Publications

Hierarchies of failures and solutions : Need for Cultural Diplomacy!

Raymond Saner, presentation given at DAW Singapore, 10^th May 2013

Sustainability is often simplified to mean achieving “Triple E” (sustained economic, environmental and equitable social development” but little has been suggested as to how communities can harmonize the triple “Es” and find constructive solutions to the inevitable occasional tensions between the three sectors of social reality. There needs to be an overarching strategy that ensures ways to nurture a social culture which supports, protects, leads, cajoles communities towards orienting their respective activities and roles towards an overall balance of their multiple interests and desires which at times are in opposition with each other and at other times coalesce towards the achieving of a sustained well being for all.

Greening WTO Agreements to stop Climate Warming

Raymond Saner, 5th July 2013

Radical new approaches are urgently needed to reverse climate warming and to prevent the world from committing “ecocide” through environmental destruction. The radical new solutions proposed in this policy study go beyond the incremental change of current policy practice and instead suggest the need for a discontinuous change as the only means of halting the pervasive “tinkering along” approach of mainstream policy making which have not been able to bring about a halt to climate warming. This policy paper assesses the various attempts of state and non-state actors to cope with climate change and argues that a radically new approach is needed within the WTO agreements to generate solutions that have sufficient weight and treaty power to bring about a new and credible approach towards halting and reversing of climate warming.

Building on previous analysis and recommendations, this policy study discusses the interface between multilateral agreements on trade and on climate change and suggests that the WTO is the only multilateral institution which can effectively generate legal constraints and political will to stop climate warming. This policy study proposes an intra-regime solution within the WTO agreement in order to elicit the green investments and green production needed to successfully implement climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Sustainable Development: Post-2015 Implications A closer look at the SDG and MDG processes

Synopsis
The objective of this paper was to analyze the emerging scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successor development instrument to the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) which are scheduled to end by 2015. The top priorities of the stakeholders involved in the processes include poverty eradication, water sanitation, energy, economic growth, green growth, governance, and employment. Current trends appear to favour a progression of the shaping and negotiation process which goes beyond the established MDG goals.

"The Expert Negotiator" 4th Edition

“The success of a negotiation is not a coincidence, but the result of careful planning. A person who has reflected and written about negotiations is Raymond Saner, a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and lecturer at the prestigious Institute of Political Science of Paris (Sciences Po ). He has been for more than 20 years a consultant to the United Nations on the impact of globalization. These topics and challenges brought him to Bolivia, where he worked with dedication and left with many friends and colleagues.”

Global Economic Governance from the Perspective of a “Small State”

Global Economic Governance from the Perspective of a “Small State” - Economic Diplomacy of Switzerland

Published by the Economic Diplomacy Programme, SAIIA, Occasional Paper, No 124, November 2012.

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