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Issue 1: April - June 2000 |
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UNU to Help Lead Creation of World Freshwater Assessment – UNU/INWEH 2. UNU
Kosovo study calls for clearer crisis 3.
UNU
Study Links Information Technology Investment, 4. Symposium Examines
Threat from
Endocrine 5.
New
Book Studies Decade of Economic New Biennial UN World Water Development Report: UNU to Help
Lead Creation of Among efforts to mark World Water Day 2000 (March 22), the UN system announced a major multi-partner initiative to assess and biennially report on the state of the world’s freshwater -- an effort designed to reduce major global information deficiencies and gaps and help nations make better use of life’s most precious resource.
The UN University International Network on Water, Environment and Health will help lead the creation of the World Water Development Report, the central product of a people-centered, comprehensive initiative to help developing countries improve their monitoring, assessment and reporting capacity, with particular focus on water quality, water use, human health impacts and river basin management. In this way, a truly global picture of the state of freshwater and its management will be built up over time. Member of the UN inter-agency Subcommittee on Water Resources, comprised of 24 organizations of the UN system, are core participants in the report. National and international partners, NGOs and other potential contributors are being invited as active collaborators. The first edition in 2002 of the World Water Development Report, The State of the World’s Freshwater Resources will include a global analysis and a progress report on implementation of water-related objectives set in Agenda 21, adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It will also monitor progress in implementation of the Ministerial Declaration of The Hague from the World Water Forum (March, 2000).
Core funding for start up of this new initiative will be provided from a Trust Fund at UNESCO. Contributions to enrich and sustain the initiative will be sought from other national governments and international development agencies. UN agencies will oversee the initiative and produce the report, drawing on an extensive network of experts and specialized databases. "This new UN initiative is important because knowledge is central to efforts to improve the global supply and quality of freshwater," said Hans van Ginkel, Rector of UN University. "By improving global information, we can support and strengthen the human ingenuity needed to save lives today and help avert a predicted water crisis in the 21st Century." The World Water Development Report will be guided by a Steering Committee and administered by a Secretariat, housed at UNESCO, Paris, assisted by the UN University / International Network on Water, Environment and Health.
UNU Study Calls For Unless world powers agree on principles to guide similar situations in future, the precedent set in Kosovo, whereby national sovereignty was disregarded on humanitarian grounds, could dangerously undermine international order, according to a newly-released UNU report, Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention. The report, co-edited by by UNU Vice Rector Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel, suggests reform of the Security Council, including possible suspension of the five permanent members' veto power, in votes on "exceptional circumstances" like those presented by the Kosovo crisis.
"Faced with another Holocaust or Rwanda-type genocide on the one hand, and a Security Council veto on the other, what would we do?" asks Mr. Thakur. "A new consensus on humanitarian intervention is urgently needed." "The permanent members and their interests should not prevent the Security Council from getting involved and stall the UN's attempts to provide assistance to those in need," added Mr. Schnabel. "Otherwise, we might see more NATO-style actions with less or no UN involvement -- and thus less order and less justice in our global community." NATO last year bombed Yugoslavia to stop persecution of Kosovar Albanians without sanction of the UN. The study argues that if NATO had not acted, action in the Security Council would have been blocked by Russian and Chinese opposition. Fallout from the Kosovo crisis "has the potential to redraw the landscape of international politics, with significant ramifications for the UN, major powers and regional organizations, and the way in which world politics are understood and interpreted," the study says. Associated Press UNU Study Links Information Technology Investment, National Economic Growth Countries that invest heavily in information technology reap handsome rewards in economic growth and higher living standards, according to a study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University in Helsinki (UNU/WIDER). The WIDER study focuses on three countries that have invested heavily in IT over the past two decades -- Finland, Singapore and South Korea -- and compared them with the United States. It found that computers have accounted for the greatest share of GDP growth in South Korea (32 per cent) followed by Singapore (19 per cent), Finland (16 per cent) and the United States (8 per cent). WIDER's comparison of a larger sample of 23 OECD countries reinforced the correlation between investment in computers and economic growth. In fact, the effect of IT investment has been almost as great as that of all other fixed investment combined. "Investment in infrastructure, physical capital and education is still the key to economic development," said UNU/WIDER chief academic officer Dr. Matti Pohjola, author of the study, Information Technology and Economic Development. "What this study adds is the view that the information technology (IT) content of these investments should be high." He adds: "There has been no corresponding growth effect in our sample of developing countries. It would seem that developing countries have not yet invested sufficiently in physical infrastructure and human capital to make IT investment worthwhile. This technology does not yet seem offer the developing countries a shortcut to prosperity." UNU presented a policy panel on the theme of the high-level segment of ECOSOC 2000, "Development and international cooperation in the XXI century: the role of information technology in the context of a knowledge-based economy". A report from the session, which was called Information Technology, Economic Growth and Development, will be posted on the WIDER website soon. For more information:
Symposium Examines Threat to East
The threat posed by endocrine disrupting chemicals to the people of East
Asia and their coastal ecosystems was the focus of an international
symposium organized by UNU and the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, April 17 - 18, 2000. New Book Studies Decade of Economic The transition to a market economy should be seen as an instrument of long-term development strategy and not as a goal in itself, according to a new book, From Shock to Therapy: the Political Economy of Postsocialist Transformation, from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University in Helsinki (UNU/WIDER).
Author Grzegorz W. Kolodko, Poland's former finance minister and deputy prime minister, argues that ongoing change only makes sense if productivity eventually grows and competitiveness and efficiency advance so that the standard of living – including the quality of consumption, of social capital and of the natural environment – is bound to rise. "The experience of the first decade of transition shows clearly that the major difficulties occur not because of a lack of the theoretical knowledge required to tackle the issues, but because of the inability of governments to carry out sound policies based on this knowledge," says Professor Kolodko. "What seems to be necessary from the economic viewpoint often turns out to be impossible from the political perspective. This is the core contradiction and the nightmare facing policymakers involved in the transition." From Shock to Therapy is available from the publisher Oxford University Press. |
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