"Suffer what they must?" Small states in international negotiations

Date

Friday March 6th 2015

Venue

Lecture Theatre, Blavatnik School of Government, 10 Merton Street

Ever since Thucydides made his famous pronouncement on the Peloponnesian War - "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - international relations scholars have assumed that smaller or poorer countries typically lose in international negotiations. This event asks: under what conditions can they succeed? Bringing together two veteran negotiators who have represented developing countries in climate, trade, and a variety of multilateral fora, the event will explore the strategies and tactics small states can use to make global governance work for them.

Panelists:

Quamrul Chowdhury - Formerly Lead Negotiator of G77 and Least Developed Countries Group in UN Climate Negotiations. Currently member of the Adaptation Committee under the UN Climate Convention.
Edwin Laurent, SLC. OBE. CMG - Formerly St Lucia’s leading trade negotiator, Permanent Secretary for Trade, Industry and Tourism, St. Lucia's representative at the WTO. Currently Director of the Ramphal Institute and Senior Adviser to UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative

Chair:

Emily Jones, Associate Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government

This event is open to the public. To attend please register by emailing your name to events@bsg.ox.ac.uk.

Quamrul Chowdhury is an economist, climate, environment and sustainable development specialist, and a legendary negotiator of developing countries covering a career of over 35 years in UN negotiations. He has been a lead negotiator of G-77 and LDCs for over 22 years including crafting of Berlin Mandate, Kyoto Protocol, Bali Action Plan, Adaptation Fund, LDC Fund, Special Climate Change Fund, Green Climate Fund, Cancun Agreement, Durban Platform, Doha Gateway and Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He was Chair and Vice-Chair of Kyoto Protocol Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee for the term 2011-12 and 2010-11 and has served in many UN and UNFCCC bodies earning global fame as a ‘trouble-shooter’ in climate diplomacy and sustainable development negotiations.

Chowdhury is also known as a guru of adaptation to climate change and has been a lead adaptation negotiator for G-77 /LDCs for many years. He is a current member of the newly created 16-member high-powered Adaptation Committee under the UN Climate Convention and a member of UN Water Scenario Focused Group. He is a proponent of National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) for LDCs and mooted the concept of National Adaptation Plan under the climate convention. He is an architect of number of globally acclaimed national plans and numerous policy papers and sustainable development documents and is an internationally rated policy analyst who was involved in crafting Rio Conventions, Agenda 21, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and The Future We Want.

As an eminent citizen of Bangladesh, Quamrul Chowdhury has been on the forefront of sustainable development movement in the Asia-Pacific region since Rio-run up and engaged in Rio+5, Rio+10, Rio+20 and now Post 2015 SDG process. He has made presentations on behalf of G-77 and/LDCs at different UN and UNFCCC in-session workshops, roundtable and dialogues.

Edwin Laurent (SLC, OBE, CMG) is currently Director of the Ramphal Institute and Senior Adviser to UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative for the Caribbean that is promoting a holistic approach to policy making in, and management of, sustainable development.

Prior to that, Laurent led a Commonwealth Secretariat team undertaking research and capacity building in trade and development policy.

Edwin Laurent was educated at the Universities of the West Indies, Manchester and the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies and began his career at St Lucia’s Ministry of Finance, later becoming Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Trade Industry and Tourism. He has held various diplomatic postings including: Ambassador to France, Germany and Belgium; East Caribbean States’ Permanent Representative to the EU, St Lucia’s Permanent Representative to the WTO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO and OPCW, and Special Envoy on Bananas of the Heads of Government of Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent.

Edwin Laurent has lectured in Central and West Africa and the Caribbean on Trade and multilateral negotiations and written and published extensively on trade and development issues. In 2013 he was awarded the St Lucia Cross for services to development