SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEW ECONOMIC (DIS)ORDER: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FREE TRADE, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS, INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND ‘ECONOMIC MIRACLES’

1996 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eloy F. Casagrande Jr
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

13. International Trade and Environmental Protection

2021 ◽  
pp. 775-812
Author(s):  
Alan Boyle ◽  
Catherine Redgwell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Current Policy ◽  
Trade Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter looks at the relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and international trade in terms of international environmental law. Twenty-five years after the WTO system came into operation it appears that neither trade law nor environmental law have trumped each other. Rather, there has been a process of accommodation which is still ongoing. The chapter ends by making some conclusions on the arguments presented in this book and the issues currently being faced. The current policy of encouraging free trade cannot always be made environmentally friendly and this will always be the case. The problem becomes clear if we consider climate change. Free trade and globalisation by nature exacerbates the difficulties of regulating environmental issues. In addition, one of the key problems with sustainable development as a concept is that there has been too much emphasis on development, and not nearly enough on sustainability, then a policy of promoting free trade is part of that problem.

International law-making in the field of sustainable development and an emerging droit commun among international financial institutions

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-353
Author(s):  
Johanna Aleria P Lorenzo
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
International Law ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
International Community ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainability Standards ◽  
Law Making

More than being funders of development projects, international financial institutions (IFIs) should also be viewed as international law-makers, or more specifically as participants in the international law-making process relating to sustainable development. Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as endorsed by the UN General Assembly, relies not only on the IFIs’ continued performance of their economic functions, but also on their collective efforts to set and apply standards for integrating economic, environmental and social considerations in development projects. In presenting IFIs as law-makers in the field of sustainable development, this article focuses on the ‘safeguard systems’ that IFIs have individually created in order to ensure the sustainability of the development projects they finance. Through the safeguard system and its components’ respective functions, IFIs clarify, elaborate and operationalise the concept of sustainable development, and thereby participate in the international law-making process relating to this concept. Additionally, the IFIs’ participation involves enabling other non-state actors to also participate in development decision-making at the international level. The law-making functions of IFIs and the emergence of a droit commun among them bear valuable insights and implications on the current discussion surrounding the new institutions, whose entry into the multilateral development banking system has elicited anxiety about a race to the bottom in sustainability standards. This article shows why this speculated outcome is not a foregone conclusion. It suggests that preventing a race to the bottom in sustainability standards entails strengthening one component of the safeguard system, the independent accountability mechanism, which interprets the system's other component, ie the IFIs’ environmental and social policies. The ongoing efforts to harmonise the IFIs’ safeguard policies should likewise be encouraged. As specialised international organisations and members of the international community, the IFIs (and their member states) should react to adverse competitive pressures with the overarching consideration of responding to the demands and expectations of the international community. This approach means continuing to implement the global commitment to the sustainable development principles of integration and public participation, as well as maintaining the protection of the rights and interests of people affected by development projects.

Aid and sovereignty: quasi-states and the international financial institutions

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Social Arrangements ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This article examines the changing status of ‘sovereignty’ in the context of some of the world's poorest countries. An examination of the relationship between the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and these countries suggests that the norm of sovereignty is increasingly being ‘trumped’ by the IFIs' commitment to the achievement of good political and social arrangements and economic development within these countries. The article explores the historical roots of this development by tracing the way sovereignty became bound up with the idea of self-determination, the achievement of the ideals of the Enlightenment, and the pursuit of a ‘national economic project’.

How Transnational Environmental Advocacy Networks Socialize International Financial Institutions: A Case Study of the International Finance Corporation

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Park
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
International Finance ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
World Bank Group ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
Advocacy Networks ◽  
International Finance Corporation ◽  
Transnational Advocacy Networks

Environmental organizations, characterized here as transnational advocacy networks, use various strategies to “green” international financial institutions (IFIs). This article goes beyond analyzing network strategies to examine how transnational advocacy networks reconstitute the identity of IFIs. This, it is argued, results from processes of socialization: social influence, persuasion and coercion by lobbying. A case study of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), as a member of the World Bank Group, is used to analyze how an IFI internalized sustainable development norms. The IFC finances private enterprise in developing countries by providing venture capital for private projects. Transnational advocacy networks socialized the IFC through influencing its projects, policies and institutions via direct and indirect interactions to the point where the organization now sees itself as a sustainable development financier. This article applies constructivist insights to the greening process in order to demonstrate how socialization can reshape an IFI's identity.

Time and crisis: framing success and failure in Romania’s post-communist transformations

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
LILIANA POP
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Structural Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the complex interplay between domestic systemic transformations in post-communist Europe and the reintegration of these countries in the global political economy, through a study of the relationship between successive Romanian governments and the international financial institutions in the 1990s. Conceptually, it seeks to overcome the dichotomies of realist and rationalist approaches to international relations by deploying fields, habitus and practices conceptual framework inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The article captures both the symbolic and material-structural dimensions of the interaction between domestic field-creation and the reproduction of global economic and political fields. It suggests that practices aimed at the reproduction of power hierarchies are also modulated by symbolic requirements, to save face and to avoid whenever possible open conflict, related to the logic of honour.

Sovereign Debt and the Right to Education

2018 ◽  
pp. 233-247
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
International Financial Institutions ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Education And Development ◽  
Developed Nations

The nexus between education and sovereign debt has not always been obvious, although it is not difficult to conceive. This is because the stakeholders involved in debt politics and economics, but particularly its protagonists, namely creditor states and multilateral international financial institutions (IFIs), do not view educational imperatives through a human rights or developmental lens. The chapter demonstrates the inextricable link between the right to education and development and then trace international efforts to entrench the former in developmental agendas, particularly the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as more recently transformed into Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The object of the chapter is to show that behind the pledges and rhetoric of development finance the reality is that the promotion of the right to education is not high on the agenda of industrialised nations (but equally perhaps on the agendas of least developed nations). We supply numbers-based scenaria in order to demonstrate that most instances of debt servicing, even if combined with debt relief and other forms of co-financing may ultimately fail to comply with the internationally accepted indicators of the right to education.

From 1970 to 1990

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
International Community ◽  
Nuclear Accident ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Developed World ◽  
First Time

The idea of sustainable development as a three-way relationship with the environment, the economy, and social considerations all occupying different points of the triangle emerged between 1970 and 1990. The synthesis occurred as the economic situation of the developed world slowed, and the developing world collapsed. This collapse gave the push for a fundamental rethink on matters of free trade, debt, aid, and transnational corporations. At the same time, a host of new problems emerged, from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl through to the shrinking ozone layer over Antarctica. Despite these very bleak events, the international community began to rally and started to create a new generation of laws and policies, which for the first time in decades started to make progress in confronting the difficulties at hand.

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