Developing countries have joined the rapidly growing global system of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past years. The drive towards regional integration has advanced with the formation of new markets and groups in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Oceania with few developing countries remaining outside these regional schemes. This volume looks at how 'getting governance right' is a central element for successful RTA implementation, taking stock of the quality and effectiveness of the monitoring of development country RTAs around the world. Organized by the main world regions and primarily focusing on developing country RTAs, the book also includes two case studies focused on monitoring in developed country regional agreements by way of comparison. The contributors operationalize governance in the context of RTA implementation with a more narrow and technical term of 'monitoring' and provide eight important lessons for assessing monitoring around the world.

Mindful of the future economic and social sustainability of the region, as well as the subcontinent's future in terms of the African Renaissance, this study provides an analysis of the developmental and institutional opportunities and challenges that confront southern Africa.

Global environmental change (GEC) represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to the food security of hundreds of millions of people, especially those who depend on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. As this book shows, at the same time, agriculture and related activities also contribute to GEC by, for example, intensifying greenhouse gas emissions and altering the land surface. Responses aimed at adapting to GEC may have negative consequences for food security, just as measures taken to increase food security may exacerbate GEC. The authors show that this complex and dynamic relationship between GEC and food security is also influenced by additional factors; food systems are heavily influenced by socioeconomic conditions, which in turn are affected by multiple processes such as macro-level economic policies, political conflicts and other important drivers. The book provides a major, accessible synthesis of the current state of knowledge and thinking on the relationships between GEC and food security. Most other books addressing the subject concentrate on the links between climate change and agricultural production, and do not extend to an analysis of the wider food system which underpins food security; this book addresses the broader issues, based on a novel food system concept and stressing the need for actions at a regional, rather than just an international or local, level. It reviews new thinking which has emerged over the last decade, analyses research methods for stakeholder engagement and for undertaking studies at the regional level, and looks forward by reviewing a number of emerging 'hot topics' in the food security-GEC debate which help set new agendas for the research community at large. Published with Earth System Science Partnership, GECAFS and SCOPE

Environmental Security in Africa: Conflicts, Politics, and Development investigates the nature, scope, and dimension of environmental security in Africa from a multidisciplinary perspective to examines the history, theories, spatial patterns, sociocultural, socioeconomic consequences, and legal ramifications of Africa’s environmental concerns. This book is grounded in theories that cut across the social, behavioral, and environmental sciences, arguing that environmental security is a multifaceted subject intricately linked to global climate change and magnified by globalization. Drawing from case studies across different parts of Africa, Elisha Jasper Dung, Leonard Sitji Bombom, Augustine Avwunudiogba, and the contributors argue that the integral part of the solution to Africa’s environmental security issues are entrenched in victims' local, regional, social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances in specific geographical locations, such as Nigeria, Northeast Africa, Kenya, and South Sudan. Comprised of 17 chapters, this book provides a unique perspective that facilitates understanding the complex problem of environmental security and its sundry ramifications for scholars and policymakers.

African regional trade integration has grown exponentially in the last decade. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal framework within which it is being pursued. It will fill a huge knowledge gap and serve as an invaluable teaching and research tool for policy makers in the public and private sectors, teachers, researchers and students of African trade and beyond. The author argues that African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are best understood as flexible legal regimes particularly given their commitment to variable geometry and multiple memberships. He analyzes the progress made toward trade liberalization in each region, how the RTAs are financed, their trade remedy and judicial regimes, and how well they measure up to Article XXIV of GATT. The book also covers monetary unions as well as intra-African regional integration, and examines free trade agreements with non-African regions including the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.