Dr. Negi at Oxford conference on 'Effective Multilateralisms'

Dr Archna Negi from CIPOD attended an International Conference on “Effective Multilateralisms: Cross-Regional Perspectives” at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford from 17-19 December 2009. The conference was organized by the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.



Dr. Negi's brief comments:

The Conference focused on the management of global security relations in the 21st century in light of the growing gap between the ‘normative ambitions’ of the international society and the ‘lack of means to deliver them’. Discussions centered on possible forms of global governance that can effectively achieve desired global action outcomes and a ‘global order based on the principle of effective multilateralism’. Nuclear non-proliferation and climate change were the two themes identified for discussion, being areas of severe potential consequences in the event of a collective action failure. Principles, problems and prospects relating to these issue areas were discussed from a cross-regional perspective.

Dr Negi’s presentation was titled “Effective Multilateralism, Climate Change and Trade: Prospects for Conflict and Cooperation between the Trade and Environmental Governance Systems”. Although there is an established prima facie case for the need for ‘effective multilateralism’ in the realm of climate change as well as trade, no two regimes are more visibly blighted with the curse of ‘ineffective multilateralism’ than those relating to climate change and trade. The presentation dealt individually with each of these governance systems and attempted to identify possible explanations for the ‘deadlocked multilateralism’ that currently characterizes both regimes. It focused specifically on potential areas of conflict and cooperation between the trade and climate change regimes. Based on specific examples, some generalizations relating both to effective multilateralism as well as coherence across the two regimes were sought to be identified.


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Rajagopalan at the NIDS Conference on Major Powers' Nuclear Policies

Cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan blog, The Real World.


I attended a conference on "Major Powers' Nuclear Policies and International Order in the 21st Century", organized by the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Tokyo, on November 18, 2009.


It was an enjoyable and very informative couple of days. The conference included two excellent key note presentation. Morton Halperin ("The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century") had a somewhat optimistic presentation about where we are headed while Ambassador Yukio Satoh ("Nuclear Disarmament and Japan's Security"), gave a blunt lecture about the troubles facing Japan, especially the consequences of radical nuclear arms control/disarmament on extended deterrence, though his audience seemed to be the new government in Tokyo much more than the outside world. We had presentations about the nuclear policies of each of the N-5, plus India: Elaine Bunn (who, I realised belatedly, has been on all Nuclear Posture Reviews, including the current one!) on the U.S. , Yuri Fedorov on Russia, Xia Liping on China, John Simpson on Britain and Bruno Tertrais on France (and me on India).

I could not get over the sense that Japan is much more worried about the direction of US policy and the general international trends than we realise. In addition to Ambassador Satoh's keynote address, we also had discussions with a couple of senior bureaucrats from MOFA and MOD, and they more or less echoed Amb. Sato's tone too. Maybe it is that I have only passing familiarity with Japan; moreover, alliance angst among American allies is hardly news. Am I over-reading this? Maybe, but it is also possible that others are taking Japan a bit too much for granted too.
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Dr. Siddharth Mallavarappu to lecture on 'Human Rights and Global Governance'

On August 12th, at the invitation of the German Development Institute, Bonn, Dr. Mallavarapu will be addressing young professionals participating in a Global Governance School . . .

The participants are drawn primarily from the newly emerging economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Dr. Maalavarapu's presentation shall focus on various sources of skepticism articulated by the Global South with regard to mainstream international human rights thinking. While engaging the idea of human rights, the presentation shall also audit key human rights actors, institutions and prevalent practices. The objective of the presentation is to help stimulate further reflection about some of the limits of the contemporary rights discourse.
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INS-TERI National Workshop

The Indian Nuclear Society (INS) and The Energy Resource Institute (TERI) are organizing a joint conference on “Nuclear energy development in India: Addressing climate change, public perception and large scale deployment”. Details about the conference can be found here.


Thanks to Dr. Negi, who forwarded the details.

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