Kategorie: Event

While the dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is under stress and demands for reform are increasingly voiced, members still use the WTO to discuss new rules. In this context, a group of more than 90 economies are engaged in so called structured discussions on investment facilitation for development. On 11 December 2019, DIE co-organised an expert workshop at the premises of the WTO in Geneva on the opportunities and challenges of establishing an international framework on investment facilitation for development together with the Bertelsmann Stiftung, International Trade Centre and World Economic Forum. Among the participants were WTO delegates, representatives of Investment Promotion Agencies, academia, the private sector, NGOs, and intergovernmental organisations. The expert workshop helped to identify key measures that governments can take to facilitate investment flows into developing economies and, especially, investment flows that contribute as much as possible to sustainable development.

Learn more about investment facilitation and its potential role for sustainable development.

Thinkers retreat at Villa la Collina, Cadenabbia, Italy, 23 to 25 November 2019, organized by DIE and the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation

Thinkers and policy-makers from China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa as well as from the European Union and international organisations engaged in a retreat-style policy dialogue on the future of multilateralism. Participants from DIE were Sven Grimm, Silke Weinlich, Christine Hackenesch and Wulf Reiners. Working with a scenario-building methodology, meant to prepare for possible futures, the group discussed drivers that will shape multilateralism to the year 2040.

The exchange of ideas and discussions took place in a retreat atmosphere in Cadenabbia, Lago di Como, Italy. Subsequently, some participants took the debate to the European level by meeting with policy-makers and think tanks in Brussels; for DIE, Sven Grimm presented the methodology and debates.

Agreement in the group was that, in the messier world of 2040, Europe will need to pragmatically cooperate with actors that are not amongst the like-minded in their outlook on the world, but are necessary partners to address urgent global issues. By 2040, the round agreed, climate change would result in warming up to an average of 3 degrees, which means that a number of ecosystems would have surpassed tipping points and would put existential challenges to humankind. Other drivers for the world in 2040 were discussed, inter alia, global power shifts, technology and the question who controls data, as well as a crisis of capitalism with rising inequalities.

No agreement was reached, though, when the question turned from what would be „the most likely“ to what would be „the most desirable“ scenario. While participants agreed on the (broad) idea of working towards the global common good, it was not clear that all discussants would want an institutionalised world of „thick multilateralism“, i.e. an institutionalised and open setting. The club scenario was also seen as a good option by some, which probably reflects the composition of the group, in which all participants came from states with substantial power resources. Follow-up of this work is to be developed by DIE’s research programme on Inter- and Transnational Cooperation, as a combination of work on the multilateral system and our Managing Global Governance (MGG) programme, involving key emerging powers.

In December 2019, the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) co-hosted a workshop in Geneva to prepare the next WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12). The objective was to strengthen multilateral cooperation in the context of the WTO, which is currently facing a deep crisis due to the recent shutdown of its Appellate Body. Clara Brandi represented DIE at the workshop, organized by the Centre for Multilateral Negotiations (CEMUNE), which entailed a fruitful exchange between negotiators of past Ministerial Conferences, WTO experts and Bakhyt Sultanov, Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan and designated Chair of MC12. The next WTO Ministerial Conference will take place in June 2020 in Nur-Sultan.

Find out more about DIE’s research on international trade and investment issues in this web special: The future of world trade.

In 1979, the book „Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age“ by the Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas was first published. The work reflects the increasing unease since the seventies about environmental destruction and technological developments with hardly calculable risks for mankind. First to be mentioned is the threat posed by the nuclear arms race. Jonas also discusses other ethical aspects of technological developments, such as eugenics. Hans Jonas took a clear position and strongly recommended to strictly reject technologies with potentially global and not yet fully understood consequences. Since 1979, the world population has increased by 3 billion people. Even without technology-induced catastrophes, planetary boundaries have been reached and in some cases already transgressed. Today, as forty years ago, the „ecological imperative“ formulated in the „Imperative of Responsibility“ is undisputed: „Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life“.

Since April 2019, a series of events has focused on the ethical aspects of technology choice. The event series therefore focused on the question of whether the policy implications of the ecological imperative need to be formulated differently today than forty years ago. Experts discussed this, using gene editing (CRISPR CAS), carbon capture and storage (CCS) and climate engineering as examples. Many scientists assign great potential to these technologies for mitigating climate change or dealing better with its consequences. However, German society and politics strongly reject these technologies.

At the closing event on December 11, Imme Scholz, acting Director at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and Jakob Rhyner, Scientific Director of the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research discussed some of the issues raised in recent months. These were formulated by Andreas Stamm (DIE) on the basis of the six previous panel events. They discussed that responsible action today can also mean preparing technologies for safe application through research and development if they can be expected to make a significant contribution to meeting global challenges. New technologies cannot replace a more comprehensive sustainability transformation, they can only accompany it. Moreover, only technologies whose effects are fundamentally reversible can be considered for potential application.

The Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research / Innovation Campus Bonn (ICB) is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

In the context of the UNSSC course “Multi-sectoral Country Leadership on Health and Well-being in the context of the 2030 Agenda”, Imme Scholz took part in the expert panel “Integrated approaches to delivering on the 2030 Agenda”. Civil servants from different Ministries of six Gulf countries (Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar) participated in the course, which took place at the UNSSC Campus in Bonn from 11 to 14 November 2019.