The International Political Economy of the Environment

Abstract

In spite of assertions of a ‘common future’ (the title of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development) and the claims in Agenda 21 about a ‘global partnership for sustainable development’, the international political economy of the environment is shaped by differences over how that common future is to be defined, what principles should inform it and what strategies should be adopted to achieve it. Those issues have been touched upon in earlier chapters but they are given greater attention here and in Chapter 8. This chapter begins with an analysis of sustainable development, a concept which has become a defining motif of contemporary environmental politics or what some prefer to think of as a ‘privileged narrative’ (Bourke and Meppem, cited in Hobson, 2002, p. 97). The concept is often deployed as if its meaning is undisputed. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Disputes over sustainable development and the ‘common agenda’ are almost always couched, at some point, in terms of a divide between the industrialized and richer countries of the North and the developing, usually poorer countries of the South. Tensions arise not only over what principles should inform and manage the relationship between rich and poor countries but over how those principles should be put into practice. Those tensions and principles are explored in the second part of this chapter.