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Multilateral Development Banks, Environmental Impact Assessments and Nongovernmental Organizations in American Foreign Policy
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Abstract
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The community of non-governmental organizations has emerged, particularly during the last decade, as an important actor in international environmental relations. NGOs have built public awareness about the environment through conferences and other public activities. More important from the point of view of international relations are their activities aimed at shaping international institutions and international law. In Chapter 8, Morten BÈûås addresses this issue by looking at NGOs in the United States and their involvement in congressional hearings on multilateral development bank (MDB) activity. BÈûås shows how this involvement led to a campaign aimed at making it impossible for U.S. Executive Directors in MDBs to support projects that could have a major impact on the environment unless an environmental impact assessment (EIA) was made available at least 120 days before the project. The NGO campaign culminated with the Pelosi-amendment, which made an EIA in advance of MDB board consideration of projects a requirement for U.S. support. Little more than a year after what originally started as a national campaign in the United States, this procedure was turned into de facto international law, since all MDBs made an EIA requirement their standard operating procedure. The chapter documents this process to highlight the transnationalization of U.S. environmental policies, specifically the internationalization of the Pelosi-amendment. BÈûås also asks the question: What right do interest-based organizations, specifically American NGOs, have to take decisions that affect not only their domestic constituencies, but also people in Africa, Asia and Latin-America?
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