Environment And Ecosystems Publications and Resources

The Other Oil War: Halliburton's Agenda at the WTO
June 1, 2025 - Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization
A Policy Brief on the Energy Services negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO)

Rich nations are trying to use the WTO to create a new global policy framework for "energy security" that would fundamentally redefine, under the logic of "free trade in services," who will access energy resources, which ones are used and how, and who will benefit most from their exploitation.  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...

Solidarity Economics
April 27, 2025 - Ethan Miller, Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Collective
Strategies for Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out  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...

WTO Ruling on Genetically Engineered Crops Would Override International, National and Local Protections
February 7, 2025 - Institute for Ag and Trade Policy
Ruling Favors U.S. Biotech Companies Over Precautionary Regulation  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...

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...

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...

Key Environmental Reasons to Oppose CAFTA
June 2, 2025 - Citizens Trade Campaign
This two page pdf document provides a summary of ten environmental reasons the Citizens' Trade Campaign has for opposing the Central American Free Trade Agreement.  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...

Proxy Season Preview Spring 2005
April 20, 2025 - As You Sow Foundation
Helping Foundations Align Mission And Investment - This booklet is intended to make foundations more aware of important upcoming proxy votes and highlights social and environmental issues that are directly relevant to the missions of foundations.  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...

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...

The Right to Water
March 1, 2025 - Jim Shultz, The Democracy Center
Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all.

--UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, November 2002

What does it take to translate these noble words into reality for the poor of Latin America and the world? This is the question addressed in this article and in a forthcoming book 'Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Latin America: From Theory to Practice.'  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...

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...

Commodity System Challenges: moving sustainability into the mainstream of natural resource economies.
April 1, 2025 - Sustainability Institute
A new Sustainability Institute report provides a map of the structures that produce the behavior common to many natural resource economies — ever-increasing production leading to the traps of over-harvest, pollution, and community decline. This paper combines results of Sustainability Institute research on US corn and forest systems with insights from other commodity management systems.  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...

Communities and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
February 7, 2025 - Antonio La VIna, World Resources Institute
This working paper provides an overview of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international agreement expected to come into force by the end of 2003, with an emphasis on its implications and significance for poor communities worldwide. Because of its subject matter – the regulation of the transboundary movement (export and import) of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from one country to another, the Protocol could have an enormous impact on the food, livelihood and environmental security of communities in both developed and developing countries. This working paper analyzes the key challenges raised by modern biotechnology, the benefits and risks the technology poses to communities, and the opportunities for maximizing benefits and minimizing risks that are provided by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.  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...

Africa Policy for a new Era: Ending Segregation in U.S. Foreign Relations
January 29, 2025 - Africa Action
Founded in xxxAfrica Action is the oldest advocacy organization on African affairs in the U.S. This document, produced by defines an agenda for U.S. Africa policy for a new era. It provides an overview of current challenges and offers recommendations for U.S. policy on priority issues and areas. It affirms Africa ’s importance to the U.S. and outlines what is required of the U.S. to engage collaboratively and effectively with its African partners.  Read publication...

From Doha to Cancun: The WTO Trade Negotiations and Communties
August 31, 2024 - Antonio la Vina and Vicente Paolo Yu III, World Resources Institute
This working paper gives an overview of the results of the Fourth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Doha, Qatar, held 9 to 14 November 2001. It looks at the political context of the ministerial meeting, identifies the key actors and stakeholders in the WTO processes, and provides an analysis of the issues being negotiated under the so-called “Doha Development Round”.  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...

A Gender Analysis of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development Plan of Implementation
November 1, 2024 - Rebecca Pearl, Women's Environment and Development Organization
Women participating in the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) hoped the ten-year anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit (UNCED) would serve as a wake-up call on a wide range of development and sustainability issues. Despite some important gains, the Summit fell short of many expectations and failed to make gender central to sustainable development. The following report offers a complete gender analysis of the WSSD Plan of Implementation.  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...

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...

Global Challenge, Global Opportunity
August 13, 2025 - United Nations
The UN's pre-Johannesburg Summit report.  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...

Update on Citizens’ Campaigns on the FTAA
July 3, 2025 - Karen Hansen-Kuhn, ART/DGAP
Representatives of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) and other social movements met recently in Quito, Ecuador for the purpose of exchanging information on their respective popular-education campaigns on the potential impacts of and alternatives to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). They also discussed the coordination of those campaigns at the hemispheric level and developed plans around a major civil-society forum to be held parallel to the official meeting of trade ministers on the FTAA in late October.  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...

Social Movements and Regional Integration in the Americas
June 18, 2025 - Beverly Bell, Center for Economic Justice
This paper explores the status of cross-border social movements in the Americas in an era of globalization.  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...

Managing the Invisible Hand - Markets, Farmers and International Trade
April 1, 2025 - Sophia Murphy, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The current global agriculture trade agreement will not succeed in helping farmers and broad-based economic development until it addresses market power by transnational corporations, finds a new report released today by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.  Read publication...

Implications of wto negotiations for biodiversity
April 1, 2025 - friends of the earth international
WTO negotiations have major implications for the Convention on Biological Diversity and its objective to protect global biological diversity.  Read publication...