Sustainable development and neo-liberal globalisation in international politics : competing paradigms defining the waste management problem

The unsustainable production and consumption patterns leading to a problem with waste management require technical and administrative solution on a local, regional or national level. Efforts may be challenged by processes of globalisation and international politics. The author discusses the contradiction between the United Nation’s focus on sustainable development and the World Trade Organization’s emphasis on economic growth and trade liberalisation, and addresses the question whether development will become more unsustainable when current development paradigms are not changed