Environmental Justice and International Grievance Mechanisms
Grievance mechanisms have proliferated globally as a means of recourse for harm from international development projects. Yet there is no evidence that communities and ecosystems are better off. Driven by a theory of environmental justice, a content analysis of 821 complaints (1994-2016) of six multilateral development banks grievance mechanisms will identify complainants’ grievances and whether they were accepted for mediation or investigation. To go beyond the limitations of public documents, case studies of communities that engaged in mediation or investigation will be conducted to identify whether justice was served. The results provide insight into the utility of grievance mechanisms for environmental justice.
Project title: Can international grievance mechanisms deliver environmental justice?
Project Aims:
International development financiers like the World Bank provide loans to developing countries for development projects. Despite numerous safeguards, the implementation of infrastructure, extractive, and energy projects have significant consequences for local communities and ecosystems. For 25 years the World Bank has had its Inspection Panel to provide recourse for grievances from project affected communities. Yet physical violence, loss of property and livelihoods, and harmful impacts on indigenous peoples continue to occur as a result of projects financed by the Multilateral Development Banks. In 2017 the Goma community in the Democratic Republic of Congo suffered all of these problems as a result of a World Bank financed project, leading to a claim to the Inspection Panel. While it is too soon to tell for the Goma community, overall, we still do not know if the grievance mechanisms contribute to remedies for people suffering environmental and social harm.
This project engages with a larger question of whether environmental justice for communities can be achieved through international grievance mechanisms by building on International Relations debates over the construction, institutionalisation, and implementation of accountability for international development financiers through grievance mechanisms.
To this end, the project addresses three core questions:
How can the debate over the effectiveness of international grievance mechanisms be understood within the framework of tackling environmental injustice?
Are the mediation or compliance investigation processes of the grievance mechanisms responsive to claimants’ concerns?
Are there broader benefits from international grievance mechanisms for international development effectiveness?
Book in press!: Environmental Recourse at the Multilateral Development Banks (CUP, 2020).
This book locates the activities of the Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs) of the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) within the broader literature on International Grievance Mechanisms and whether they can be used to achieve procedural environmental rights and the rights of nature. International Grievance Mechanisms are increasingly common means to attempt to rectify harm as a result of international interventions in developing countries by states, corporations, international organisations, and industry bodies including multi-stakeholder initiatives. This book analyses the different standards International Grievance Mechanisms use to provide access to justice, most notably the United Nations Guiding Principles and the environmental and social protection standards promulgated first by the World Bank. The book identifies that three procedural environmental rights are evident within the standards: access to information, access to participation, and access to justice in environmental matters, in addition to referencing specific environmental protections. This matters because claimants seek recourse for failures to uphold their procedural environmental rights: a lack of access to information and a lack of access to participation. They also seek recourse for the rights of nature independent of their reliance on it. This is evidenced by a content analysis of 394 publicly available original grievance claims submitted to the IAMs up to the end of 2018. The chapters examine how the IAMs provide access to justice in environmental matters through two processes: ‘problem solving’ which is a form of alternative dispute resolution, and ‘compliance investigations’ that identify whether the harm resulted from the acts or omissions of the MDBs. Using a database of 1,052 claims to the IAMs over the course of their existence (Park 2019), the chapters detail how they provide recourse for environmental and social harm within the confines of international development financing.
Listen to my keynote for the Ninth International Workshop on Advances in Cleaner Production (IWACP): “Addressing Environmental and Social Harm through the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the Multilateral Development Banks,” www.advancesincleanerproduction.net