Environmental Recourse At The Multilateral Development Banks

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.

The good hegemon : demanding accountability as justice for the multilateral development banks -- US norm entrepreneurship and the MDBs -- US hegemony for what? From accountability as control to accountability as justice for the MDBs -- Bank resistance to institutionalising accountability as justice -- Accountability as justice in practice : challenging the banks? -- Changing the banks and strengthening accountability as justice? -- Norm diffusion within the MDBs and insights beyond the banks.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are increasingly expected to address environmental issues in their economic development lending. Yet the banks have been accused of failing to implement their own environmental policies, thereby contributing to environmental degradation in borrowing countries. In this book Tamar Gutner analyzes the environmental policies of three MDBs: the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the European Investment Bank. She compares their performance in Central and Eastern Europe, where the need for economic and environmental reform has been particularly urgent, and where these MDBs are among the largest donors. Gutner finds many obstacles to efforts to "green" the three banks, most notably a mismatch between the environmental mandates and existing patterns of institutional design and incentives. The depth and scope of the banks' green activities reflect the degree of shareholder commitment to environmental issues and how demand-driven the MDB is designed to be. Surprisingly, the World Bank, the most scrutinized and criticized of the three MDBs, has been rather more responsive than its counterparts to its environmental mandate in the region. The discussion is framed by larger explorations of the behavior of international organizations and the sources of their innovation and inertia in addressing new policy issues. Gutner demonstrates the need to examine the impact of different stages of the policy process on new mandates and to incorporate both political and institutional variables when developing theories about the behavior of international institutions.