Global environmental sustainability: Intragenerational equity and conceptions of justice in multilateral environmental regimes

With specific focus on two environmental regimes (the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and the Climate Change Convention), this paper seeks to indicate the prospects and limitations of the aspirations for distributive justice by the political South within the context of sustainability in general, and the institutions for global environmental governance in particular. It is argued that while these aspirations have produced important normative shifts in the rule-structure of global environmental management, they have not proved momentous enough to generate policies outside of what the prevailing neoliberal socio-economic regime might permit. Hence, although the texts of global environmental agreements accommodate concepts that express egalitarian notions of justice, core policies remain firmly rooted in market-based neoliberal interpretations of justice, which mainly serve to sustain the status quo.     

Neoliberalism and water reforms in western India: Commercialization, self-sufficiency, and regulatory bodies

This paper deals with the changes brought about by the ‘reforms’ in water currently under way in many parts of the world. Three particular reforms in the state of Maharashtra in western India are discussed - the commercialization of a parastatal body, the concept of self-sufficiency as it plays out in the context of urban local bodies, and the working of the regulatory body in water. The analysis of these reforms shows how, in common with neoliberal projects elsewhere, changes in institutional practices are resulting in changes in subjectivities, foreclosing alternatives, and leading to attempts to ‘depoliticize’ the water arena. At the same time, there are differences between the regulatory experience of Maharashtra and regulation in other locales, which offers insights into how neoliberalism works in a context where water reforms have emerged relatively late.