Development scene

If you talk about the South don't keep silent about the North

S - Global thinking and local action is what all of us should practice at home. This is the motto of an information brochure for German-speaking readers, published by the World Peace Service (Welt-friedensdienst WFD), a development organisation in Germany's new eastern states and the association of small-scale farmers (Arbeitsgemeinschaft brliche Landwirtschaft - AbL). Examples in the brochure explain the interdependencies and in teractions in agricultural policy.

Readers learn about European meat and onion exports and their catastrophic impacts on African markets, about how inconsiderate grain exports which change traditional food patterns in Zimbabwe, and how nonsustainable agriculture practiced today in the North is undermining the livelihood basis of local farmers. The aim is to explain interrelationships which WFD and AbL feel are still only known to a small segment of the German public. Both organizations see this as a contribution to the action plan Agenda 21 adopted at the UN conference for Environment and Development in 1992.

WFD/AbL Inlandsprojekt
Winderatt
D-24966 S
Germany
Tel. +49 46 35/27 45
Fax: +49 46 35/12 99

NGO: Trade and commerce should contribute to a sustainable development

Bonn/Cologne - The German NGO Forum "Environment and Development" has put forward to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) three demands concerning trade and environment: its contracting parties should undertake not to undermine international environmental protection, natural resource conservation and sustainable development policies.

The WTO should also fully recognise multinational environmental protection conventions and apply their directives. The NGO's forum also demands more transparency in WTO's work and participation by non-governmental organisations, similar to arrangements made with the parties to the convention on climate.

The NGO considers that fair trade between the North and the South can make a very practical contribution to sustainable development. At the recent congress of Ger many's Fair Trade Movement in Cologne some 250 participants put forward to politicians the demand that quotas and EU customs give preference to products from environmentally-sound and sociallycompatible manufacturing processes and that conditions for public tenders be changed to include ecological and social aspects along with price and functional value.

Fair trade products are distributed by more than 700 "world" shops and numerous supermarkets in Germany. "World" shops have a 25-year tradition and mostly obtain their goods from gepa (Association to Promote Partnership with the Third World Gesellschaft zur Frung der Partnerschaft mit der Dritten Welt) whereas its supermarkets have been supplied with certified goods from the South by Transfair Germany since 1992.

Gepa was founded by the Catholic and Protestant Churches and is Europe's largest alternative trading organisation. Transfair is an association of 36 trading organisations.

To help scientific research in the South

Trieste (Italy) - To recognize, support and promote excellence in scientific research, to provide promising scientists in the South with the research facilities necessary to advance of their work, to facilitate contacts between individual scientists and institutions in the South, to encourage South-North cooperation between individuals and centres of scholarship and to promote scientific research on major problems facing developing countries.

These are the main objects of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), a nongovernamental, non-political and non-profitmaking organization, founded in Trieste (Italy) in 1983 by a distinguished group of scientists from the South, under the leadership of the Nobel laureate Abdus Salam of Pakistan.

At present, TWAS has 411 members (330 fellows from 59 countries in the South and 81 associate fellows from nine countries in the North). In 1991 UNESCO took over responsibility for administering TWAS funds and staff, based on an agreement signed by TWAS and UNESCO.

In addition, TWAS has maintained close relationships with other international bodies with which it shares common objectives. With funds largely provided by the Italian government, TWAS has been supporting research carried out in over 90 countries in the South since 1986.

In 1988, TWAS was also instrumental in the establishment of the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations, a nongovernmental alliance of over 140 scientific organizations in the South. It also played a key role in launching the Third World Organization for Women in Science in Cairo in 1993.

For further information:

Prof. M.H.A. Hassan
Executive Director
TWAS
c/o International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
P.O. Box 586
Strada Costiera 11 34100
Trieste, Italy
Tel: +39 40-22 40-327
Fax: +39 4022 45 59
Email: twas@ictp.trieste.it
Homepage: http:/www. trieste.it/-twas/
TWAS.html