Several pressing global issues highlight the urgency of finding a way forward. These global challenges are indicative of three core sets of problems we face - those concerned with sharing our planet (Global warming, biodiversity and ecosystem losses, water deficits); sustaining our life-chances (poverty, conflict prevention, global infectious diseases); and managing our rulebooks (nuclear proliferation, toxic waste disposal, intellectual property rights, genetic research rules, trade rules, finance and tax rules).
A call towards a more comprehensive, precise and dynamic understanding of institutional interactions.
The project of a new Global Governance has become a crucial issue in this globalised world. All together we need the joint work of states, international actors, NGO’s, institutions and trade unions that seeks to advance understanding of the new actors, institutions and mechanisms of global governance. While we address the phenomenon of global governance in general, our concerned is focused on global environmental change and governance for sustainable development.
Analytically, global governance is defined by three criteria. First, we see global governance as characterised by the increasing participation of actors other than states, ranging from private actors such as multinational corporations and (networks of) scientists and environmentalists to public non-state actors such as intergovernmental organisations (‘multiactor governance’).
Second, we see global governance as marked by new mechanisms of organization such as public-private and private-private rule-making and implementation partnerships, alongside the traditional system of legal treaties negotiated by states.
Third, we see global governance as characterised by different layers and clusters of rule-making and rule-implementation, both vertically between supranational, international, national and subnational layers of authority (‘multilevel governance’) and horizontally between different parallel rule-making systems.
Governance and Development
The structures and the quality of governance are critical determinants of social cohesion or social conflict, the success or failure of economic development, the preservation or deterioration of the natural environment, as well as the respecting or violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. These links are widely recognised throughout the international community and show how governance matters for development.
The UN Millennium Declaration states that creating an environment that is conducive to development and to the elimination of poverty depends, inter alia, on good governance within each country, on good governance at international level and on transparency in the financial, monetary and trading systems. In the Monterrey Consensus, Heads of State agreed that good governance at all levels is essential for sustainable development, sustained economic growth, and poverty eradication. Governance, democratisation and development are equally linked in the EU general objectives as defined in the Treaties, in the Commission's White Paper on Governance and in the Council conclusions of May 2002.
On 20 October 2003, the Commission adopted a Communication on governance and development which sets out a new, more pragmatic vision of countries' effectiveness in eradicating poverty and promoting sustainable development in the world.
This will be the means by which the Commission will guide the EU's approach to governance and development, identify the type of measures to be supported in different situations, and contribute to the international debate on these issues.