POLES APART -- A WORLD OF DIFFERENCES
CSE REPORT ON GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATIONS

The Global Environmental Negotiations (GEN) reports are an effort to document ongoing global environmental policy-making from the Southern perspective. The first report, Green Politics, first published in 1999, was launched at over 20 locations around the world. It provided easy-to-read historical analyses and challenges ahead for

+ the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change   (UNFCCC)
+ Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
+ Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD)
+ negotiations on persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
+ global negotiations on forests
+ trade and environment
+ the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI)
+ the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and
+ the UN's environment agenda.

The recently completed second report, Poles Apart, updates all these issues. In addition, it looks anew at four conventions and one institution:

+ the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
+ Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal
+ Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (also known as the Rotterdam Convention)
+ Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, and
+ the Commission on Sustainable Development.

At this important juncture in the history of sustainable development, as the world prepares for the WSSD, Poles Apart analyses recurring controversial issues between rich and poor nations in global environmental policy-making.

+ Are global environmental policy decisions based on principles of equity, and to what extent do they take on the concerns of the poor?
+ What are the links between poverty and environmental degradation?
+ What does sustainable development mean? Over the years since UNCED, it has come to mean different things to different people, and the world is largely at a loss on how best to operationalise it
+ The technology transfer bugbear haunts every environmental negotiation. Will the North help the South leapfrog to clean technology in the interest of the world's environment, or continue to sell technology that needs constant upgrading, and thus constant expenditure on part of the South?
+ As the North tightens its purse strings, how will the world fund efforts towards sustainable development?