ABSTRACT
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has worked on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) since June 1996. The MAI has changed the intellectual and political climate for debate on macroeconomic policy. When WWF started lobbying on the MAI we were told it was not about developing countries, and just before it collapsed the head of OECD said it was for developing countries. The MAI generated such opposition because there was a fundamental clash between two different world views. On the one hand there was the world view of the trade and investment experts. Second, there is the world view of the massed hordes, caricatured as barbarians at the gates, out there on the Internet. In this world, there are some new rules that go beyond the old-world aim of capital efficiency. There is uncertainty and irreversible environmental and social damage which is coded in the precautionary principle – a key principle left out of the MAI.
