"Jeffrey D. Sachs is one of the world's most perceptive and original analysts of global development. In this major new work he presents a compelling and practical framework for how global citizens can use a holistic way forward to address the seemingly intractable worldwide problems of persistent extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and political-economic injustice: sustainable development. Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice"--Provided by publisher.

This book presents in detail a pair of models of the economics of climate change. The models, called RICE-99 (for the Regional Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and DICE-99 (for the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy) build on the authors' earlier work, particularly their RICE and DICE models of the early 1990s. Humanity is risking the health of the natural environment through a myriad of interventions, including the atmospheric emission of trace gases such as carbon dioxide, the use of ozone-depleting chemicals, the engineering of massive land-use changes, and the destruction of the habitats of many species. It is imperative that we learn to protect our common geophysical and biological resources. Although scientists have studied greenhouse warming for decades, it is only recently that society has begun to consider the economic, political, and institutional aspects of environmental intervention. To do so raises formidable challenges of data modeling, uncertainty, international coordination, and institutional design. Attempts to deal with complex scientific and economic issues have increasingly involved the use of models to help analysts and decision makers understand likely future outcomes as well as the implications of alternative policies. This book presents in detail a pair of models of the economics of climate change. The models, called RICE-99 (for the Regional Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and DICE-99 (for the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy) build on the authors' earlier work, particularly their RICE and DICE models of the early 1990s. They can help policy makers design better economic and environmental policies.

"Trade and the environment" issues have engaged powerful non-governmental organizations in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Environmentalists and labor union leaders have been concerned that falling international trade barriers, along with international trade organizations associated with free trade, are undermining environmental protection. In contrast, business leaders and developing-country governments have been concerned that purported environmental regulations may be used as disguised barriers to trade. Those with competing perspectives on these issues have clashed in scholarly journals, the editorial pages of leading newspapers, the halls of government-and in the streets. This is the first book that systematically compares how each of the world's major international trade organizations has been addressing environmental issues. It provides background, up-to-date information, and analysis on the development of trade-environment rules in the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the International Organization for Standardization, and other key organizations. All of the essays are both policy-oriented and conscious of their theoretical underpinnings. Together they offer a range of realist, liberal, and institutionalist perspectives. The book concludes by suggesting that the treatment of environmental issues in international trade organizations is best explained by understanding the trade and environment interests of the world's most powerful countries.

Expressed in such new institutions as GATT, NAFTA, the World Trade Organizations, and Maastricht, as well as by the development schemes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, economic globalization has been bulldozed through legislative bodies throughout the world, with scant public debate or discourse. These tremendous changes are hailed by their backers as leading to a new era or prosperity and peace, but is this true? Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive point-by-point analysis of the workings of the global economy, its premises, and its dire implications told by more than forty of the world's leading social, environmental, and economic thinkers from the America's, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. They charge that free trade and economic globalization create exactly the opposite results from what is promised. Each of the forty-three chapters in The Case Against the Global Economy takes one part of the story and delves into it, to show both the root assumptions of globalism and its multiple failures. In the end, it is clear that we need to reverse course; away from the global toward a revitalization of local political and economic control, self-sufficiency, and ecological health.