International investment agreements (“IIAs”) provide enforceable protections to foreign investors based on the premise that enforceable investor protections will stimulate greater foreign investment flows, which, in turn, are assumed to promote development. However, as understandings of both...

The extractive industries (EI) are at a critical juncture. A period of significant commodity price volatility is intersecting with the global energy transition and, more recently, the major social, political, and economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic – a combination of forces...

This paper examines the trade-off between resource intensive development and preservation of natural resources in the context of groundwater. Use of public schemes that expand groundwater irrigation to mitigate poverty is challenged as being unsustainable, especially when water tables around the...

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reach their end date in 2015, negotiations are ramping up at the United Nations for the establishment of a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs, to be announced in September this year, will replace the MDGs and serve as a universal...

In den Diskussionen über die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik nach 2013 nimmt die Honorierung nicht marktgängiger gesellschaftlicher Leistungen der Landwirtschaft eine zentrale Rolle ein. Unterschiedliche Ansichten bestehen darüber, was unter diesen Leistungen genau zu verstehen ist und wie sie...

This paper calculates and analyzes key indicators from Bolivia's Green National Accounts during the period 1990 - 2015, which covers an entire Commodity Super Cycle. The first half includes the Great Commodities Depression while the second half of the period is characterized by an unprecedented...

This text for discussion is part of a research aimed to understand the institutional constraints to the implementation of investment in infrastructure in contemporary Brazil and to propose public policy improvement. The rationale for their implementation is that there is evidence that indicate...

The Rural Development Regulation (RDR) within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as an exemplary manifestation of the New Rural Development Paradigm, has achieved significant results. Nevertheless, it has increasingly become liable to institutional complexity and central control in an...

Nature conservation scientists and practitioners have voiced the concern that a conservation discourse based on economic arguments and monetary valuation may undermine conservation efforts by eroding ("crowding out") the influence of other arguments for nature conservation. This paper presents...

Understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy. From a sustainability perspective, economic valuation should not only seek to determine willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources, but should...