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International Business and the Environment

Overview

Module description

This module will enable you to analyse the way in which law’s engagement with systems of capital accumulation impacts on the natural world. It will provide you with historical and theoretical perspectives that draw on the work of Arrighi, Marx, Polanyi, Hobsbawm, Latour, Viveiros de Castro, Escobar and the non-Marxist positioning of Amerindian and other Indigenous peoples. These perspectives will be located within the specific context of current issues that raise particular concerns about the way in which law mediates or mandates the relationship between capital accumulation and the environment, including the impact of the Bretton Woods system, the WTO and access to biological resources, international investment law and investor-state dispute settlement, and the regulation of the multinational corporate sector.

Indicative module syllabus

  • Historical Perspectives: capitalism, industrialization and the extractive industries
  • Theoretical Perspectives on the Relationship between the Rise of Capitalism and the Exploitation of the Natural World: Marx, value and the environment
  • Theoretical Perspectives on the Relationship between the Rise of Capitalism and the Exploitation of the Natural World: nature and the machine question
  • Native Constitutionalism and the Inter-American Court: nature rights, post-development and the critique of extractivism
  • The Role of Natural Resources: case study on access to water in post-colonial perspective
  • The Impact of the Bretton Woods Institutions on the Protection of the Environment: legal techniques for enabling global capital accumulation
  • Case Study on Transnational Business and the Environment I: the WTO, intellectual property and access to biological resources
  • Case Study on Transnational Business and the Environment II: international investment law and Investor State Dispute Settlement
  • Case Study on Transnational Business and the Environment III: greening or greenwashing of multinational corporations?

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • understand how the political economy of the relationship between law and capitalism impacts on the environment
  • analyse a range of historical and theoretical perspectives that address the political economy of the relationship between law, international business and the environment
  • locate significant points of intersection between capitalism, post-colonialism and international law
  • critique the role and environmental impact of international law’s promotion of capital accumulation and the international competition for mobile capital
  • apply historical and theoretical perspectives to international business practices with a view to examining their environmental sustainability.