Sustainable development requires the creative integration of economic, social and environmental goals inside policies. This is vital in the response to the challenge of globalisation, which arises from the increasing interconnectedness and interdependence between nations and peoples. Nowhere are the consequences of globalisation more apparent than for the global environment, where it simultaneously poses new threats and offers new solutions. Environmental problems are inherently cross cutting. They cannot be effectively dealt with from separate policy compartments.

The Sustainable Development and Globalisation Team works closely with the other four teams to ensure that we draw as effectively as possible on the expertise available across the Department, and that lessons learned in one area are applied in others. It is also helping the FCO develop participatory approaches to the issues with which it deals, drawing on the skills of its secondees, from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Unilever, and - through the internship programme with LEAD International - Mexico and Pakistan.

The team articulates our response to these challenges by covering four key thematic areas: globalisation, business and the environment, sustainable development and poverty, and environmental democracy and participation. It is helping to develop the UK approach to the Rio+10 summit on environment and development in 2002, and contributing to the international debate on how to strengthen and make more coherent the international institutional structure relating to the environment. It is in close touch with the Task Force on Renewable Energy established at the Okinawa Summit in July 2000, and will help formulate the UK response to its recommendations. It is working with business, and with the FCO Global Citizenship Unit, on the environmental impacts of corporate activity.

Useful links Department for International Development (DFID)
Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor The UK Government's second White Paper on International Development, 'Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor'.

Worldaware Worldaware works to raise awareness of international development issues.
UK Policy on the Environment