ABSTRACT
One important aspect of globalization is the increasingly dense and consequential regime of global rules that govern and shape development everywhere. Covering trade, investment, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, labour standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources and much else, these rules – structuring and enabling, permissive and constraining – have a profound impact on the lives of human beings and on the health of our planet. This impact is catastrophic. Billions of human beings are avoidably mired in severe poverty and avoidably exposed to a variety of diseases that do little or no damage in the more affluent parts of the world. And our planet's natural diversity and beauty – its resources, ecosystems, atmosphere and climate – are avoidably being degraded at an alarming rate.
