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Possible Global Environmental Institutions: Exploring the Developing Country Interests

This project is funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the McArthur Foundation, and is in collaboration with FLASCO (Facultad Latinamericana de Cienceas Sociales) in Argentina, and the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR) in India. The first aim of the project is to explore the forms that possible future global environmental arrangements might take. For example, should agreements be one-off, like the Montreal protocol on ozone layer depletion, or should there be an institutional structure such as the WTO to deal with global and cross-boundary environmental issues? How should conflicts between cross-boundary environmental issues and trade agreements be arbitrated? The second aim is to understand the developing country interest in global environmental arrangements. Do developing countries have common or conflicting interests in the form that such institutional arrangements might take? Is it in the developing countries’ interest to link negotiations on global environmental arrangements to other issues, such as trade? An interdisciplinary approach to these questions, drawing on both economics and political science, is envisaged.

John Whalley, "Environmental Considerations in a New Multilateral Agriculatural Negotiation, and Associated Developing Country Implications", CSGR Working Paper 46/99, November 1999, Abstract, Full Document PDF icon

Raghbendra Jha and John Whalley, "The Environmental Regime in Developing Countries" PDF icon, click to obtain a version of the paper in Acrobat format (.PDF).