The Sustainable Development Goals viewed through Gross National Happiness,Ubuntu, and Buen Vivir

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a normative (non-binding) global international environmental agreement...     

Breaking the mold: a new type of multilateral sustainable development negotiation

Participants in the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were reminded time and again that there is no model for the process to develop the SDGs. They resolved to not repeat the closed process used to develop the Millennium Development Goals, but the OWG began work when failures to reach consensus and fatigue with multilateral environmental negotiations dominated delegates’ minds, rather than examples of successfully negotiated outcomes. The OWG Co-Chairs were faced with the daunting task of guiding delegates’ efforts to develop a proposed set of crisp SDGs and targets that all could agree to, and thus, had to accomplish the following goals: (1) reduce delegation rigidity, both of individual Member States and within coalitions; (2) maximize the sense of participation, transparency, and ownership to get the most buy-in at the end; and (3) develop a sense of trust that would change the relationship between Member States. To do this, the OWG Co-Chairs broke the mold of UN multilateral negotiations that Member States and observers had become familiar with and created a different approach. This article examines how the OWG accomplished these goals and overcame the shortcomings of other multilateral negotiating processes on sustainable development to produce a widely supported consensus outcome at a time when governments have struggled to achieve agreement in many multilateral negotiation tracks.     

The rule of law and sustainable development

This paper examines the relationship between the rule of law and sustainable development. It does so from the perspective of the rule of law as a development end, and as a means to sustainable development. It offers a model for conceptualising and measuring the rule of law, including the two global indicators for SDG Target 16.3. It explores the wider relationship between the rule of law and other Sustainable Development Goals, and proposes a thematic approach to better understanding the associations between legal frameworks and development outcomes.     

Sustainability labelling as a tool for reporting the sustainable development impacts of climate actions relevant to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement

The architecture of global carbon markets has changed significantly since the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals were both agreed in 2015. Voluntary, international cooperative approaches established in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allow Parties to work together to achieve the targets set out in their respective Nationally Determined Contributions to limit global warming to an increase below 1.5–2 °C. In Article 6.4, a sustainable mitigation mechanism is established for which rules, modalities and procedures will be developed internationally considering the experience and lessons learned from existing mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and its Sustainable Development (SD) Tool. Historically the issue of making integrated assessments of sustainable development and mitigation actions has been politically and methodologically controversial for many reasons: developing countries fear that an international definition of SD will interfere with their sovereignty and therefore their ability to define their own development pathways; players in the carbon market fear that markets can only handle one objective, namely mitigation outcomes; and sustainable development is regarded as too complex and costly to be measured and quantified. In an effort to address these concerns, the article proposes a new methodology for the sustainability labelling of climate mitigation actions relevant to Article 6 approaches. The article draws on an application of the CDM SD tool to analyse 2098 Component Programme Activities that had entered the CDM Pipeline by January 2017. The article demonstrates that assessment of the sustainable development benefits of climate actions can be graded and labelled based on the analysis of qualitative data, which is less costly than applying a quantitative approach.

     

A Strategic Approach to Regulating Unacceptable Forms of Work

Upgrading low‐waged and insecure work is central to contemporary labour and development initiatives, from the UN Sustainable Development Goals to the United Kingdom ‘Taylor Review’. The International Labour Organization's notion of unacceptable forms of work (UFW) is a crucial contribution. Yet the regulatory frameworks that can effectively address UFW are unclear. This article builds on a novel framework ‐ the Multidimensional Model of UFW. Drawing on theoretical literatures at the frontline of regulation scholarship, it proposes a strategic approach to UFW regulation that supports development, acknowledges the constrained resources of low‐income countries, and targets expansive and sustainable effects. Two key concepts are identified: points of leverage and institutional dynamism. Globally‐prominent regulatory frameworks are assessed as a starting point for mapping the strategic approach: the Mathadi Act of Maharashtra, India; Uruguayan domestic work legislation; minimum wages in the global North and South; and United Kingdom regulation of ‘zero‐hours contracts’.     

Commercial and company law and sustainable development

This paper reviews key areas of commercial and company law that are relevant to sustainable development. It includes an overview of international and regional frameworks, and examines good practice in national laws in the specific areas of company law, securities law and corporate insolvency. It does so with a view to providing conclusions and recommendations that represent a starting point for Commonwealth member countries when engaging with law reform and strengthening in the area of commercial law. The recommendations aim, in particular, at supporting law reform that enables commercial law frameworks to make a clear contribution to attainment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

可持续发展法律初探

文章针对法学界将可持续发展法律仅仅局限于环境法或从属于经济法的观点 ,提出理论争鸣 ,认为可持续发展法律是指 ,符合可持续发展战略的要求 ,适用于可持续发展时期的法律制度。同时 ,文章还对可持续发展法律的生态性、代际性、协调性、超前性、综合性等特征 ,以及可持续发展法律的体系进行了深入的探讨。     

Achieving the 1.5 °C objective: just implementation through a right to (sustainable) development approach

Achieving the 1.5 °C objective of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in a just manner requires equitably sharing the responsibilities and rights that relate to this objective. This paper examines how international law concerning the Right to Promote (Sustainable) Development can contribute to determining what would be a “just” approach to achieving the 1.5 °C objective. This entails building on both the Right to Development (RtD) and the Right to Promote Sustainable Development (RtPSD). The RtD is a central notion within international human rights law and the RtPSD has been adopted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Based on a literature review and legal analysis, we argue that, although the two Rights are prima facie different, in the context of the unanimously adopted Agenda 2030, including the SDGs, they partly complement and partly merge with each other. Together they provide a framework for assessing how a just transition towards a low greenhouse gas development process could be achieved and what this means for phasing out fossil fuels especially in the context of prospective oil producing countries.     

Introduction: Global Crime Today

International relations scholars and practitioners alike have paid increasing attention to how malevolent non-state actors like terror groups and transnational criminal organisations challenge the state and otherwise threaten secure and stable human relations. Scholars and experts have yet to agree on the existence, nature and scope of enduring alliances (or a nexus) between crime and terror groups. In this article, the author wades into the debate and offers a new perspective using an analytical framework rooted in James Rosenau's postinternationalist paradigm. Drawing on research gathered through a recently-completed comparative study of the crime-terror nexus, the article notes that two forms of the crime-terror nexus exist. Such bifurcation eclipses the more parsimonious view that criminals and terrorists only engage in marriages of convenience to further their methods but their motives maintain long-term separation. The articles concludes with suggestions on how to develop state policies that address all forms of the crime-terror nexus.     

The Sustainable Development Goals and REDD+: assessing institutional interactions and the pursuit of synergies

This paper analyzes potential synergies between two recent sustainable development initiatives, namely the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), a climate mitigation mechanism negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The paper elaborates a conceptual framework based on institutional interactions and distinguishes core, complementary, and supplementary synergies that may be realized between the SDGs and REDD+. Potential synergies are analyzed at the global level, as well as within two national-level contexts: Indonesia, with its long-standing REDD+ programme, and Myanmar, which is in the early stages of implementing REDD+. Both are now also engaging nationally with the SDG implementation process. Our research draws on literature review and document analysis, direct observations of global policy processes relating to REDD+ and SDGs, as well as extensive engagement (of one author) at national level in Indonesia and Myanmar. Our analysis reveals that there are currently significant opportunities to pursue synergies in the implementation of these international initiatives at the national level, although pro-active interaction management is necessary, especially to achieve complementary synergies.     

Resuscitation of a Phantom? On Robert Alexy’s Latest Attempt to Save His Concept of Principle

This paper is my contribution to round three of a longstanding debate between Robert Alexy and me about the principles theory’s concept of principle. In the first round, Alexy—bucking tradition—proposed a nongradualist distinction between rules and principles that divided the ontology of norms into two categorically distinct norm‐types. He connected this norm‐theoretical analysis with a theory of fundamental rights according to which such rights had to be understood as principles and thus interpreted as optimization requirements. In the first round I objected to the norm‐theoretical assumptions and questioned the doctrinal merit of the principles theory approach. Unlike Alexy, I saw no merit in his notion of principle over and above optimization requirements, which by that time Alexy, too, regarded as rules. In round two, Alexy defended his concept of principle by taking refuge in the notion of an ideal ought, which he defined as a command to be optimized. In this second round, I criticized the new attempt to save his view of principles on the ground that the norms Alexy had in mind optimized not commands but states of affairs and thus were ordinary norms or rules according to the misguided taxonomy of the principles theory. Alexy opened round three of our exchange by admitting that my critique of round two was justified and that he had erred in identifying principles as ideal commands to be optimized. He now proposes an index theory of principles. In the paper, I recapitulate the motive and the main points of our debate and scrutinize Alexy’s latest innovation.     

Are older deafblind people being left behind? A narrative review of literature on deafblindness through the lens of the United Nations Principles for Older People

Underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRDP), Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the international goal to ‘leave no one behind’. However, the World Federation of the Deafblind have argued that deafblind people have been excluded from international welfare and disability development programmes. Despite making up the majority of the deafblind population, it appears that older deafblind people are particularly invisible. The paper builds on the earlier work of others, which translated the UN Principles for Older Persons into the language of older visually impaired adults, by using them here as the lens for a narrative review of the literature on older deafblind people. It argues that existing research demonstrates that older deafblind people are not only being ‘left behind’ in benefitting from implementation of the UN Principles, but also that the focus of the UN Principles themselves risks maintaining or enhancing their exclusion. Further research and policy development with older deafblind people is required to ensure that international and national social welfare policies and provision are not nugatory to the older deafblind population.     

Labour Law in a Service World

Drawing on the genealogy of the theoretical thought about services in economic and geographical economic literature, I argue in this article that in today's Service World it is highly important to develop an integrated approach that sees both consumption and production as impacting work relationships within legal thought. The current structure of labour law, which is based on the Fordist model of employment, is centred mainly on the production side, thus creating an incongruity between labour law and services. I propose thinking about work relations through a new framework –‘the nexus of service work’– that incorporates consumerism into the legal thought of work relationships, detaching it from the Fordist model of employment to achieve a more attuned approach to today's Service World.     

Global Sustainable Development Governance: Institutional Challenges from a Theoretical Perspective

This paper submits that efforts to achieve sustainable development at global level call for, inter alia, institutional reform. It argues that there is no optimal institutional design, and that different schools of thought have different perspectives of the future. It briefly presents the history of institutional evolution in the area of sustainable development up to the latest developments in the context of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development. This history sets the context for the rest of the discussions. It then presents a taxonomy of the various options suggested in the literature for improving the institutional structure of the United Nations in order to achieve sustainable development. This paper critically examines the feasibility of these options from the perspective of the different schools of thought in international relations theory. It argues that from the point of view of idealistic supranationalists, a hierarchic supranational environment and/or development organisation should be established to integrate and coordinate activities in the UN in order to promote sustainable development governance. It argues that from a realist/neo-realist and neo-liberal institutionalist approach, coordination, whether hierarchical or horizontal, is doomed to failure. From a historical materialist approach all efforts at institutional design are likely to lead to asymmetrical results reflecting global power relations. This paper concludes with a speculative argument that institutional design is not a question of the best architectural option, but calls for multiple pathways including strengthening of individual organisations, promoting the progressive development of the law of sustainable development, developing a high level advisory body to advise the Secretary General, promoting the concept of the decentralised network organisation and possibly finding ways to cluster regimes. The effectiveness of these multiple efforts are dependent on the support of civil society. In order for sustainable development to take the key concerns of developing countries into account, it is necessary that institutions are able to represent the variety of views of their members and that countries develop good policies domestically.     

The Organized Irresponsibility Principle and Risk Arbitrage

In an age of accelerating wealth at the very top and accelerating risks at the bottom, there is a clear disjunction between the flow of social benefits and social damages produced by different actors and their share of these respective benefits and damages. Yet, the specific processes that generate the dualization of tracks of accumulation of rewards or accumulation of risks and precarity are still up for debate. In tackling this dual process in a way that is attuned to the critical contribution of contemporary forms of the law to this uneven accumulation of wealth and of risks, this paper focuses on organized irresponsibility—where individuals can cumulatively contribute to risks, but avoid individual culpability—and how relations of organized irresponsibility provide extensive opportunities for risk arbitrage. Risk arbitrage is correspondingly a process where actors, whether it be individuals or larger organizations, can produce social risk, appropriate benefit from these risks, and disproportionately avoid the consequences of the risks so as to benefit from the overall “cycle of reward and risk”—even if society as a whole is worse off. The paper identifies organized irresponsibility as fundamentally undergirded by mismatches between existing configurations of law and the existing complexity of the processes of the production of social goods and risks. This paper proceeds to show how gaps in the law enable the organized irresponsibility principle—that given a level of risk production, the greater the number of actors involved and the greater complexity between causes and the risk’s impacts, the less overall culpability that tends to be assigned. It then shows how the organized irresponsibility principle enables relationships of risk arbitrage that intensify contemporary risk and inequality.     

排污费改税法律制度探讨

我国的排污收费制度已经不适应新世纪可持续发展的要求,如何利用税收来促进环保工作,建立环境税收法律制度,在费改税的大潮中,将排污费改为排污税,已成为当前我国面临的新课题。在分析排污收费制度现状的基础上,结合国外排污税征收的实践,对我国建立排污税法律制度进行探讨。     

Security, Social Control, Democracy and Migration within the 'Constitution' of the EU

Abstract:  Moving from Michel Foucault's criticism, in the mid-1970s, of a 'theory of the State', this paper addresses the relevance—for the current process of making the 'Constitution' of the European Union—of the obsolescence of the state concept and the emergence instead, in the course of the twentieth-century, of an idea of 'social control' as a way to represent conditions for social order within the new mass democratic society. Such conditions, and the theory thereof, first developed in North America, and then increasingly in Europe after World War II and especially since the 1970s. From such a comparative-historical perspective, the paper then tries to shed light on the debate that was ignited by Dieter Grimm on the very possibility of a 'democratic constitutionalisation' of Europe. The connections between language, social control, and a (democratic) European constitution are then discussed, and specific attention is given to the nexus that has been constructed in today's Europe between migration, criminalisation and security, as a sort of test bench of those connections.     

Obstacles to preserving precaution and equity in global hazardous waste regulation: an analysis of contested knowledge in the Basel Convention

The Basel Convention is regaining attention for the potential entry into force of the heretofore stalled Ban Amendment. In this paper, we draw parallels between the current debate surrounding the Ban Amendment and contestations that occurred in the early years of the Basel Convention’s Technical Working Group (TWG) over defining ‘hazardousness.’ Like the present debate, TWG deliberations involved a contestation between two divergent discourses concerning how hazardous wastes should be regulated—as ideally managed versus actually managed in the global South. Scholars have shown how the TWG is a site for industry to press for a definition of hazardousness favorable to their economic interests. However, explorations of the specific processes by which this occurred—particularly, how a framework for defining hazardousness that privileges private technical expertise over concerns of precaution and equity was successfully institutionalized within the TWG—have yet to be completed. We show that it is important to reexamine this debate today in order to better understand current Basel Convention developments.     

Differentiation or federalisation: Which democracy for the future of Europe?

Differentiation has become a central topic of debate in the EU. Generally, it is considered a positive device for advancing integration in crucial policies, letting the unwilling states opt out from the new regimes. However, the debate has not sufficiently acknowledged that policy differentiation has been made possible by governance differentiation. It was the 1992 Maastricht Treaty's decision to inaugurate an intergovernmental regime for core state power policies, distinct from the supranational regime regulating single market policies, that allowed differentiation to flourish. Differentiation and intergovernmentalism are thus inter-connected. During multiple crises of the last decade, intergovernmental governance has shown its undemocratic effects, thus soliciting a critical reappraisal of the differentiation logic. The federalisation of the EU appears a more promising alternative strategy for advancing integration and, at the same time, meeting the democratic expectations of the EU.     

Combatting institutional corruption: The policy-centered approach

How can institutional corruption be combatted? While recent years have seen a growth in anti-corruption literature, examples of countries rooting out systemic corruption remain few. The lack of success stories has sparked an academic debate about the theoretical foundations of anti-corruption frameworks: primarily between proponents of the principal-agent framework and those seeing systemic corruption as the result of collective-action problems. Through an analysis of current principal-agent and collective action anti-corruption literature, this article adds two additional arguments to the debate: (a) the need to specify what one talks about when talking about systemic corruption and (b) the necessity to move beyond the principal-agent versus collective action frameworks dichotomy towards a policy-centered approach for how to combat institutional corruption. Having outlined how institutional corruption can be seen as one type of systemic corruption, this article shows how a policy-centered approach such as strengthening the appearance standard through an independent public commission can address theoretical mechanisms emphasized in each anti-corruption framework–thus arguing that the frameworks complement rather than rival each other. The article ends by arguing for an anti-corruption discourse acknowledging that a multifaceted problem such as corruption requires multiple frameworks rather than attempts for silver-bullet explanations.