A multitude: the many ways of reading, the many children of Zarathustra. Notes on the global conference “Nietzsches Zukünfte”

In this article I review history of global environmental conferences and draw political lessons about their broader role in constructing efforts at global environmental governance. I also examine future of global conference diplomacy for environment, in particular Rio+10 in Johannesburg in 2002 and prospects of reaching goals for sustainable development set at UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Global conferences are oft-used policy instruments, thus deserving careful evaluation and assessment. Jacques Fomerand expresses justifiable skepticism that most global conferences are momentary media events that provide sound bite opportunities without lasting effects on policies or quality of environment. (1) Guilio Gallarotti, and Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, offer similar skeptical judgments about potential for effective state-based international governance. (2) Yet Fomerand also points out, as do I, that many conferences provide indirect effects that may be beneficial for inducing states to take more progressive steps toward governance and sustainable development. Governance and Constructivism Governance has recently become a popular catchphrase of international relations. Without prospects of hegemonic leadership, and in light of substantial growth of influence of international institutions and nonstate actors, international rule making has become domain of multiple overlapping actors and regimes, rather than clearcut leadership by one state or multilateral conformity with a small and homogeneous set of shared rules backed by enforcement mechanisms. Anne Marie Slaughter defines it as the formal and informal bundles of rules, roles and relationships that define and regulate social practices of states and nonstate actors in international affairs. (3) Sustainable development requires multilateral governance, because without well-defined rules and expectations most countries are incapable of unilaterally protecting themselves from transboundary and global environmental risks Constructivist scholars of international relations (IR) have been focusing on institutional, discursive, and intersubjective procedures by which international governance develops. John Ruggie writes that social constructivism rests on an irreducibly intersubjective dimension of human action ... constructivism is about human consciousness and its role in international life.... Constructivists hold view that building blocks of international reality are ideational as well as material; that ideational factors have normative as well as instrumental dimensions; that they express not only individual but also collective intentionality; and that meaning and significance of ideational factors are not independent of time and place. (4) Constructivists look at mechanisms and consequences by which actors, particularly states, derive meaning from a complex world, and how they identify their interests and policies for issues that appear new and uncertain. It is now widely accepted by most IR scholars that governance increasingly occurs in a decentralized manner, through a loosely tied network of multiple actors, states, functional state agencies, and nonstate actors who interact frequently, sometimes at global conferences. (5) Governance of environment is no different. Constructivists focus on such distinctive processes as socialization, education, persuasion, discourse, and norm inculcation to understand ways in which international governance develops. Typically these are complex procedures involving multiple interacting actors that accrue over time and contribute to transformational shifts in perceptions of national identity, international agendas, and presumptive ways by which national interests are to be attained. UN conferences contribute to governance and sustainable development by establishing and reinforcing some of these constructivist themes in international relations. …

The global environmental conferences convened by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) during the last fifty years have contributed to the development of international environmental law and institution-building. Yet, given the deteriorating state of the global environment they are but one element of international environmental governance. While they were important to bring environmental issues to the attention of states, the time for agenda-setting seems over. Rather the international community must move on to the implementation of existing binding and non-binding rules and principles. While the UNGA continues to play an important role in the context of sustainable development and the Agenda 2030 process and is, indeed a stable platform for international cooperation on environmental issues, it seems that the time for comprehensive global environmental conferences may have come to an end, unless more innovative mechanisms for the implementation of international environmental law and policy are brought forward.

IntroductionGlobal health conferences are important platforms for knowledge exchange, decision-making and personal and professional growth for attendees. Neocolonial patterns in global health at large and recent opinion reports indicate that...

This article examines the compatibility of the Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies with a sharing economy model. The analysis is based on the claims presented in Europol documents and public statements of Europol executives that this initiative serves as a platform for knowledge exchange and building professional networks between public and private actors to tackle crypto-laundering. The article investigates the validity of these statements with the most prominent sharing economy concepts: low barrier accessibility, transaction cost and trust-building. The article employs each sharing economy concept on two beneficiaries of the platform—law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and non-governmental organizations—while scaling the platform’s sharing economy level. Based on Europol documents, an expert interview and participant observation of the 5th Global Cryptocurrency Conference, the article’s core argument is that these cryptocurrency conferences can be categorized as a ‘partial’ sharing economy platform. They reduce the transaction cost for public and private actors to share knowledge about the latest trends and threats about crypto-laundering and reduce transaction costs for networking. However, co-founders should consider integrating robust trust-building mechanisms that allow low barrier entry to the conference, which will facilitate more inclusive and optimized public–private partnerships (P3).

Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETPs) and Public Health Schools Without Walls use the “learning while doing” approach to build public health's international capacity.1–9 Under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the late Charles Merieux, these programs in 1997 established Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (TEPHINET). The network's mission is to strengthen international public health capacity through initiating, supporting, and networking field-based training programs that enhance competencies in applied epidemiology and public health interventions. Since its inception, TEPHINET has linked professionals to WHO epidemic response and polio eradication teams and has organized “train-the-trainers” workshops and the first global TEPHINET conference, held in Ottawa in April 2000 and hosted by Canada's FETP. This conference, attended by 187 participants from 30 countries, featured 93 trainee papers. Five regional conferences were held in 2001. There are now 30 programs participating in TEPHINET, with 1317 graduates and 428 current fellows, excluding those of the oldest TEPHINET program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epidemic Intelligence Service. TEPHINET programs target midcareer professionals working for public health agencies; 46.7% of participants are women, 64% are medical doctors, and 20.3% hold postgraduate degrees in public health. There is a growing interest among ministries of health in establishing new TEPHINET programs. These programs are becoming increasingly recognized as catalysts for strengthening the scientific basis of policy-making through the continuous examination of data available from surveillance systems; their systematic field investigations provide opportunities for training and enable ministries of health to better respond to public health problems. Table 1 ▶ shows the range of problems faced in countries served by TEPHINET programs and the methods used to address them. The vast majority of these problems involve communicable diseases (70.5%), and almost half of the projects use the method of outbreak investigation. By responding to pressing public health problems through field projects, the programs usually provide services to the poorest of the poor. TABLE 1 —Public Health Problem Topics and Methods Reported in Trainee Papers Submitted for Consideration at Scientific Conferences: TEPHINET Programs, 1995–2000 The programs result in improvements in surveillance, disease prevention, and health promotion programs. Consider the following examples. The Mexican and Peruvian programs were central to the response to cholera in the 1990s, which resulted in a 93% decrease in incidence and a remarkably low case-fatality rate (0.7.%) through improved surveillance case management, health education, and sanitation. Systematic studies of nosocomial transmission of blood-borne pathogens (Plasmodium falciparum, Klebsiella pneumoniae) in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s resulted in better infection control practices for preventing catheter-related infections and extrinsic contamination of infusates and led to nationwide recognition of the usefulness of public health surveillance. The Thailand FETP contributed to the establishment of surveillance systems early in the HIV epidemic, which proved critical to characterizing the epidemic and to developing and evaluating interventions. These interventions, in turn, have resulted in a decreasing incidence of HIV since 1994 through increased condom use and through lower rates of sexual intercourse with commercial sex workers among young men. TEPHINET aims to increase its participation in international epidemic and disaster response teams and to collaborate with its partners to train field epidemiologists, which are currently available to only 30% of the world's population. The TEPHINET second global conference, scheduled for June 2–6, 2002 in Madrid, will be hosted by Spain's FETP.

This paper offers an overview of some of the highlights of the 2024 NISO Plus Global Online Conference that was held September 17–September 18, 2024. This conference grew out of the virtual NISO Plus meetings that were held during the Pandemic. While NISO Plus conferences resumed in-person in February 2024, the global sessions were so successful that NISO held a purely virtual one later that same year. Speakers who could not usually travel to the USA are able to give their presentations virtually and the global conferences allow for a much wider net to be cast for speakers and attendees. The ultimate goal of the NISO Plus conferences is to have a discussion, identify information industry problems and, with the collective wisdom of the speakers and audience who are representative of the information industry stakeholders, generate potential solutions that NISO or others can develop. As with prior years, there was no general topical theme (although Open Science, Open Access, sustainable research, and scientific integrity were common threads), but there were topics of interest for everyone working in the information ecosystem—from the practical subjects of persistent identifiers, standards, metadata, data sharing, Open Science, and Open Access to the potential future of the research article and journals.

This commentary was commissioned from J. Hope Corbin by the IUHPE in order to share her personal experience as a rapporteur and particpant in the 6th WHO Global Conference on Health Promotion held in Bangkok, Thailand, in August 2005. Her contribution serves as an example of how the IUHPE is committed to continue supporting a dialogue on the Bangkok Charter and its implementation through its electronic journal the Reviews of Health Promotion & Education Online which has provided a forum for IUHPE members to share their thoughts and views in the series: From Ottawa 1986 to Vancouver 2007, Should the Ottawa Charter be revisited? This series will be prolonged all the way up to the IUHPE's next world conference in Vancouver where the issues taken up by the various declarations of global WHO conferences, notably the Ottawa one in 1986, will be at the core of its programme (see http://www.iuhpeconference.org/). We are thus looking forward to a strong ongoing debate until then, and all IUHPE members are invited to submit their own paper on this subject for consideration and posting on RHP&EO (www.rhpeo.org)!

This year, the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) marks the fortieth anniversary of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and the tenth anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. As part of the preparations for Rio+20, the five UN Regional Economic Commissions convened regional preparatory meetings. These regional meetings have become de rigueur in the run‐up to international conferences or summits. This article examines the regional contribution to Rio+20 by looking at the history of the UN Regional Economic Commissions and their role in preparing for the global sustainable development conferences, with specific emphasis on the Rio+20 process, and how the regional preparatory meetings examined some of the major issues on the agenda.

Second Global Conference: Building a Sustainable World Through Tourism

Guest Editorial Note:Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms Jean H. Quataert and Benita Roth, Special Issue Co-editors This note introduces our special issue on "Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms." In it we try to capture part of the contentious histories of feminist activism unfolding in the period after World War II. We focus specifically on the meanings for feminist thought and action worldwide of the UN sponsored world conferences on women and related international gatherings. Prodded by international and national women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and facilitated through the UN's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the United Nations General Assembly declared 1975 "International Women's Year" (IWY) and named 1975-1985 as the "Decade for Women." The UN sponsored three large international conferences beginning with Mexico City (1975), followed by Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1985); these gatherings generated so much momentum that a Fourth Women's World Conference was held in Beijing in 1995. Other UN conferences, including the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa in September 2001, also featured in this issue, allowed feminist antiracist activists around the globe to come together to discuss understandings of the intersections of gender and racial oppression.1 These conferences took place against the backdrop of a number of formative geopolitical developments: Cold War tensions and their subsequent easing after 1989; decolonization struggles and emerging nations' insistent drive for equitable economic development amid the continuing inequalities of the global economic and political order; the rise of neo-liberal economic agendas; women's increased participation globally in the formal labor sector; transnational organizing for lesbian and gay rights; and a concomitant, significant rise by the mid-1990s of conservative religious and fundamentalist groups around the world. These geopolitical and cultural factors sometimes sustained and sometimes constrained the ability of diverse feminist [End Page 11] and women's activists to form alliances, set new international and national agendas, and see to their implementation on the ground. Until very recently, much of what has appeared about the UN conferences in journal literature has been in the form of reports on participants' experiences nearly exclusively in women's studies journals.2 Since 1996, it has mainly been feminist sociologists and political scientists charting the effects of the UN conferences on feminist and women's organizing around the globe.3 There also is a vibrant literature assessing the impact of women's [End Page 12] world conferences on feminist contributions to development discourses, particularly those efforts challenging the neo-liberal assumptions that drive the giving of mainstream development aid. These debates stress ongoing unequal macro-economic contexts.4 [End Page 13] The topic of the UN meetings, with a few exceptions, has been left largely unexamined in women's history despite its undeniable importance for shaping the vibrant new patterns of transnational advocacy networks that emerged during the Decade.5 The same time frame saw a huge growth of feminist NGOs worldwide; the invention of innovative gatherings like the World Social Forums, which feature impressive participation by feminist activists; and the creation of UN People's Forums, which gave voice and visibility to NGOs as well as to local leaders and activists generally marginal to governmental authority and power. Strikingly, however, the Journal of Women's History paid scant scholarly attention to these conferences. One short report by Peggy Simpson, "Beijing in Perspective," appeared in the Spring 1996 issue; Simpson was an acclaimed Associated Press journalist whose personal experiences are part of the larger narrative presented here. In 1997, the JWH published Wang Zheng's article "Maoism, Feminism, and the UN Conference on Women: Women's Studies Research in Contemporary China."6 The relative neglect by historians of the more recent interface of global and local feminist organizing lies, perhaps, in the challenges for historical research of engaging contemporary themes and issues. The growing interest among women's historians in human rights histories and comparative studies in women's movements thus reflects a major conceptual shift, which promises a turn to transnational methodologies, interregional connections, and global historical perspectives. As we hope to show through the articles in...

Risk of CKD Progression and Quality-of-Care Indicators in the Primary Care Setting

# Global health conferences: Are they truly "global"? The Bethune Round Table paradigm for promoting global surgery {#article-title-2} As recognition of the contribution of injury and surgical disease to the global burden of disease grows, strategies to address these challenges have emerged,

Evaluating the impact of a virtual international global surgery conference as a means for global surgery and health education

A strong and robust Primary Health Care system is essential to achieving universal health coverage and to save lives. The Global Conference on Primary Health Care 2018: from Alma-Ata towards achieving Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals at Astana, Kazakhstan provided a platform for low‐ and middle‐ income countries to join the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI). At this Global Conference, Malaysia has declared to become a Trailblazer Country in the PHCPI and pledged to monitor her Vital Signs Profiles (VSP). However, the VSP project requires an honest and transparent data collection and monitoring of the Primary Health Care system, so as to identify gaps and guide policy in support of Primary Health Care reform. This is a huge commitment and can only be materialised if there is a collaborative partnership between Primary Care and Public Health providers. Fundamental to all of these, is the controversy concerning whether or not ‘Primary Care’ and ‘Primary Health Care’ represent the same entity. Confusion also occurs with regards to the role of ‘Primary Care’ and ‘Public Health’ providers in the Malaysian Primary Health Care system. This review aims to differentiate between Primary Care, Primary Health Care and Public Health, describe the relationships between the three entities and redefine the role of Primary Care and Public Health in the PHCPI-VSP in order to transform the Malaysian Primary Health Care system.

EXTENDING the concerns of medical education beyond the traditional pattern and "onto new terrain of health and social development" was the aim of a first-ever meeting held this summer in Rockford, Ill. At the Global Conference on International Collaboration on Medical Education and Practice, John H. Bryant, MD, a noted medical educator and chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, discussed the interface between medical education and practice and the health care of populations. One of Bryant's theses, which he strongly stated and others reiterated, is that training physicians simply to treat individual patients who present in the office or hospital is not going to get the global health care job done anymore. A broader view, which has gained force in the 16 years since it was set forth, is informed by the ethical principles designating health a basic human right embraced