Neoliberalism and Nature : the case of the WTO
- Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, November 2003
Political pressures exerted by environmental movements have forced governemnts otherside sommited to neoliberal policies to find reconciliatory policy positions between two contradictory political imperatives - economic growth and environmental protection. This article explores some ideological means of reconciliation, as with notions of sustainable development, wich appear to bridge the impassable divide, and some of the institutional means for dealing with contradiction, as mith the displacement of political power upward, away from elected national governments and toward international agreements and nonelected global governance institutions. Through these two strategic maneuvers, the authors argue, environmental concern has been ideologically and institutionally incorporated into the global neoliberal hegemony of the late twentieth century. The global capitalist economy can grow, if not with clear environmental conscience, then with one effectively assuaged. This process of neoliberal deflection is illustrated using the case of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organizations