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PLAID on the Cover of Environment Magazine

January/February 2009 | "Has Foreign Aid Been Greened" By J. Timmons Roberts, Bradley Parks, Michael Tierney, and Robert Hicks

Since the first major international conference on environment and development in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, environmentalists, voters, and policymakers in the developed world have faced a vexing dilemma: with some of the richest stores of biodiversity, natural resources, and carbon located in developing countries, the greatest potential for damage to the global environment resides in places outside the sovereign control of the countries most able, financially speaking, to prevent it...

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Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance

By Robert L. Hicks, Bradley C. Parks, J. Timmons Roberts, Michael J. Tierney

Every year, billions of dollars of environmental aid flow from the rich governments of the North to the poor governments of the South. Why do donors provide this aid? What do they seek to achieve? How effective is the aid given? And does it always go to the places of greatest environmental need? All of these questions and many more are addressed in this groundbreaking text, which is based on the authors' work compiling the most comprehensive dataset of foreign aid ever assembled. Order Now

Fueling Injustice: Globalization, the Ecological Debt, and Confronting Responsibility for Climate Change

By Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

The globalization of economic production fundamentally reshapes how a 'fair' solution to the climate change problem must be forged. Emissions are increasing sharply in developing countries as wealthy nations 'offshore' the energy- and natural resource-intensive stages of production. We review a new and relatively under-utilized theory of 'ecologically unequal exchange' and apply it to the case of climate change. We describe four distinct principles that have been proposed to assign responsibility for carbon emissions, discuss their inadequacies, and briefly lay out some 'hybrid' proposals currently under consideration. We suggest combining hybrid proposals with environmental aid packages that help poorer nations transition from carbon-intensive pathways of development to more climate-friendly development trajectories, using remuneration from the so-called 'ecological debt'. In the context of deadlock over a completely inadequate Kyoto Protocol, we argue that fairness principles, climate science, and an understanding of globalization and development must be integrated. Download

All PLAID Publications

"Has Foreign Aid Been Greened?" Robert L. Hicks, Bradley C. Parks, J. Timmons Roberts, and Michael J. Tierney. Environment Magazine, January/February 2009.

Greening Aid: Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance. Robert L. Hicks, Bradley C. Parks, J. Timmons Roberts, and Michael J. Tierney. Oxford University Press, 2008.

"Fueling Injustice: Globalization, the Ecological Debt, and Confronting Responsibility for Climate Change." J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. Globalizations 4 (1), 2007.

"Bridging the Rationalist-Constructivist Divide: Re-engineering the Culture of the World Bank." Daniel Nielson, Michael J. Tierney, and Catherine Weaver. Journal of International Relations and Development 9 (2), 2006.

A Climate of Injustice: North-South Politics and Climate Policy. J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. MIT University Press, 2006.

"Theory, Data, and Hypothesis Testing: World Bank Environmental Reform Redux." Daniel Nielson and Michael Tierney. International Organization 59 (3), 2005.

"Who Ratifies Environmental Treaties and Why? Institutionalism, Structuralism, and Participation by 192 Nations in 22 Treaties." J. Timmons Roberts, Bradley C. Parks and Alexis A.Vásquez. Global Environmental Politics 4 (3), 2004.

"Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform." Daniel Nielson and Michael J. Tierney. International Organization 57 (2), 2003.

Conference Presentations and Working Papers

"Does Adjustment Lending Work? Policy Reforms in the Wake of Program Finance." Joshua Loud and Daniel Nielson. Presented to the International Political Economy Society at Stanford University, November 2007.

"IOs as Norms Platforms: The World Bank's Influence on Environmental Practice at the Islamic Development Bank." Daniel Nielson and Christopher O'Keefe. Presented at Duke University's and University of North Carolina's joint seminar on Global Governance and Democracy in Durham, September 2007.

"Faith and Foreign Aid: Voter and Government Interests in (European) Aid to Muslim Countries." Joshua Loud, Daniel Nielson, and Christopher O'Keefe. Presented at the American Political Science Association annual meetings in Chicago, September 2007.

"Healthy Aid? The (In)Effectiveness of Health-targeted Development Assistance." Nathaniel Gebhard, Katherine Kitterman, Ashley-Anne Mitchell, and Daniel Nielson. Presented at the Marjorie Pay Hinckley Mentored Learning Conference in Provo, April 2007.

"If You Build it, Will they Come? Infrastructure Aid and Foreign Direct Investment." Steven Kapfer, Richard Nielsen, and Daniel Nielson. Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago, April 2007.

"Strategic Aid: International Political Economy, Public Choice, and Donor Interest at Multilateral Development Banks." Christopher O'Keefe and A. Bradley Potter. Presented at the International Studies Association annual meeting in Chicago, March 2007.

"Principals and Interests: Agency Theory and Multilateral Development Bank Lending." Daniel Nielson and Michael J. Tierney. Presented to the International Political Economy Society at Princeton University, November 2006.

"Values, Institutions and Structures: Islam, Democracy, and Hegemony at the Islamic Development Bank." Christopher O'Keefe. Presented at the International Studies Association annual meeting in San Diego, March 2005.

"Outsourcing Environmental Aid Allocaiton." Robert L. Hicks, Bradley C. Parks, and Michael J. Tierney. Presented at the American Agricultural Economics Association annual conference in Boston, January 2005.

"Cooperation of Collusion: Explaining Bilateral and Multilateral Environmental Aid to Developing Countries." Bradley C. Parks and Michael J. Tierney. Presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago, September 2004.