions of people out of energy poverty. Using public resources to subsidize the expansion of the oil and fossil fuel industry will feed overconsumption in the North, fuel global warming, and increase international tensions without generating long-term alternatives. As outlined in the following brief, there is an urgent need to challenge G-8 plans to increase support for the oil and fossil fuel industry and to call on governments around the world to focus international efforts on strategies that will simultaneously address energy poverty, crushing debt and global warming.  Read publication...

The Unfinished Agenda on International Debt
July 14, 2025 - Jubilee USA Network, Jubilee USA Network
In July 2005, world leaders gathered in Gleneagles, Scotland, and announced a plan to cancel debts, increase foreign aid, and make changes to international trade policy. At the time, Jubilee USA Network responded to the announcement by the G-8 on additional debt cancellation by welcoming it as an important first step on a long journey. One year later, it is important to look back and take stock. On the positive side, some debts have been cancelled for 21 nations, and the money is being put to good use. But much more remains to be done: 9 out of 10 people in the developing world will see no benefit from the 2005 debt deal. A broader, Jubilee cancellation of debts is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals and to cancel odious and illegitimate debts. This policy brief looks at the progress of the past year, and outlines the unfinished agenda on international debt ahead of the 2007 Sabbath Year.  Read publication...

State of Negotiations and WTO’s Exclusive June Mini-Ministerial
June 16, 2025 - Aileen Kwa, Focus on the Global South
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U.S. Hegemony or Global Good Neighbor Policy?
February 1, 2025 - Laura Carlsen and Tom Barry, International Relations Center
Over the past few years we have faced two major challenges in conceiving of a new foreign policy in Latin America. The first is the relative lack of attention to the region, by both the U.S. government and public. The second is the increasing friction between the current U.S. administration's strategies for global U.S. hegemony and Latin American elected governments and grassroots trends toward greater independence and new models. The following policy review of U.S.-Latin American relations examines the salient new developments in Latin America and the Caribbean and U.S. policy in the region. It concludes with general guidelines for a more coherent and constructive U.S. Latin American policy in the region, along the lines of the “Global Good Neighbor Ethic for U.S. Foreign Policy.”  Read publication...

Measuring Globalization
April 10, 2025 - The A.T. Kearney/FOREIGN POLICY
Globalization Index™ is the first comprehensive empirical measure of globalization and its impact. It measures economic, person-to-person, political, and technological integration in 62 countries, accounting for 96 percent of the world's gross GDP and 85 percent of the world's population.  Read publication...

Brazil and the Difficult Path to Multilateralism
March 8, 2025 - Raul Zibechi, International Relations Center - America's Program
Brazil's rise as a regional and world power that champions multilateralism is being met with domestic and international obstacles. In addition to the resistance of the United States, Brazil has left a bitter taste in the mouth of its own neighbors who feel its steamroller-like advances are creating a new disequilibrium on the subcontinent. The domestic problems of Brazil - a country that has won "the world championship of inequality" - are spilling over as the country aspires to become a major player on the international scene. Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org).  Read publication...

China Copes with Globalization - a mixed review
January 15, 2025 - Dale Wen, Visiting Scholar, International Forum on Globalization
This primer intends to serve as a briefing on the implications of China’s evolving role in the global economy and help build bridges and greater understanding between emerging social movements in China and international civil society.  Read publication...

The Public Voice WSIS Sourcebook: Perspectives on the World Summit on the Information Society
December 7, 2024 - EPIC Public Voice Project
An upcoming book will contain selections from the final resolutions and statements of the WSIS meeting held in Tunis in November 2005.  Read publication...

The Doha Deception Round: a recipe for unemployment
December 2, 2024 - {Civil Society signatories]
Over a hundred social movements, trade unions and NGOs release a statement on the employment and unemployment effects of the present WTO negotiations.  Read publication...

Why the EU and the and the USA must reform their subsidies, or pay the price
November 30, 2024 - Oxfam International
Oxfam releases a new paper that shows that a variety of US & EU agriculture subsidies are likely violating WTO rules and are vulnerable to challenge... For the US and EU, the message is that the status quo is not be defensible; morally or legally. US & EU farm programs risk being picked apart by legal challenges. To prevent this unhappy scenario, rich countries must dig much deeper to reform farm subsidies and offer more opportunity to developing countries. Otherwise, the Doha Round will offer little “development” and may not succeed. What is on the negotiating table thus far is not enough.  Read publication...

Doha Round’s Development Impacts: Shrinking Gains and Real Costs
October 1, 2024 - Timothy A. Wise and Kevin P. Gallagher, RIS Policy Briefs
RIS, the India-based Research and Information System for Developing Countries, has published a policy brief by GDAE's Tim Wise and Kevin Gallagher analyzing the limited gains projected for developing countries from further WTO agreements and highlighting some of the hidden costs of WTO measures.  Read publication...

Global Civil Society 2005/6
November 28, 2024 - Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier, Sage Publications
Global Civil Society 2005/6 tackles contentious and pertinent issues shaping the growing global consciousness of the 21st century: climate change, labour migration, gender and reform of the United Nations. In addition, this scholarly yet accessible annual publication analyses the infrastructure of global civil society – the extent of its connectedness, the use of new technology and the nature of the social forum phenomenon. A collaboration between the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Civil Society at University of California Los Angeles, the Global Civil Society Yearbook is the standard work on the topic, indispensable for activists, social scientists, students, policy makers and journalists.  Read publication...

Is the WTO the only way?
October 24, 2024
Safeguarding Multilateral Environmental Agreements from international trade rules and settling trade and environment disputes outside the WTO. A briefing paper published by Adelphi Consult, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace.  Read publication...

Drilling Into Debt
July 4, 2025 - Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change and Irfan Nooruddin of The Ohio State University, Oil Change International, Jubilee USA Network, Institute for Public Policy Research
New research published today reveals that the energy strategy for the G8 is fundamentally at odds with its development strategy for Africa and the rest of the world. Drilling into Debt, co-published by Oil Change International, the Institute for Public Policy Research, and the Jubilee USA Network (with additional support from Milieu Defensie and Amazon Watch), finds that oil production and export increases rather than relieves countries’ debt burdens, despite generating massive revenues.  Read publication...

What about us? Debt and the countries the G8 left behind
September 23, 2024
In July, 225,000 people marched through Edinburgh demanding that the G8 cancel the developing world’s debt. Yet the G8 failed to deliver. Only 18 out of 153 developing countries stand to receive anything, leaving more than 5 billion people living in countries that are mired in debt.  Read publication...

First Step On A Long Journey: Putting the G-8 Debt Deal Into Perspective
June 20, 2025
The paper describes and analyzes the G-8 debt agreement agreed by world leaders in Gleneagles in July 2005.  Read publication...

Four Economic Issues That Environmentalists Should Care About
September 21, 2024 - MARK WEISBROT, Center for Economica and Policy Research
Paper for SierraSummit 2005, September 8-11, 2005, San Francisco 1. The American versus the European Model 2. “Free Trade” and “Free Markets” versus Protectionism: Who Wants What? 3. Falling Birth Rates in High-Income Countries: Should We Be Worried? 4. The Cost of Reducing Global Climate Change  Read publication...

Sorting Out the DDA End Process
June 20, 2025 - Trade Reports International Group, Washington Trade Daily
Volume 14, Number 121 Friday, June 20, 2025 Geneva – A dozen capital-based senior trade officials today will be asked by the European Union to provide some indication as to how far they can go in advancing all the pillars of the Doha Development Agenda work program  Read publication...

Bush at OAS: Same Old “Free Trade” Tune
June 8, 2025 - Deborah James, Common Dreams
This weekend, foreign ministers and ambassadors of 34 nations of the western hemisphere met in Ft Lauderdale, Florida at the 35th meeting of the Organization of American States. The meeting occurs during a time of major shifts in the relationship of the US with Latin America, particularly the erosion of US domination in the region due to a growing resentment of US double standards on democracy, and the growing rejection of the “Washington Consensus” economic model of corporate globalization in the region.  Read publication...

Economic Integration and Migration
June 1, 2025 - Tanya Dawkins, Oscar Chacon, Amy Shannon, Eduardo Moncada, Global-Local Links Project
The CAFTA and immigration policy debates are proceeding along separate tracks. In reality, the dominant model of trade policy is one of the primary drivers of internal and cross-border migration. The "silo" approach to these issues has been largely adopted by US public policy officials who generally do not focus on root causes and catalysts of migration, like economic, social or political instability. The Global-Local Links Project Issue Brief on Economic Integration raises fundamental questions about the impact of global trade rules and migration. Also available in Spanish.  Read publication...

World Social Forum Funder Delegation Report
March 1, 2025 - Mark Randazzo, Funders Network on Trade and Globalization
Excerpts from a report of FNTG's funder delegation to the WSF 2005.  Read publication...

Choike at the World Social Forum
February 8, 2025 - Choike: A Portal on Southern Civil Societies, a project of the Third World Institute
In this report Choike offers articles, discussions from previous regional forums, news, debates and background information on the World Social Forum 2005. Coverage was also provided during the development of this event.  Read publication...

Practical Guide to the WTO
December 10, 2024
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The WTO in 2004: a year in review
December 16, 2024 - Alexandra Strickner and Carin Smaller, Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy
A comprehensive overview from IATP's Trade Information Project in Geneva, including negotiations and challenges for 2005.  Read publication...

A Manifesto On Wipo And The Future Of Intellectual Property
December 1, 2024 - James Boyle, Duke Law and Technology Review
In this Manifesto, Professor Boyle claims that there are systematic errors in contemporary intellectual property policy and that WIPO has an important role in helping to correct them.  Read publication...

GLOBAL RECOVERY UNDER WAY, BUT WITH TROUBLED OUTLOOK
September 27, 2024 - UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
The situation of the global economy and the outlook for developing countries is brighter than a year ago. But there is a risk that the unequal distribution of demand, the impact of higher oil prices and pressures on the dollar could lead to greater exchange-rate and financial instability and a slowdown of growth, concludes UNCTAD´s Trade and Development Report 2004.  Read publication...

Agriculture framework, an asymmetric Doha-minus
July 20, 2025 - Chakravarthi Raghavan, South-North Development Monitor
Published in SUNS, Geneva, 20 July 2025 The draft framework text, Job(04)/96, issued on 16 July by General Council chair Shotaro Oshima and WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, aimed at restarting the stalled WTO negotiations, is a "Doha-minus", both overall and in the agriculture annex.  Read publication...

From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics
May 6, 2025 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
Thomas I. Palley is the chief economist at the U.S.-China Security Review Commission. This essay will appear as a chapter in a book by Deborah Johnston and Alfredo Saad-Filho, eds., Neoliberalism--A Critical Reader ).  Read publication...

FTAA: Health Hazard for the Americas?
November 16, 2024 - Ellen R. Shaffer, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Americas face critical threats to health, including crises in access to health care, water and other vital human services; re-emerging but preventable fatal diseases; the advance of AIDS; and biohazards. Imbalances in wealth and power undermine equity between and within nations. Addressing these crises is a high priority, and requires effective, cooperative international efforts. The draft Free Trade Area of the Americas is likely to worsen these problems, and to challnge countries’ domestic regulations, including those proven effective in advancing and protecting public health. This report presents issues and concerns related to the impact of the FTAA on democracy, public health and health care in the Americas. It reviews the arguments for and against liberalizing trade in health services, inequalities in health and wealth in the Americas, with a case study of Peru, and presents recommendations.  Read publication...

Call for Public Health Accountability in International Trade Agreements
November 16, 2024 - Joe Brenner, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) threatens measures that protect health, provide access to medications, and assure the safety and affordability of vital human services, including health care, water, education and energy. Under the FTAA, vital human services are tradable commodities. The statement, signed by public health and health advocates, establishes the priority of health over commercial concerns, and calls for transparent and accountable fair trade negotiations that exclude vital human services.  Read publication...

Dogmatic Development - Privatisation and conditionalities in six countries
March 1, 2025 - War on Want
This report looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services.  Read publication...

A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All
February 24, 2025 - World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, International Labour Organization (ILO)
Globalization can and must change, says a new, groundbreaking report presented today to the International Labour Organization (ILO) urging that building a fair and inclusive globalization become a worldwide priority. This report, issued by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, calls for an "urgent rethink" of current policies and institutions of global governance.  Read publication...

Sustainable Industrial Development: The Performance of Mexico’s FDI-Led Strategy
February 19, 2025 - Kevin P. Gallagher and Lyuba Zarsky, Global Development and Environment Institute/Tufts University
A new policy report, and a short policy brief that concisely summarizes the larger report, provide an economic analysis of the industrial development model promoted by Mexico, and draws out lessons for Mexican development, the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations, and the Doha Development Round.  Read publication...

"FTAA-Lite" Reflects Long-Term Economic Failure
November 24, 2024 - Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
It was clear to anyone who followed the negotiations closely in Miami that the ministerial meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was at least as much of a failure as the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun in September. The difference was that this time the U.S. and Brazil papered over their differences in front of the cameras.  Read publication...

São Paulo Declaration
October 30, 2024 - Socialist International
At its recent Congress in São Paulo, Brazil, the Socialist International issued a final declaration under the heading 'The Return of Politics: For just and responsible global governance - For globalisation governed by the people'.  Read publication...

Investing in Destruction: The Impacts of a WTO Investment Agreement on Extractive Industries in Developing Countries
June 1, 2025
This report shows how a WTO investment treaty would exacerbate the social and environmental problems associated with extractive industries in developing countries. The report above all makes a strong case for keeping investment rules off of the WTO's agenda.  Read publication...

Human Development Report 2003
July 9, 2025 - UN Development Programme
The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.  Read publication...

NAFTA's Untold Stories: Mexico's Response to North American Integration
June 10, 2025 - Timothy A. Wise, Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center
Although some policymakers still point to Mexico as a success story, there is a growing consensus that its free trade experiment has not lived up to expectations. Results of nine case studies published in the book Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico illustrate implications for a host of new trade agreements now under consideration.  Read publication...

DOHA PROGRAMME HASN'T FULFILLED DEVELOPMENT PROMISE, WTO SYMPOSIUM TOLD
June 19, 2025 - A Third World Network Report
WTO Members were told at the WTO Public Symposium on 18 June that the Doha Ministerial Declaration's promise of putting development at the heart of the Doha work programme had so far turned out to be empty rhetoric.  Read publication...

Economic Globalization vs. Human Rights: Lessons From The Bolivian Water Revolt
April 30, 2025
The Bechtel Corporation’s 2000 takeover of the public water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia and the civic revolt that ended it, in addition to being an inspiring story of local people taking courageous action, is also a cautionary tale of how global economic rules have the power to reduce international human rights law into nothing but pretty words on paper.  Read publication...

The Selling of "Free Trade"
April 23, 2025 - John R. MacArthur, Hill & Wang
This brilliant expose chronicles the brutal and expensive campaign in 1993 that led to the passage of the poorly understood, highly controversial law creating the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the story is urgently up-to-date.  Read publication...

Civil society speaks out in CAFTA negotiations
April 11, 2025 - CENTRAL AMERICA REPORT
Civil society assumes a more active role ; US negotiating framework seen as obstacle to equitable agreement .  Read publication...

Water Justice for All
March 31, 2025 - Friends of the Earth International
Major new publication from Friends of the Earth International, in pdf format.  Read publication...

WATER IS LIFE: A CIVIL SOCIETY WORLD WATER VISION FOR ACTION
March 31, 2025
This civil society statement was prepared in the run up to the World Water Forum in Kyoto.  Read publication...

The Emerging Global Regime on Genetic Resources and Local Communities
August 31, 2024 - Antonio La VIna, World Resources Institute
This briefing paper gives an overview of the emerging global regime on genetic resources, with a special emphasis on its implications for local and impoverished communities worldwide.  Read publication...

From Kyoto to Marrakech: Global Climate Politics and Communities
August 31, 2024 - Antonio la Vina, World Resources Institute
This briefing paper provides a background on the threat posed by climate change, particularly on the Global South and on poor and impoverished communities.  Read publication...

A Watershed in Global Governance?
November 1, 2024 - Navroz Dubash, Mairi Dupar, Smitu Kothari, Tundu Lissu, WRI/Lokayan/LEAT
Why and how did the World Commission on Dams (WCD) become an experiment in global governance? Controversial because of their social and environmental costs, dams are also symbols of larger concers of economic governance, democratic representation, and regulation over capital flows. A report by the World Resources Institute, Lokayan (India), and Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (Tanzania) takes an independent look at the WCD, and its legacy for larger questions of democratization at local and international levels.  Read publication...

The Successes and Failures of Johannesburg: A Story of Many Summits
September 23, 2024 - Antonio La Vina, Gretchen Hoff & Anne Marie De Rose, World Resources Institute
Johannesburg, in late August and early September 2002, was a city of many summits: the official intergovernmental meeting in Sandton; the Global People’s Forum in NASREC Fairgrounds; the People’s Earth Summit; the gathering of landless people from Africa and the world; the forum on environmental justice; the teach-in by the International Forum on Globalization; the many meetings at the IUCN Environment Centre; the summits of the legislators and the local governments; the Implementation Conference of stakeholders; the international business days convened by industry; and the Ubuntu Village exposition center and the Water Dome exhibition center, as well as other exhibitions. Adding to those summits held in Johannesburg were a few others held throughout South Africa: the Kimberley Summit of Indigenous Peoples; the Capetown conference on responsible tourism; and, the Children’s Earth Summit in Soweto. All of these were “summits” in their own right and can be told as separate narratives. Understanding what took place in Johannesburg during the World Summit on Sustainable Development, its success and its failure, requires an appreciation of each of these summits and how they come together into one story. This story is both inspiring and disturbing, for it tells much of where the world and its peoples are in implementing sustainable development and exposes what remains to be done. This report is an attempt to tell this greater story.  Read publication...

Women and Gender WSSD Survival Kit
August 1, 2025 - Women's Environment and Development Organization
The WSSD Survival Kit on Women and Gender highlights women's perspectives on sustainable development for a new global policy based on equality, human rights and world peace.  Read publication...

Porto Alegre & Beyond: Following up on the World Social Forum
November 22, 2024 - Interhemispheric Resource Center
The growing profile of citizen-based agendas in global affairs represents one of the most promising developments in the international arena. This "Citizen Action in the Americas Discussion Paper" reports on an annual gathering that has become a prominent space for citizens' movements to meet and develop strategies for a more hopeful future: the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.  Read publication...

Power Politics in the WTO
November 22, 2024 - Aileen Kwa, Focus on the Global South
In the World Trade Organization, formally based on a one-country, one-vote system, actual decisions are made in backrooms by the big trading powers. This publication, based on extensive interviews with developing country delegates to the Doha ministerial, is an effort to throw much-needed light on this non-transparent, non-accountable process. This report is essential reading for everyone with an interest in one of the most powerful economic groupings of our time.  Read publication...

A New Development Paradigm-Domestic Demand-Led Growth
October 30, 2024 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
WHY IT IS NEEDED & HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN Critics of the neoliberal model of economic development—one driven by the demands of transnational corporations— have long been saying that this dominant paradigm isn’t working. It’s not producing broad-based economic development at home or abroad. But what’s the alternative?  Read publication...

Global Public Policy Networks: Contested spaces where the human spirit can triumph
October 29, 2024 - Steve Waddell, Global Public Policy Network Resource Group
How to take effective global action to address public concerns is the critical issue at the center of this report. It builds upon earlier work by Reinicke that looked at global public policy network. Four key effectiveness factors are identified, and their implications for global governance are discussed. The findings are based in case studies of the Climate Action Network, the Internation Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, the Global Reporting Initiative and the International Federation for Alternative Trade.  Read publication...

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
September 1, 2024 - U.S. Government
The National Security Strategy was issued by the White House in September.  Read publication...

Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy
October 10, 2024 - Edited by Robin Broad, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Global Backlash is the first book to move beyond the monolithic portrayal of the globalization protests that have escalated since Seattle and are not likely to abate soon.  Read publication...

The Two Faces of Globalization
May 31, 2025 - Branko Milanovic, World Bank
The paper shows that the current view of globalization as an automatic and benign force is seriously flawed. It is mistaken because it focuses on only one, positive, face of globalization while entirely neglecting a malignant one.  Read publication...

Responsible Reform of the World Bank
April 1, 2025
As World Bank donors will decide on funding replenishment for the International Development Association (IDA), a broad array of civil society organizations, including development groups, people of faith, labor, environmental organizations, and gender advocates, have formed an unprecedented coalition to promote positive proposals for World Bank reform.  Read publication...

From Rio to Johannesburg: The Globalization Decade
July 24, 2025 - Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, CorpWatch and Food First Books
An overview of the political, environmental and economic context in the 10 years between the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and the upcoming Summit in Johannesburg.  Read publication...

Power Politics: Equity and Environment in Electricity Reform
June 27, 2025 - Edited by Navroz K. Dubash, World Resources Institute
Over the last decade the staid, stable world of electricity supply has become tumultuous. In Power Politics, Navroz K. Dubash and contributors from around the world show how electricity reform is, at root, an issue of sustainable development. Electricity reform represents an opportunity to focus attention on the 1.7 billion of the world's poor without access to electricity. It could also be an opportunity to align investor incentives along a trajectory toward a clean energy future, one that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases while promoting development and supporting livelihoods. The concern is not solely one of a missed opportunity. Inappropriately done, electricity reform could hinder progress toward a more socially and environmentally sustainable energy future. Drawing on six country studies-- Argentina, Bulgaria, Ghana, India, Indonesia, and South Africa--the contributors to this volume examine whether and how the process of electricity reform can support rather than hinder sustainable development. Instead of sustainable development, they find that financial concerns and donor conditions have driven electricity reform. Managed by closed political processes and dominated by technocrats and donor consultants, social factors play a limited role, and environmental considerations play almost no role in a re-envisioned electricity sector. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the political economy of electricity reform in the six country studies, the study concludes with recommendations toward a more equitable and sustainable electricity future. June 2002 / 192 pages  Read publication...

African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD
July 8, 2025
African civil society organizations declare their resistance to the "New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development" (Nepad), and push for demands that they think better address development, democracy, human rights and peace in Africa.  Read publication...

A Guide to the Enron Collapse
July 8, 2025 - Polaris Institute, Darren Puscas
This article provides an overall guide to understanding the Enron debacle, in a manner that broadens it from the standard, narrow financial or scandal-based story you can read in newspapers.  Read publication...

World Summit on Sustainable Development: Bali, Indonesia
July 8, 2025 - Antonio G. M. La Vina and Gretchen Hoff, World Resources Institute
This paper provides an update on the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), focusing on the outcomes of the Fourth Preparatory Committee (Prepcom IV) meeting recently held in Bali, Indonesia.  Read publication...

Greenwash + 10
January 24, 2025 - Kenny Bruno, CorpWatch
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro represented a high point of hope for the international community in general and the United Nations in particular. The Rio Summit led to a series of challenging negotiations whose purpose was to protect the earth and improve life for its most impoverished inhabitants. Unfortunately, that purpose was undermined by the Summit's failure to confront corporate power in any meaningful way.  Read publication...

Enron's Pawns: How Public Institutions Bankrolled Enron's Globalization Game
June 18, 2025 - Jim Vallette and Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies
Report by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network explores how the now-fallen giant's rise to global prominence depended upon close financial relationships with U.S. agencies, the World Bank, and other government institutions.  Read publication...

MAKING TRADE WORK FOR WOMEN: Opportunities& Obstacles
June 18, 2025 - Marceline White, Women's EDGE
In this primer, we explore why and where women may be affected differently, and we offer pragmatic, feasible "fixes" that the U.S. could adopt to become better global partner.  Read publication...

The Relative Impact of Trade Liberalization on Developing Countries
June 11, 2025
In recent years, new trade agreements have often been promoted on the basis of their potential benefit to developing countries... When the benefits and costs of continued liberalization... are evaluated according to standard economic research, it is not clear that the developing countries as a group are facing a net gain.  Read publication...

The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and Poverty
May 21, 2025 - Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN)
A multi-country participatory assessment based on the results of a joint World Bank/Civil Society/Government Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initaitive (SAPRI) and the Citizen's Assessment of Structural Adjustment (CASA)  Read publication...