Les liaisons fructueuses - RUIG-GIAN

framework that managed to exploit the very fertile
but not sufficiently explored interaction between
academic and intergovernmental activities. These
of course are concentrated in Geneva to a degree
found nowhere else in the world with the sole exception
of New York. The GIAN program therefore
had the merit of providing an outstanding observatory
to scientific researchers by encouraging them explicitly
to delve into the unique wealth, diversity and quality
of knowledge accumulated in the numerous international
organisations aggregated in la Genève internationale.
Thus we cooperated closely with UN
organisations and the WTO Secretariat, with the
Permanent Missions, and with international NGOs
specialized in the project’s general issue area, i.e. the
interface between trade and sustainable development.
More precisely, the project focused on a domain
which is called – both in intergovernmental negotiations
and in academia – Trade and Environment. The
WTO has a Division and two standing Committees
by this name which is frequently found also in the
scientific literature and in NGO documents. Most
of these discussions and negotiations, and also most
of the related research, focus on the relationship between
WTO agreements and MEAs, many of which
are administered by the UN Environment Program
(UNEP). There is a considerable amount of literature
also on the WTO jurisprudence in this domain. The
originality of our project consisted in bringing the
question of the transfer of technology into this problematic.
Technology transfer is a widely discussed and
analysed issue but there is hardly any mentioning of it
in the context of trade and environment.
Urs Thomas and Anne Petitpierre at the GIAN’s “Ceremony for laureates”, 31 October 2006.
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