Free trade agreements, private courts and environmental exploitation: Disconnected policies, denials and moral disengagement

Abstract

Although there is strong scientific consensus that climate change and environmental degradation are occurring, there is also a significant body of opinion that is sceptical about, or denies the validity of, evidence for this. However it is not solely the nature of differing views about global warming or ecological disaster that is being contested but the case for or against intervention and regulation in the market. At an international level, gestures toward sustainability are (i) compromised by combining them with declarations of the need for continued economic growth, and (ii) undermined by the arrangements put in place by existing and new transnational trade agreements. The paper examines these views and developments, and the patterns of denial, disconnection and fragmentation they display.