Sustainability

IPE and sustainability have co-evolved over the past 40 years under the twin pressures of ever-deepening neoliberal globalisation and environmental degradation. Globalisation has seen the massive expansion in international trade, investment and finance and an associated rise in international organizations, multinational corporations (MNCs) and civil society organisations. In conjunction with the development and spread of information and communications technologies, the global political economy has transnationalised giving rise to new forms of public, private and hybrid governance. Globalisation has been associated, however, with high levels of tropical deforestation, fisheries depletion, biodiversity loss and global warming. From a social justice perspective, deep-seated inequalities remain within and between countries in the Anthropocene (Biermann et al 2012), with coefficients of inequality now greater than they were at the outset of the globalisation push (Picketty 2014).