The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. Democracy for a Sustainable World explains why global democracy and global sustainable development must be achieved and why they can only be achieved jointly. It recounts the obstacles to participatory democratic global governance and describes how t...

In Truth About Trade, international scholar, jurist, statesman, and activist James Bacchus offers a thought-provoking collection of some of the essays he has written on international trade and international law since he completed his tenure as one of the founders and twice the chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The breadth of these essays ranges from his visionary proposals for expanding world trade and enhancing the international rule of law by modernizi...

The World Trade Organization is undergoing an existential crisis. Trade links the world not only through the flow of international commerce in goods, services, and ideas; but also through its economic, environmental, and social impacts. Trade links are supported by a WTO trading system founded on rules established in the 20th century which do not account for all the modern changes in the global economy. James Bacchus, a founder of the WTO, posits that this global organization can survive a...

This book critically analyses the World Trade Organization’s approach to "special and differential treatment" (SDT) to argue that it is founded on seeking exemptions from WTO obligations, instead of creating an enabling environment for developing countries to integrate fully into the multilateral trading system. Through six key sections:United States Proposal on Special and Differential TreatmentResponses to United States ProposalThe Evolution of...

In this time of unwillingness, the right kinds of global solutions are needed now more than ever. Climate change is here and intensifying. Anxieties over economic globalization grip many in the fear of change. While these fearful have turned inward into unwillingness, the world's willing are working harder than ever for international and other cooperative solutions. James Bacchus explains why most of the solutions we need must be found in local and regional partnerships of the willing that...

Most Canadians know that Stephen Harper has had a tremendous impact on the country since becoming prime minister in 2006. But few have the in-depth knowledge of how far his transformation has gone -- what has already been done, and what the consequences will be in the future.This book brings together Canadian experts in a wide variety of areas. They document key changes put in place by the Harper government. There have been dramatic changes in education, health care, women's rights...

In the past decade, the developed world has spent almost US$ 2 trillion on foreign aid for poorer countries. Yet 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty and around 2.9 billion cannot meet their basic human needs.But should rich nations continue to help the poor? In this short book, leading global poverty analyst David Hulme explains why helping the world’s neediest communities is both the right thing to do and the wise thing to do Ð if rich nations want to take care of the...

"Advances an analysis that should encourage progressives, be cautionary for conservatives, and engage and enlighten everyone who cares about America's political and economic future." —James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic"A tonic—not because it will make you feel better, although it might, but because he makes a powerful, provocative and persuasive case that progressives are in a better position than they realize to make our world bet...

Why is the United Nations not more effective on global environmental challenges? The UN Charter mandates the global organization to seek four noble aspirations: international peace and security, rule of law among nations, human rights for all people, and social progress through development. On environmental issues, however, the UN has understood its charge much more narrowly: it works for "better law between nations" and "better development within them." This approach treats peace and huma...

The idea of reducing poverty and inequality and improving health, education, and job opportunities around the world is beyond criticism. Yet, the reality of development can often be confusion, contradiction, deceit, and corruption.This fully updated third edition makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the effectiveness of aid and development. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from international studies to personal stories, Maggie Black brings objective analysis an...

Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around th...

In this third volume of his award-winning American Crisis series, James Gustave Speth makes his boldest and most ambitious contribution yet. He looks unsparingly at the sea of troubles in which the United States now finds itself, charts a course through the discouragement and despair commonly felt today, and envisions what he calls America the Possible, an attractive and plausible future that we can still realize.The book identifies a dozen features of the American political econom...