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	December 1998

"CC:TRAIN - Climate Change Training Materials, Volume 2" is a new CD-ROM available at no charge from the Global Environment Information Centre adjacent to UNU Headquarters.

This is the middle disc in a series of three modelled on the UN's Train-X Strategy, which is a methodology on training and cooperation; the third CD-ROM is projected to come out in winter 1999. Created with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and implementation assistance from the Environment Agency of Japan and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in partnership with the UN Climate Change Secretariat, the ambitious instructional series benefits from additional aid from four other national and international organizations.

Jerry Velasquez, Programme Coordinator of the UNU's Global Environment Information Centre (GEIC), says that together the series provides an extensive curriculum on climate change-related topics, including vulnerability and adaptation assessment, compilation of a national inventory of greenhouse gases, and climate change mitigation analysis. Those seeking copies of this training tool can contact GEIC or consult its Web site: http://www.geic.or.jp/cctrain2.

Joining South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki's The African Renaissance: South Africa and the World in the UNU Public Lecture series is The Declaration of Human Rights: A Living Document by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

This compact publication features Ms. Robinson's lecture from the January Symposium on Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region, and also includes the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed fifty years ago on 10 December 1948. Both brochures are available from the UNU Public Affairs office.

The UNU's Institute of Advanced Studies recently issued its fiftieth and fifty-first Working Papers, a series of excerpts from IAS fellows' research.

The papers are available without charge from IAS, and the most recent are Importance of Eco-Restructuring for the Sustainable Agricultural Development in Nepal by Punya Prasad Regmi and Globalization, Regionaliza-tion, and Chinese Cities by Felicity C. Rose.

The UN Secretary-General from the Cold War to the New Era: A Global Peace and Security Mandate? by UNU Peace and Governance Academic Programme Associate Edward Newman was published recently by Macmillan/ St. Martin's (London, 248 pp., hardback £42.50). This work is described as: "An in-depth examination of the evolving peace and security activities of the United Nations Secretary-General in the context of developments in international politics. The constraints and opportunities which the Office has experienced under Pèrez de Cuèlllar and Boutros-Ghali in the transition to the post-Cold War world and the contro-versy which has surrounded the Office reflects the volatility and uncertainty of the UN in a changing environment.

Past Imperfect, Future UNcertain: The United Nations at Fifty, edited by UNU Vice-Rector Ramesh Thakur, was also published recently by Macmillan (London, 296 pp., hardback £45.00, paperback £17.50). The author describes this book:

"The end of the Cold War and the forceful response to Iraq's aggression created expectations that the UN would change from a marginal into a central player in world affairs. These hopes were seemingly dashed in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia.

"Has the United Nations abdicated its moral duty as the custodian of our hopes for a better world? In this book, foreign ministers, generals, ambassadors, and scholars provide sober assessments of how the United Nations can meet the challenge of a balance between the desirable and the possible."

Vice-Rector Thakur also edited two volumes released this year on specific security issues: Keeping Proliferation at Bay (Jakarta: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 132 pp.) and Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones (London: Macmillan, 256 pp., hardback £45.00).

The former book presents papers from the December 1996 ARF Track Two Seminar in Jakarta in which experts analyze proliferation challenges with regard to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and discuss appropriate regional and global mechanisms to meet these challenges.

The latter volume's topic is explained thus:

Almost the entire southern hemisphere is now covered by nuclear weapons-free zones. Those in Latin America and the South Pacific were established during the Cold War, those in South-East Asia and Africa after its ending. Zones have also been proposed, so far without success, for the Middle East, South Asia and North-East Asia.

"In this book, analysts from within the respective regions explore the reasons for success and failure in the establishment of the zone, and their utility and limitations as stepping stones to a nuclear weapons-free world."