Supporting or Resisting Global Public Goods? The Policy Dimension of a Contested Concept.

Following the publication of a seminal book by the UN Development Programme in 1999, the concept of global public goods has become a key theme in the debate on international development. Supporters argue that an adequate provision of GPGs can help manage the negative consequences of globalization; moreover, considering that these goods provide benefits to both developed and developing countries, resources should be additional to foreign aid. Resistance has come both from developed countries, which question the issue of additionality, and from developing countries, which raise the issues of diversion of resources and the international decisionmaking process. This article shows how this concept has emerged and has been dealt with by policymakers in the Financing for Development Conference in March 2002 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002. It also analyzes the work and final report of the International Task Force on Global Public Goods established by France and Sweden in April 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]