Global Public Goods

The next aspect of the conference I want to understand more about is Global Public Goods.

What are Global Public Goods?

The term Global Public Good is hard to define. The best definition is rather vague, but still gives a reasonable idea. A Global Public Good is a "good" that is available on more-or-less worldwide basis. Global Public Goods traditionally have the three following properties:

- Non-Rivalrous: Consumption of this good by anyone does not reduce the quantity available to other agents.
- Non-Excludable: It is impossible to prevent anyone from consuming that good.
- It is available more-or-less worldwide.

According to Kaul, Grundberg and Stern, Global Public Goods have usually consisted of 'Traffic Rules' between countries and border issues such as tariffs. Today, targets such as disease control, pollution reduction, crisis prevention, and harmonized norms and standards are what is considered "important". The reason being enhanced openness, growing systemic risks, and the policy demands of the growing number of transnational actors in both business and civil society. A major reason for the under-provision of this new class of global public goods — we call them global policy outcomes — is that public policy-making has not yet adjusted to present-day realities. There are three major gaps:

- Juristictional Gap: The discrepancy between the global boundaries of today’s major policy concerns and the essentially national boundaries of policy-making.
- Participation Gap: Which results from the fact that we live in a multiactor world but international cooperation is still primarily intergovernmental.
- Incentive Gap: Because moral suasion is not enough for countries to correct their international spillovers or to cooperate for the global public good.

Cooperation is everything when it comes to the continuation of Global Public Goods. And not just cooperation that mistakenly assumes that the sphere of “public” ends at national borders, but cooperation that recognizes that an efficient system of global public policy is a necessary ingredient of an efficient global economy.

Global Governance

The next topic I have looked into is Global Governance, a further issue that will be discussed at the Wellington Conference. Global Governance is concerned with sustainable development. In order to maintain a steady rate at which the world will develop, it is believed by some that in order for this to happen, there must be global governance.

In an article by the UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, it is believed that successful global governance has not yet been achieved, however its importance is recognized as the world is becoming more interdependent and there has been an increase in trade and capital flow. The United Nations is an important aspect of inclusive global governance as it is the only universal and inclusive multilateral forum.

Another reason why it is important to recognize the significance of global governance is because of illegal workers due to gaps in global governance which make progress in social development more difficult. This creates weak protection for migrants moving into a new country as well as restricted access to health benefits, agriculture, and other areas.




GOVERNANCE OF THE GLOBAL COMMONS

Stewardship of the global commons cannot be carried out without global governance because the Global Commons are defined as those parts of the planet which fall outside national jurisdiction - for example the oceans, the atmosphere, the Antarctic, and outer space. Science, information, education and peace are also sometimes thought of as global commons. Our planet is facing critical changes to the environment including climate change, the depletion of the ozone layer, and degradation in Antarctica. Without global governance, if business prevails, these problems will likely worsen and will negatively impact the global commons capacity to "provide ecosystem services for human well-being."

A number of treaties have been put in place to help to prevent this happening, as there are those who acknowledge that there is a problem. These include the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 and instruments governed by the International Maritime Organization and UNEP’s Regional Seas Conventions to govern the high seas; the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) ensuring the protection of the Antarctica fauna and flora; a multitude of international environmental treaties that administer and protect the atmosphere and deal with the air pollution and atmospheric depletion, like the UNFCCC and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; and the Treaty on Principles governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space.

Global Commons

To gain a better insight into what the May conference in Wellington is about, I looked further into 'Global Commons.'

Global Commons is defined as a term used to describe international, supranational and global resource domains in which common-pool resources are found. The term 'Global Commons' includes earth's natural resources, the atmosphere, outer space, and the northern and southern polar regions, plus possibly cyber space (a new idea).

The 'Commons' is the bounteous inheritance of resources that makes life possible.
The 'Commons' includes: physical, biological, social, intellectual, and cultural dimensions both tangible and intangible.

Much of what adds texture and vitality to life is, in fact, participation in one form or another of the commons. There are essential inter-dependencies among these examples which reflect assets that are collectively shared and must be responsibly stewarded on behalf of succeeding generations.

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE:

As the world becomes more inter-connected, Global Governance will increase in relevance to be able to achieve sustainable development. Deepening economic globalization, and increasing migration, trade and capital flows, and climate change and increased activities in the global commons – those resource domains that do not fall within the jurisdiction of any one particular country, and to which all nations have access – make individual States more susceptible to policies adopted by others.