"Discusses how climate solutions must empower global development by improving livelihoods, health, and economic prospects and how poverty alleviation must become a central strategy for reducing global vulnerability to adverse climate impacts. Draws on expertise to ask how public, private sectors can help the poor manage the global climate crisis"--Provided by publisher.

Whether one favors the U.S. global projection of force or is horrified by it, the question stands - where do we go from here? What ought to be the new global architecture? Amitai Etzioni follows a third way, drawing on both neoconservative and liberal ideas, in this bold new look at international relations. He argues that a "clash of civilizations" can be avoided and that the new world order need not look like America. Eastern values, including spirituality and moderate Islam, have a legitimate place in the evolving global public philosophy.Nation-states, Etzioni argues, can no longer attend to rising transnational problems, from SARS to trade in sex slaves to cybercrime. Global civil society does help, but without some kind of global authority, transnational problems will overwhelm us. The building blocks of this new order can be found in the war against terrorism, multilateral attempts at deproliferation, humanitarian interventions and new supranational institutions (e.g., the governance of the Internet). Basic safety, human rights, and global social issues, such as environmental protection, are best solved cooperatively, and Etzioni explores ways of creating global authorities robust enough to handle these issues as he outlines the journey from "empire to community."

This 2004 book aims at advancing our understanding of the influences international norms and international institutions have over the incentives of states to cooperate on issues such as environment and trade. Contributors adopt two different approaches in examining this question. One approach focuses on the constitutive elements of the international legal order, including customary international law, soft law and framework conventions, and on the types of incentives states have, such as domestic incentives and reputation. The other approach examines specific issues in the areas of international environment protection and international trade. The combined outcome of these two approaches is an understanding of the forces that pull states toward closer cooperation or prevent them from doing so, and the impact of different types of international norms and diverse institutions on the motivation of states. The insights gained suggest ways for enhancing states' incentives to cooperate through the design of norms and institutions.

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.

"There is a vast literature on water in the Middle East, but few studies that take on such a balanced approach as Water Wisdom. The book makes a great addition to academic libraries around the world and for scholars involved in water policy studies."---Aaron Wolf, Oregon State University "This comprehensive, informed, and balanced volume provides invaluable insights into the roots of the water management challenges in the Middle East and charts a course for resolving this pressing issue."---James D. Wolfensohn, former Quartet Special Envoy for Gaza Israel and Palestine are, by international criteria, water scarce. As the peace process continues amidst ongoing violence, water remains a political and environmental issue. Thirty leading Palestinian and Israeli activists, water scientists, politicians, and others met and worked together to develop a future vision for the sustainable shared management of water resources that is presented in Water Wisdom. This book is a model for those who believe that water conflict can be an opportunity for cooperation rather than violence.