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TWN
Info Service on Climate Change (Apr13/02) Dear friends and colleagues, We are pleased to share with you the link to an interview recently held with Martin Khor, formerly the director of the Third World Network (TWN), presently the executive director of South Centre, an intergovernmental organization of developing countries based in Geneva. In this interview conducted on 22 April by Paul Jay of the Baltimore-based The Real News Network (TRNN), Khor talks about the critical need for the advanced countries of the North to own up to their responsibility in dealing with climate change by cutting their carbon emissions and facilitating the transfer to developing countries of environmental technology. Failure to do so, says Khor, will lead to a calamitous outcome for the Earth and a catastrophe for humanity. [Item 1] In addition to the interview with Khor, we also include below the link to a TRNN interview held earlier with Dr. Yılmaz Akyüz, formerly the Chief Economist and the Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) until his retirement in August 2003. He is now Chief Economist of the South Centre. In this interview conducted on 17 December, Akyüz speaks of the dangers of the current drive towards finance-based globalisation that has seen the promotion of financial markets, the creation of bubbles created on rising incomes earned on assets amidst falling labour income. He warns that such a system of competition between governments and their regulators, on the one hand, and finance, on the other, that constantly sees markets winning the upper hand will lead us to a ‘doom’ of bubble-bust cycles unless finance is approached completely differently. [Item 2] In a third interview conducted on 23 April, TRNN spoke to international trade and investment expert, Chakravarthi Raghavan, who served as Chief Editor of South-North Development Monitor, SUNS , 1980-2005 and now as Editor Emeritus. Raghavan also formerly served as Editor of Third World Economics & Geneva Representative of Third World Network. Raghavan speaks about the need to transform the structure as well as the substance of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) institution making up an important part of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) being signed around the world. Until that happens, the world will continue to see corporations claiming compensation for, or challenging, actions taken against them by governments even when those actions were taken in the public interest and/or on the basis of the corporations’ contractual, environmental, or other, violations. [Item 3]
[Item 1] People
of the South to the North: Will You Face Up to Climate Catastrophe?
[Item 2] Incomes
Earned on Assets Rising while Labor Income is Falling* [Item 3] Why
Can Corporate Interests Trump Sovereign Rights?*
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