PhD Collegium "Ecology and Fairness in the World Trade Regime"

Since the end of the 1990s international debate on the crucial question "Which globalisation is sustainable?" has concentrated mainly on world trade and how it is structured. As trade is extended to new economic sectors, it extends increasingly into the political sphere. However, as the regulatory framework for the transnational economy, the present trade regime ensures neither an ecological nor a fair alignment of global trading structures.

This is the background against which seven research projects are in progress within the graduate course. Their shared focus is a reform of the world trade regime that is based on ecology and justice:

• Bridging Knowledge Systems - Challenges for integrating small farmers into value chains
• Intellectual property as an obstacle to fair world trade
• Ecological indicators of international trade
• Privatisation of global politics: Opportunities and limits to Type 2 partnerships in the water sector - An analysis of the EU's Water for Life initiative
• Environmental governance in global value chains - A network and stakeholder perspective (working title)
• Institutional change and biomass trade (working title)
• Project-related environmental compatibility tests as a part of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The graduate course was launched at the Wuppertal Institute on 1 April 2005 under the aegis of Dr Wolfgang Sachs. It receives funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The graduate course is a part of the Wuppertal Institute's PhD programme.

Reinhild Bode, more

Monika Dittrich, more

Justus von Geibler, more

Gregor Kaiser, more

Lena Partzsch, more

Aranka Podhora, more

Mark Starmanns, more