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Globalization is part of a contemporary trend toward adopting a planetary scale as a means of emancipation from a primarily national representation of issues. Chapter 8 focuses on how mountains came to be identified as a global issue. The introduction of the mountain into organizations and international conferences has been a major innovation of the last twenty years. It was the result of a reconfiguration of stakeholders: the initiative fell to a heterogeneous group of individuals, organizations, and institutions that included scientists, national administrations, and various international organizations. It proceeded to recompose the levels of analysis and recommendation and called for a redefinition of the category of the mountain and of the objects that compose it. This global recognition of mountain which led to significant initiatives had to overcome the diversity of environmental, socioeconomic, and political situations of the various mountain ranges throughout the world. Therefore, the still-decisive weight of the actors at intermediate levels and the extreme diversity of mountain situations throughout the world require a multiscalar approach to each of the problems and a multi-level approach to the modalities for solving them.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and Agenda 21, adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992, are two instruments quite distinct in their legal nature and scope, and yet they are complementary to one another. While UNCLOS is an international treaty which sets forth rights and obligations of states in the uses of the seas and oceans, management of their resources, and protection and preservation of the marine environment, Agenda 21, including its Chapter 17 on the protection, rational use, and development of the living resources in marine and coastal areas, is an instrument that lacks for in international law. This chapter discusses the interfaces between UNCLOS and Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 and its effects, and the protection of the marine environment from land-based and sea-based activities.

This chapter examines the intersection of urban planning and political culture. Traditionalistic political culture, with its roots in Carolina, was influenced in its development by decentralized, rural settlement patterns. Resistance to urbanization and the persistence of an urban/rural divide in American politics are by-products of conflicts among political cultures. The new politics of the Tea Party and far-right conservatism opposes many urban planning initiatives as inconsistent with “first principles” on which the nation was founded. The principles of “sustainable development,” in particular, are challenged by traditionalistic political culture. However, modern principles of “sustainable development” are shown to have emerged early in the nation’s history and were part of Locke’s settlement plan for Carolina.

This chapter explores the origins of the concept of sustainable consumption in global policy circles in the 1990s and its subsequent evolution in academia, business, civil society, and policy. It describes how academic research increasingly critiqued the understanding of consumption as an individual act and instead conceptualized it as a systemic issue deeply embedded in the economy, culture, and infrastructure, and how it is structured by life-event decisions like buying a house. It describes how the ecologically-inspired critique of consumption merged with the much older social critique of consumerism going back to Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and the Frankfurt, School and discusses the emergence of alternatives and possible pathways to systemic change. The concept of sustainable consumption has influenced policies in the European Union, on the level of cities, and organizations like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the concept has acquired new meanings spurred by the economic crisis and, in the US, the demise of the “American Dream”. The chapter concludes by discussing the concept’s ambiguities and possible futures.

This chapter addresses and discusses the international policy and soft law rationales that exist for states to include sustainable development concerns in their trade and investment treaties. First, it discusses reasons why the negative impacts of trade liberalization should not just be left to roll downhill onto the fragile ecosystems and vulnerable populations of developing states, using indications from the 1972 Conference on Human Environment (UNCHE), the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) deliberations, the 1997 General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and the 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development (UN CSD) to support this argument, and it specifically analyses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as they frame the new consensus. It then goes on to discuss how these soft laws, while not legally binding, constitute a legitimate expectation that States will promote sustainable development in their trade and investment treaties. It finds that there is a convincing international policy rationale for States to undertake measures to prevent, or at least mitigate, the environment and social development impacts of trade and investment agreements, addressing the main tensions identified in this volume.

This chapter begins by discussing the potential negative effects of trade on sustainable development, and the changes in the rules of trade and investment regimes that could lead to these negative impacts. It also discusses the rise of impact assessment processes, which States, regions and international organizations have begun to commission, to model and analyse the potential environmental and social/human rights impacts of trade and investment liberalization. It introduces the new generation of regional and bilateral trade and investment treaties being negotiated, and the need to evaluate how States are addressing sustainability concerns that emerge from impact assessments of these treaties. It also provides a working definition of ‘sustainable development’ and uncovers the circumstances and provisions under which international economic law levers are more likely to foster sustainable development, as well as the most effective interpretive weight for them. Finally, it highlights the utility of insights on international economic law and sustainability.

This chapter discusses and analyses the history of development and environment concerns, in an international trade context, and in doing so, builds a timeline (between 1947 and 1994) which traces the development of conversations and debates around these issues at the international level. It begins by discussing the context and time period within which development concerns became part of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) debate, and then proceeds to a discussion of the sources of conversations around environmental concerns. It concludes by discussing how at the start of the new World Trade Organization (WTO) (in 1994), tensions existed between constituencies interested in trade-led economic growth, constituencies seeking trade to support development and countries wishing to make links between trade and the environment.

In this chapter, it is argued that in the 2001 Doha Declaration launching the new trade negotiations and in subsequent dispute settlement decisions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) member States and dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) have made small steps to integrate social and environmental considerations into the work of the WTO, but progress is limited. In particular, certain exemptions have been expanded and clarified (more through subsequent disputes than through negotiations), States have agreed on frameworks for negotiations that could both liberalize trade in environmental goods and services and reduce subsidies that encourage over-fishing, and potentially also encourage greater cooperation on trade-related environment and social development challenges. Influential WTO disputes are canvassed, and concerns with regards to process and production methods (PPMs) and related technology transfer opportunities are discussed briefly. It is also demonstrated that these steps, as critiqued in legal scholarship, reveal real limits to the WTO’s progress.