Environmental Recourse at the Multilateral Development Banks

Examines international grievance mechanisms for those suffering environmental/social harm resulting from multilateral development financing.

Susan Park (Author)

9781108702348, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 December 2020

75 pages
15 x 23 x 0.6 cm, 0.16 kg

Global governance now provides people with recourse for harm through International Grievance Mechanisms, such as the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the Multilateral Development Banks. Yet little is known about how such mechanisms work. This Element examines how IGMs provide recourse for infringements of three procedural environmental rights: access to information, access to participation, and access to justice in environmental matters, as well as environmental protections drawn from the United Nations Guiding Principles and the World Bank's protection standards. A content analysis of 394 original IAM claims details how people invoke these rights. The sections then unpack how the IAMs provide community engagement through 'problem solving', and 'compliance investigations' that identify whether the harm resulted from the MDBs. Using a database of all known submissions to the IAMs (1,052 claims from 1994 to mid-2019), this Element demonstrate how the IAMs enable people to air their grievances, without necessarily solving their problems.

1. International recourse for environmental and social harm
2. International grievance mechanisms and procedural environmental rights
3. Access to justice in environmental matters through the problem solving practices of the independent accountability mechanisms of the MDBs
4. Access to justice in environmental matters through the compliance investigations of the independent accountability mechanisms of the MDBs
5. Providing effective international recourse for environmental and social harm.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Climate change [RNPG], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], Urban economics [KCU], Environmental economics [KCN], Geopolitics [JPSL], Politics & government [JP]