Sustainable Development Agendas of Regional International Organizations: The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the Eurasian Development Bank

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes how the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) approach sustainable development in their legal documents and social media. Unlike democracies, autocracies are driven by concerns of regime survival, but they often seek legitimacy through expressed commitments to global norms. We find that while the EBRD has a clear and detailed environmental agenda, this is not so for the EDB, which appears unconcerned about legitimizing itself on this issue. The paper advances our understanding of the likely role of these organizations in sustainable development, identifying areas for further research on global environmental challenges.

Introduction

The role of regional international organizations (RIOs) as actors in environmental policy and sustainable development “has only recently attracted attention as a distinctive area of inquiry, beyond the range of studies of national environmental policies” (Haas 2016).¹ This is especially true in regard to the differences between democratic RIOs (DemRIOs) and authoritarian RIOs (AuthRIOs). Prior research on this subject has focused almost exclusively on DemRIOs such as the European Union (EU), and multilateral development banks led and sponsored by democracies such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).² Scholarly analysis of AuthRIOs is a relatively new field of study and therefore their role in regional governance, generally, and environmental policy, in particular, is almost entirely lacking in the literature.³ Moreover, authoritarian regimes have had a historically poor record of implementing their international commitments (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2000, 2002). This may also be the case with the implementation of their environmental and sustainable development agenda, if it exists at all. As a consequence, the research that has been done on these regimes has focused on their failures, rather than successes (McCarthy 2019). Since AuthRIOs are established by autocracies, they are assumed to reflect the goals of their members, and thus they have not been seen as promoters of a green agenda.⁴ Hence, there has been little scholarly attention to their agendas and standing in this area.

Nonetheless, this is an important issue—and one that intensifies over time. The growing strength of authoritarian states in the international system and the proliferation of AuthRIOs means that the environmental agenda advanced by democratic states and DemRIOs on the world stage will be increasingly challenged by a policy agenda that places a premium on regime-preservation and the enrichment of political elites over sustainable development (Cooley and Heathershaw 2017). Moreover, the growing wealth of some authoritarian regimes and their desire to increase their influence abroad means that they are more willing to leverage this to fund foreign projects bilaterally and through the AuthRIOs that they dominate. Russia, for example, increased its development assistance eleven-fold between 2004 and 2017 (World Bank 2018). Consequently, analyzing the similarities and differences between how DemRIOs and AuthRIOs approach sustainable development will become increasingly crucial to our understanding of the likely future of environmental politics and policies.

This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the role of AuthRIOs in global environmental politics and sustainable development through a comparison of two multilateral development banks that have analogous sustainable development mandates and overlapping geographic areas of investment, but differ in terms of the regime type of their members: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB). It does this through an original dataset consisting of content analysis of their respective founding agreements and legal documents, complemented by an examination of their social media messaging on environmentalism and sustainable development. As far as we know, such a study has not been undertaken before and this article serves as a plausibility probe upon which to build a future research agenda.

We find that although the two organizations share many similarities in terms of general development activities, they differ sharply in terms of their actual commitment to sustainable development as evidenced by their founding documents and social media messaging. On the one hand, the EBRD’s sustainable development agenda is extensive, continuous, clear, and detailed in its official documentation, and this is apparent in its social media messaging as well. On the other hand, despite its public commitment to a green agenda, the EDB’s discourse on sustainable development is rather sparse, not sustained, and, when it does occur, is quite general. This finding is reinforced by the example of one of the EDB’s largest investment projects, which demonstrates that even its limited rhetorical commitment to environmentalism is not borne out in implementation. As discussed in the conclusion, this finding, even if unsurprising, has important implications for the future of sustainable development on the world stage. If authoritarian-led development banks such as the EBD do not feel the need to fulfill environmental commitments—or, more importantly, even to appear to fulfill them—then it is clear that the environmental agenda advanced by the democratic world is increasingly being met by countervailing norms and alternative funding opportunities. This, in turn, undermines the global fight against climate change.

The article proceeds as follows. The first section discusses why the EBRD and EDB are good cases for this study and provides brief background on them. The second section justifies the use of social media messaging for our data selection and the methodology used in data collection. The third section examines the founding documents of the EBRD and EDB to provide a foundation for understanding their social media messaging on sustainable development. The following two sections examine the social media messaging on sustainable development of the EBRD and EDB, respectively. The next section discusses the findings and their implications for a sustainable development agenda on the regional and global levels. The final section identifies areas of additional research prompted by this article.

Regional International Organizations and Sustainable Development

When examined, research on international organizations and regionalism has almost exclusively focused on the democracies-led or democracy-dominated RIOs (DemRIOs), such as the European Union (EU), and multilateral development banks led and sponsored by democracies, including the World Bank, the WTO, and the like (for instance, Arpino and Obydenkova 2020; Barret 2003; Ben-Artzi 2016; Biermann and Bauer 2004; Gutner 2002; Knill and Liefferink 2007; Lankina, Libman, and Obydenkova 2016a; Mišić and Obydenkova 2021; Obydenkova and Arpino 2018; Pillarisetti 2005). This is not surprising. First, analysis of authoritarian-dominated RIOs (AuthRIOs) is a relatively new field of study and therefore their role in regional governance remains less explored when compared to DemRIOs (Allison 2018; Debre 2020a, 2020b; Dragneva and Wolczuk 2015; Hall, Lenz, and Obydenkova 2021; Izotov and Obydenkova 2021; Kirkham 2016; Kneuer and Demmelhuber 2016; Tansey 2016). These studies all highlight the importance of the political regime of the so-called “leading state” and member-states in a regional international organization as being crucial for the nature of the organization. Alexander Cooley described authoritarian regionalism in terms of organizations sponsored, initiated, and controlled by autocracies (2015). Marianne Kneuer and Thomas Dummelhuber called these states “authoritarian gravity centers” that are associated with “the active promotion of autocracy as well as the inducement of diffusion effects” (2016, 775). Alexander Libman and Anastassia Obydenkova crafted a different concept of “non-democratic regional organization,” defined as “an organization in which the leading state and most of the member states of the IO are not democracies (these states are not necessarily consolidated autocracies; different forms of hybrid regimes may be included)” (Libman and Obydenkova 2013, 221). In this paper, we follow Libman and Obydenkova’s definition of AuthRIOs.

Second, authoritarian regimes tend to pursue environmental and sustainable development policies differently as compared to democracies (Fredriksson and Neumayer 2013; Fredriksson and Wollscheid 2007; Obydenkova and Salahodjaev 2016, 2017). Yet, the literature that has begun to explore how regional organizations help autocratic regimes consolidate power and enhance survivability remains nascent (see Ambrosio 2008, 2012; Libman and Obydenkova 2018a). Since the AuthRIOs that these regimes establish adopt the agendas of their members, they, too, have not been seen as making a positive impact on advancing environmental policies. Hence, there has been little scholarly attention to their impact in this area.

This is not only an important issue, it is one that will increase in significance over time. Given the growing strength of authoritarian states in the international system and the proliferation of AuthRIOs, the dominance of democratic states and DemRIOs in advancing environmental issues on the world stage will be increasingly challenged by a policy agenda that places a premium on regime-preservation and the enrichment of political elites over sustainable development. Consequently, analyzing the similarities and differences in how DemRIOs and AuthRIOs approach sustainable development will become increasingly crucial to our understanding of the likely future of environmental politics and policies.

Case Selection

Comparing multilateral development banks is suitable for providing insights into the future of these issues because these institutions will be deeply involved at the local, regional, and global levels in the legitimization of environmental norms through the funding of projects that have direct ecological impacts.⁵ In particular, the EBRD and the EDB share several qualities that make them particularly suitable for comparative analysis. Both were explicitly constituted as development banks dedicated to funding projects at the local and regional levels, and this continues to drive their core missions. Moreover, both have publicly expressed some commitment to a green agenda and sustainable development, and promoting these values is supposed to influence their funding decisions.⁶ Finally, although the EBRD’s geographic scope is broader; both organizations physically overlap with the region of the former Soviet Union (FSU). Despite these similarities, the two organizations differ regarding the primary characteristic under evaluation here: regime type.

The EBRD is a DemRIO created in 1991 by predominantly democratic countries to support the post-communist economic and political transitions of East European and FSU states.⁷ Its shareholders remain overwhelmingly democratic countries and they drive its agenda.⁸ At the time of its creation, it was unique in that it was “the first multilateral development bank to have an explicit environmental mandate in its charter,”⁹ and this has remained a core component of its policy agenda and funding choices. This commitment to promoting a green agenda continues to reflect the normative and policy orientation of its most influential, and Western, founding members.

By contrast, the EDB is an AuthRIO, founded by Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006, and later expanded to include four other FSU countries—Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. At present, Freedom House rates four of the six member-states as “not free” and the remaining two (Armenia and Kyrgyzstan) as “partly free.” The EDB is dominated by its fully authoritarian members, with Russia holding approximately two-thirds of its shares and Kazakhstan holding the overwhelming majority of the remainder.¹⁰ While its official mandate is to promote economic development for its members, some literature argues that the EDB was launched by Moscow as a competitor to the EBRD to mimic Western-dominated development RIOs without Western interference or priorities, and to further solidify its sphere of influence over the region (Ambrosio 2012; Dragneva 2018; Kirkham 2016; Libman and Obydenkova 2018b; Roberts 2017). Although not included in its founding document, since 2009 environmentalism and sustainable development have become one of the EDB’s core missions—at least rhetorically. Such a move should not be surprising. Even though Russian president Vladimir Putin once quipped that climate change would lead to warmer winters in Russia, which would, in turn, save energy and benefit the economy, environmental awareness and engagement in the country has been sustained, despite the limited opportunities provided to activists due to the authoritarian nature of these states (Davydova 2021; Henry 2010; Poberezhskaya 2015, 2018). Russia also has treaty obligations under the Kyoto Protocol that led to “years of international pressure” to fulfill (Digges 2020). Moreover, the ecological impacts of climate change on the region are evident, as seen by the extensive deforestation, fires, and floods that have occurred in subnational regions of Russia, across Siberia and the Arctic zone.¹¹ Thus, although the EDB was late to adopt a commitment to a green agenda, in many ways it completes the organization’s goal of mimicking its democratic counterpart.

Data Selection and Methodology

In order to identify the degree to which the EBRD and EDB expressed and sustained a commitment to an environmentalist agenda, we focused our attention on their core documents and social media messaging, rather than surveying projects that they funded. In this paper, we follow the research design and methods developed in Hall, Lenz, and Obydenkova (2021). The reasons for doing this are as follows. For any RIO, its legal documents and public expressions (via social media) regarding the organization’s green agenda are an easy and cost-effective means to signal its commitment and serve as a necessary first step to actually implementing one. It is also the easiest means of building an image of a benevolent actor and gaining public support and legitimacy. As discussed below in detail, legitimacy, while increasingly crucial for democratic RIOs, became an important factor for authoritarian ones especially in terms of founding agreements and rhetorical statements (see Ambrosio 2008). Therefore, if environmental commitments are lacking in both legal documents and public expression, then it is unlikely that examining funded projects on sustainable development will prove fruitful. From this perspective, legal documents and social media present the actual root of the success or failure in advancing environmental norms. Examination of this root is, thus, crucial for understanding its future implications and consequences. With this in mind, we employ a concurrent mixed research design, collecting information independently from different sources and triangulating the results (see Creswell 2009; Jick 1979). This approach allows us to overcome the pitfalls of sequential design and to compare the findings derived from different sources and discover whether they coincide or contradict each other (Jick 1979). For example, if commitment to sustainable development was clearly outlined in founding agreements, has it been closely followed up—at least rhetorically—through social media? Applying a concurrent research design is the best way to address this issue.

Specific funding decisions may not be solely connected to environmental issues, but rather to additional factors such as the availability of funds, the quality of the project proposals, or the peculiarities of the decision-making processes within these organizations. Thus, the linkage between funded projects as an expression of an organization’s commitment to a green agenda may be more difficult to demonstrate. Additionally, the environmental impact of any funded project may not be readily available or, at the very least, might be problematic to translate into a form that makes for data-driven, comparative analysis. Documents and social media messaging, therefore, allow for the collection of hard data through content analysis and are particularly appropriate for a plausibility probe, such as in the current study.

Although an organization’s founding and core documents serve as a baseline for understanding these organizations’ commitment to an environmental agenda, our specific attention to social media messaging is crucial for drawing any broader conclusions because it serves as a “living-document” of the organization’s continuing commitment. Social media can be perceived as a form of digital lens and in recent decades has become a primary means to “communicate with domestic and international audiences” (Barberá and Zeitzoff 2018, 121). RIOs, in particular, have increasingly sought to utilize public communications to signal their adherence to global or regional norms (Ecker-Ehrhardt 2018; Gronau and Schimdke 2016). Although there may be a gap between a RIO’s rhetorical support for a set of norms and its actual implementation of comparable policies, the former can be illustrative of their commitment to and seriousness about these norms.

Moreover, public statements can be a means to increase a RIO’s legitimacy as a responsible and effective international actor in the eyes of domestic, regional, and global audiences. Although some have argued that even democracies and DemRIOs struggle to sustain their legitimacy,¹² the continuing (albeit, challenged) normative dominance by democracy and democratic political systems globally has led authoritarian regimes and AuthRIOs to perceive that they suffer from a legitimacy deficit. In an effort to close their legitimacy gap, authoritarian regimes have increasingly imitated democracies and the social media messaging utilized by democratic states (see Dobbin, Simmons, and Garrett 2007; Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000; Gilardi 2010; Lemon and Antonov 2020). This has been extended to AuthRIOs, as they, too, have actively sought to enhance their own legitimacy to domestic and international audiences through social media narrative construction (Edel and Josua 2017; Hoffmann 2011; Libman and Obydenkova 2018a; Schatz 2006). Content analysis of social media messaging therefore provides a data-driven approach to demonstrate legitimacy-seeking behavior in general and in regard to specific issue areas.

In terms of our specific data-collection process, we were purposely broad regarding the terms we looked for and the sources we analyzed. For instance, we analyzed the founding documents of each organization for relevant keywords such as “environment,” “ecological,” “green agenda,” “sustainable development,” and more general concepts such as “renewable energy,” as well as variants of these terms. The EBRD’s and the EDB’s founding documents are separated by a fifteen-year gap, with the EBRD’s founding document signed in 1991 (updated in 2006, 2012, and 2013) and the EDB’s in 2006. Because the EDB’s founding document did not include any of these keywords, we expanded our analysis to include that organization’s subsequent documents for the sake of completeness, as well as fairness. We then used the same terms when analyzing the social media feeds of both organizations. The EBRD uses Facebook and Twitter and has a separate Twitter account—@EBRDgreen—that is focused on its environmental actions. All three accounts are in English. By contrast, the EDB solely uses Facebook as its social network medium and the language of choice is Russian. The range of dates for data collection spanned from June 2017 to March 2021, with the same keywords identified above. In addition to the discussion below, our findings are summarized in Tables 1–3.

Table 1. The Founding Document of the EBRD 1991

Articles	Quotes and Phrasing in the EBRD 1991
Article 2 (7)	EBRD will “promote in the full range of its activities environmentally sound and sustainable development.”
Article 11 (1.5)	Loans are made dependent on a sound environmental agenda by the loanee “by making […] loans and providing technical assistance […] including environmental programmes, necessary for private sector development and the transition to a market oriented economy.”
Article 35 (2)	“The Bank shall report annually on the environmental impact of its activities and may publish such other reports as it deems desirable to advance its purpose.”
Explanatory Notes: Article 2 (4)	“In paragraph 1, subparagraph (vii), Delegates recognized the serious environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe, and emphasized that principles of environmentally sound development must be integrated into the full range of the Bank’s operations. Thus Delegates intended ‘in the full range of its activities’ to include all of the Bank’s activities, including technical assistance and all special operations, and not merely that the Bank should be able to provide support directly for specific environmental projects.” (3 times)
Explanatory Notes: Article 13 (1)	“This statement of policies would cover, among other things: the extent to which the Bank would be expected to go to satisfy itself that the funds which it invested were used efficiently and economically and, where such funds were used for the purchase of goods, that the goods were bought on reasonable terms and in favorable markets; and the detailed requirements for the identification, appraisal, monitoring, implementation and ex-post evaluation of all projects, including their economic, technical, managerial, financial and environmental aspects.”
Explanatory Notes: Article 35 (2)	“Delegates were conscious that there might be little to report initially on the Bank’s environmental impact and that the form of the first annual reports on this subject might be very different from later versions.”

Table 2. The EDB Document 2007 (the First Document that Mentioned Environment; Issued 1 Year Later After the Founding Agreement of the EDB of 2006)

Sub-Sections	SECTION 12 (page 17): Social and Environmental* Responsibility (of the Bank)
12.1	“Social and environmental responsibility of the Bank is understood as a voluntary contribution of the Bank to social, economic, and environmental aspects of the development of society connected directly with the main activity of the Bank outside of the legally defined minimum.”
12.2	“The bank’s compliance with [principles of] social and environmental responsibility is controlled by the Bank [itself] while considering the investment projects.”
12.3	“Annual governing board [meaning of ‘ежегодное правление’ is not clear] of the Bank informs the council of the Bank about the Bank’s compliance with the principles of environmental and social responsibility in the annual report of the Bank’s board.”

* In Russian, “environmental” and “ecological” are translated as the same word: ekologicheskii.

Note: All cursive, bold, brackets and parentheses, and inserted clarifications are ours.

Table 3. Summary of Environmental Agenda in Legal Documents of the EBRD and the EDB

	The EBRD	The EDB
Founding Documents	1991: Mentions environment 8 times.	2006: Does not mention environment at all.
Documents are updated for the first time / or further developed	2006: EBRD Basic Document was changed in 2006: article 1.**** Mentions environment 8 times.	2007: Corporate Governance Regulations of the Eurasian Development Bank: Mentions environment 6 times
Documents are updated for the 2nd time / or further developed	2012: EBRD Basic Document was changed in 2012: article 18.**** Mentions environment 8 times.	2012: Eurasian Development Bank: Environmental and Social Policy Mentions environment 53 times.
Documents are updated for the 3rd time / or new document appeared	2013 EBRD Basic Document was changed in 2013: article 1.**** Mentions environment 8 times.	2013: Regulation on the Investment Activities of the Eurasian Development Bank Mentions environment twice.
Documents are updated for the 4th time / or further developed	2019:** Strategy Implementation Plan 2020–2022. Mentions environment 10 times.	2017:* Strategy of the Eurasian Development Bank for the period from 2018 to 2022. Mentions environment 4 times.

* and ** Do not have a publication dates. Likely to be 2016–2017 for EDB and 2019 for EBRD Strategies.

*** We cannot find anything older or newer than the 2013 EBRD Basic Document. EBRD indicates only the changes in the 2006, 2012, and 2013 texts in Articles 1 and 18. **** Updated Article 1 is titled “Purpose” and sets out the remit of the Bank, its structure, and where it can operate; Updated Article 18 covers “Special Funds” and how countries can apply for these.

Sustainable Development in Legal Documents of the EBRD and the EDB

The founding document of the EBRD in 1991¹³ (available in English) references the environment eight times (See Table 1). While this might be perceived as not much in a document consisting of 88 pages, these references appear to be straightforward, clear, and cover entire articles of the text. The topic of the environment first appears at the very beginning of the document in Article 2(7), stating that the EBRD will “promote in the full range of its activities environmentally sound and sustainable development.” It is highly important that such a statement was listed among its top priorities. This environmental agenda is continued in Article 11(1.5), stating that its lending is dependent on a sound environmental agenda by the loanee “by making […] loans and providing technical assistance […] including environmental programmes, necessary for private sector development and the transition to a market-oriented economy.” It is plausible that the EBRD was the very first multilateral regional development bank that actually created such a phenomenon as environmental conditionality on its loans.¹⁴ While the EU’s democratic conditionality became the focal point of studies of democratization in the post-communist world,¹⁵ the environmental conditionality of the EBRD has received little attention in the political science literature. This commitment to an environmental program continues with Article 35(2), stating that “the Bank shall report annually on the environmental impact of its activities,” keeping shareholders and member states up-to-date on its environmental impact. This is an important statement signaling maximum attention to an ongoing reevaluation of the EBRD’s environmental impact and a commitment to accountability and transparency, and a means to sustain its legitimacy as a global and regional environmental actor.¹⁶ This commitment is reiterated in Article 13(1) of the Explanatory Notes, which requires the EBRD to provide comprehensive reports on a regular basis to satisfy members “that the funds which it invested were used efficiently and economically,” but always making sure that the funds given out by the Bank take into account the principles and goals of sustainable development as a crucial part of these investments. It should be noted that these reports are publicly available. Interestingly, in the Explanatory Notes, Article 2(4) highlights the dire environmental situation in Central and Eastern Europe and the need to address this pressing issue. Because of this calamitous situation “principles of environmentally sound development must be integrated into the full range of the Bank’s operations.”

We now turn to the EDB’s 2006 founding agreement and twelve other legal documents (available in Russian), utilizing the same search terms as for the EBRD (See Table 2). The primary reason for going beyond its founding agreement is that it contains no references to an environmental agenda. However, several subsequent documents do, indicating at least a nascent awareness of the importance of this issue. For the sake of completeness and fairness, it was important to include them. However, given the restrictions of an article-length treatment, it will be impossible to go into detail on all of these documents.

The first reference to the EDB’s environmental policy was found in clause 12.1 of its 2007 document and mentions the environment together with the social and economic aspects of development. Whether the environment and sustainable development should be prioritized over economic interests is not specified, as was done by the EBRD in 1991. Additionally, the EDB’s environmental and social responsibilities were listed as voluntary, in contrast to the EBRD documents where they are obligatory and a clear commitment. In clause 12.2, the EDB requires some sort of internal accountability for these issues, but the sentence is quite vague and ambiguous, overall lacking in clarity. Finally, clause 12.3 seems to echo the EBRD’s approach, as it commits to reporting the EDB’s environmental impacts annually. However, unlike the publicly available EBRD reports, the EDB equivalents are, as stated, the “internal business” of the bank and are handed over from its “annual governing board” to its executive council. Thus, any accountability starts and ends within the EDB itself and seems unavailable for the wider public to view, assess, and respond to.

After including only vague information on the environment in its founding agreement and subsequent 2007 document, the EDB directly confronted the issue, dedicating an entire document to it. The 2012 “Environmental and Social Policy” referenced the environment 53 times and noted that all the projects that the Bank would invest in would have to take into account environmental factors. For example, Article 1.3 states that the EDB has a “desire to increase potential positive environmental and social effects” and that it seeks to “ensure the contribution of funded projects to sustainable development.” Similarly, Article 3.6 details the five principles it will follow in order to take “environmental factors into account in the course of investment activities.” These include transparency; social and environmental responsibility; refusing to finance certain types of activities; protecting biological diversity, resources, or cultural heritage; and cooperation with the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development. It should be noted that the last of these is not actually about the environment or sustainable development, per se, but is first-and-foremost a fund connected to the Eurasian Economic Union that supports member states with financial credits in times of budgetary or balance-of-payment crises. In addition, none of the listed activities that the EDB refuses to finance have anything to do with the environment, but instead include forced and child labor, gambling, arms production and trade. Article 4.3 requires that the bank classify projects based upon their “nature and potential environmental and social impacts.” Finally, Article 5.10.3 states that the EDB will provide annual reports associated with its “environmental and social requirements.” While these were all positive steps, they were counterbalanced by the fact that there was no external accountability for implementing these mandates and the wall between public and internal information flows erected in the 2007 document remained.

This was followed by the 2013 “Regulation on Investment Activities of the Eurasian Development Bank,” which mentioned the environment twice. Article 1.2 states that the EDB will help “increase the efficiency of using natural resources, environmental protection, and improvement of the environmental [ecological] setting.” However, there appears to be a contradiction in this very same article in which the EDB is also committed to “eliminating […] constraints to steady growth”—a commitment that appears to take precedence since it is placed in a preceding bullet point. Adding to the confusion is the assertion in Article 3 that the Bank only finances projects “that do not result in the real deterioration of the living environment.” How an environmental agenda and the priorities placed on enhancing growth are to be reconciled is something that the document does not address. Nonetheless, there was some substantive evidence of at least a rhetorical commitment to a green agenda by 2013.

Similar sentiments are found in the 2017 “Strategy of the Eurasian Development Bank for the Period from 2018 to 2022.”¹⁷ One of the key components of this strategy document was to build new and modernize old chemical and petrochemical plants to reduce their environmental harm. Similarly, the EDB states that it will only finance new coal power generation projects that are environmentally friendly, and that coal will become less of a priority for the Bank.

To summarize, the environmental statements that appear in the EBRD’s founding document are straightforward and clear, identified as one of its top priorities, and are re-visited throughout its entirety in the document, raising both the concerns and commitments to different types of accountability (See Table 3).

While it was updated in 2007, 2012, and 2013, the EBRD’s environmental commitments remained intact. Despite a post-founding commitment to environmentalism, it remained unclear whether this was just rhetorical or would be put into practice. While there are many references to environmentalism in the EBRD’s founding document and later revisions,¹⁸ the EDB’s remain hidden from public view. What is open to the public, however, is their respective social media messaging. It can reasonably be assumed that if the EDB was actually going to follow through on the commitments expressed from 2007 onward and seek to bolster its legitimacy on this basis, this would be duly reported through social media to create and sustain its image of an environmentally friendly actor. Thus, we now turn to a comparison of the EBRD’s and the EDB’s social media accounts.

The EBRD’s Sustainable Development Social Media Messaging

Before engaging with the analysis of the social media messaging of the Bank, we want to briefly provide an explanation of the data in terms of numbers. Although both organizations have been on social media for over a decade, it was not possible to scroll back through posts and tweets past mid-2017. Consequently we do not have data from before this period and cannot state with any certainty that there were many messages from the two Banks on the environment before this timeframe. It cannot be said, for instance, that the EBRD had 10,000 messages pertaining to the environment compared to the EBD’s 1,000 as it is not possible to access this data. However, the evidence that we find after mid-2017 corroborates the argument of the paper that the EDB has mimicked a green agenda, but its social media do not point to action in this sector. We were able to locate 363 messages that were not re-tweets/posts from the EBRD directly pertaining to the environment and a green agenda, and 183 of these messages were about the FSU region. By contrast, the EDB had 87 messages that alluded to the environment in some way. This means that the EBRD had 276 more messages that directly represented the Bank’s green agenda than the EDB, whose messaging was unclear about a green agenda.

Even a cursory examination of this messaging provided an overwhelming number of posts and tweets referencing the EBRD’s green agenda, ranging geographically across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, North Africa, the Middle East, Africa, the FSU, and Mongolia. Even outside the FSU, they detailed specific investments and programs on reducing carbon emissions,¹⁹ promoting renewable energy,²⁰ tackling the problems of nuclear waste,²¹ energy efficiency,²² sustainable agriculture,²³ and urban environmentalism.²⁴ This was so extensive that cataloging each or even a substantial portion of these would be tedious for the reader and only marginally helpful in demonstrating that it has an obvious and concrete commitment to environmentalism and sustainable development Additionally, the EBRD set up a special website— www.ebrdgreencities.com—to develop “a better and more sustainable future for cities and their residents” through “identifying, prioritising and connecting cities’ environmental challenges with sustainable infrastructure investments and policy measures.” This initiative opened up more opportunities for the EBRD to engage in social media messaging about its programs. Consequently, this section will focus only on a selection of the EBRD’s activities in the FSU, so that a direct comparison to the EDB will be easier to make.

The EBRD’s activities in the post-Soviet space are extensive. However, since the EBRD is still seen as an “outsider” in the region, not all of these projects are directly related to environmentalism and sustainable development, but are intended to provide it with legitimacy in order to further this agenda. For example, there are plenty of posts and tweets on cultural events like the #EBRDLiteraturePrize2020,²⁵ a night of Tajik films,²⁶ and the celebration of Navruz.²⁷ The EBRD uses its Facebook and Twitter feeds to tell readers what the organization is doing, explain its operations, and allow the public to comment on policies.²⁸ These activities allow it to “build its brand,” demonstrate commitment to engagement and transparency, and acquire valuable feedback. Nonetheless, the EBRD’s green agenda is quite extensive and Tables 1 and 3 illustrate that environmentalism and sustainable development constitute a substantial portion of its activities. There is the possibility that some projects are ineffective or only marginally beneficial to the environment, but this is not within the remit of this paper. It does show, however, a substantive commitment to adhering to and promoting environmental norms and accountability.

The EBRD’s investments can be categorized into support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and major projects. The EBRD does not just invest money into a company, but offers advisors to support a business, such as with backing for Stone Décor in Kazakhstan.²⁹ Similarly, the Bank gives advice on creating a viable business strategy for companies, seen with support given to ARAZ Supermarketlər Şəbəkəsi in Azerbaijan.³⁰ While the EBRD offers business strategy support and advisors to businesses, its key backing is investment: “we invested almost €1.6 billion in more than 100 projects in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.”³¹ Likewise, the EBRD offered significant support to SMEs across the entire FSU,³² including those headed by women in Central Asia.³³

Agriculture is another area of EBRD investment in the FSU. For example, it backed the Enhanced Competitiveness of the Tajik Agribusinesses Project #ECTAP, with one project supporting ZirvEco to buy new equipment to develop edible oil.³⁴ Another example is its support to improve “farm management, accounting and financial reporting³⁵” in Turkmenistan. It developed a roadmap for Kazakhstan to improve the safety of raw milk and other dairy product by “transparent and comprehensive monitoring of animal health […] measures such as testing raw milk […], inclusiveness by sharing knowledge and best practices.”³⁶ Businesses are not the only entities that received EBRD support. By promoting Georgia through #TravelSafely and #TravelLocal, it helped increase tourism and highlighted the beauty of Georgia and the friendliness of Georgians.³⁷ Similarly, the EBRD has promoted the benefits of investing in Central Asia through Facebook posts.³⁸ Likewise, the EBRD developed a strategy for Tajikistan on ways to strengthen business competitiveness, help infrastructure connectivity, and enhance access to business services.³⁹ Another feature of the EBRD’s non-financial support is backing given to the Moldovan government to introduce mediation between companies to reduce the workload of the courts,⁴⁰ thereby speeding up investment and business.

The EBRD was deeply involved in nuclear issues and other environmental concerns. In the former, the clean-up at Chernobyl dominated, in part due to Home Box Office’s (HBO’s) mini-series on the disaster, which the EBRD used to highlight its own work in decommissioning the reactor, creating the confinement structure over the destroyed reactor, and safely removing waste.⁴¹ While understandably Chernobyl dominated the EBRD’s focus on nuclear issues, there are other projects that the Bank is involved with, such as the Lepse ship —known as Russia’s most radioactive ship⁴²—which was a Soviet nuclear ice breaker left to rust in the port of Murmansk with nuclear waste onboard.⁴³ Similarly, another nuclear spill that had occurred in 1982 just north of Murmansk in the Andreeva Bay was only finally cleaned in November 2019 due to EBRD funding.⁴⁴ Another nuclear waste project that the EBRD addressed is the toxic radioactive waste from Soviet-era uranium mines in Central Asia.⁴⁵

The EBRD’s Green Cities initiative is prominent in the FSU region, with the majority of posts and tweets pertaining to Ukraine. There has been much environmental investment in Ukraine, such as 400 new environmentally friendly trolleybuses, greater energy efficiency in buildings, and modernizing waste management.⁴⁶ Similarly, Kyiv’s city government signed a roadmap to turn the city into a green metropolis following EBRD guidelines.⁴⁷ Apart from Ukraine, the Moldovan city of Bălți joined the Green Cities program, signing a roadmap and increasing its fleet of green trolleybuses.⁴⁸ Further EBRD green investments were made in Georgia, with the Georgian capital Tbilisi seeking environmental support for developing the city’s metro system.⁴⁹ The cities of Telavi and Kutaisi received five and ten environmentally friendly buses through EBRD funds respectively.⁵⁰

The EBRD also invests heavily in water retention projects across the post-Soviet space, particularly in Central Asia. Many of the EBRD posts and tweets refer to funding for various water projects, such as upgrading the Qairokkum hydropower plant in Tajikistan⁵¹ and providing that 40,000 people in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan “will now benefit from better water sanitation.”⁵² Within Central Asia, the EBRD has supported financing the refurbishment of wastewater facilities using new green technologies in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, to benefit one million residents by reducing CO2 emissions.⁵³ Likewise, in cooperation with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the EBRD has supported a waste management project in Belarus to turn wastewater into clean energy.⁵⁴ It supported projects to double the capacity of a small hydro-electric dam in Armenia⁵⁵ and renovate the Enguri Dam in Georgia, which increased its capacity by 40 percent.⁵⁶ The bank also gave $380 million for 12 solar farms in Kazakhstan,⁵⁷ and other solar investments were made in Armenia,⁵⁸ Georgia,⁵⁹ and Moldova.⁶⁰

The EDB’s Sustainable Development Social Media Messaging

Between mid-2017 and March 2021 the EDB devoted around a dozen posts to subjects associated with environmentalism and sustainable development. In 2020, there was nothing. While there are some indications of an environmental program found within, these are infrequent and do not provide the same level of detail as in the EBRD’s social media messaging, or are only tangentially related to a green agenda. One example includes the “creation of a single platform for the analysis and implementation of projects of the water management complex of the Russian Federation.”⁶¹ However, this post referred to solving the problem of underfunding in the sector, rather than to the importance of sustainable development for water management. Similarly, in 2017, the Bank detailed priorities for investments, including financial support for “energy, engineering, chemical, oil and gas and mining, infrastructure.”⁶² However, there was no mention of the environmental impact of these industries.

Nonetheless, there were some posts pointing to at least a nascent green agenda for the EDB. In late 2017, the Bank signed a loan agreement with Solar Systems LLC “to develop a ‘green’ energy in Russia,” although the post devoted more time to naming those who signed the agreement than what the agreement was about.⁶³ Additionally, wind farms were developed in Russia⁶⁴ and Kazakhstan,⁶⁵ and investments in solar panels were made in 2019.⁶⁶ The EDB financed the reconstruction of the hydropower plant in the Republic of Karelia in Russia.⁶⁷ In 2017, the EDB provided a loan to Alfa-Bank CJSC to offer “support for small and medium businesses and an energy efficiency improvement program in the Republic of Belarus.⁶⁸” While the EDB announced those plans and investments, it is not clear if any of these initiatives were implemented and completed. For example, we have not found any posts on the opening ceremony of any of these projects. Since these would serve as opportunities for the EDB to demonstrate its successes, their absence is surprising— and quite possibly telling.

Even its messaging on one of the most high-profile investments by the EDB—the Nurek hydroelectric dam in Tajikistan⁶⁹—was almost entirely devoid of its environmental impact. Discussion about the EDB providing financial support for the reconstruction of the Nurek plant began in 2011. During the early stages, Sergei Shatalov, the EDB deputy chairman, did not even mention the environmental benefits of hydroelectric power. Rather he concentrated on how the project would help the Tajik economy and “significantly increase the export potential for Tajikistan, increase the volume of its foreign exchange earnings, and strengthen the balance of payments and the budget.⁷⁰” This became a recurring theme in EDB messaging about the project, with the focus being on how the EDB’s investment would provide economic benefits for Tajikistan through improved irrigation systems and food security⁷¹ and the sale of excess electricity generation.⁷² Only one document mentioned how the reconstruction of the Nurek dam would result in increased sustainable development in Tajikistan.⁷³

Discussion

Marianne LeGreco and Sarah J. Tracy (2009, 1526) noted that an important means of determining the intentions and goals of an institution is to collect primary sources in such a way as to allow the researcher to identify what was present and to “articulate those discourses that are absent.”⁷⁴ By analyzing both DemRIOs and AuthRIOs we broaden the literature that has focused largely on DemRIOs and we contribute to the nascent studies in comparative analysis of environmental agendas across AuthRIOs and DemRIOs (e.g., Hall, Lenz, and Obydenkova 2021). By combining case studies of both organization types we contribute to this newly emerging literature. In the analysis presented above, we have demonstrated that poor implementation of international commitments is also the case regarding environmental policies for the EDB.

In the present case, the lack of evidence of a substantive commitment to environmentalism and sustainable development found in the EDB’s social media messaging is a significant finding, especially when contrasted with that of the EBRD which is extensive, concrete, and continuous. While there was an attempt to include environmentalism in the EDB’s post-2006 legal documents, which could have been illustrative of a nascent green agenda, this was most likely an attempt to pay lip service to adhering to these norms and practices. It is reasonable to assume that if the EDB was actually interested in seeking to legitimize itself as a full-fledged alternative to the EBRD, it would have sought to do so on the basis of one of the latter’s core missions: promoting a green agenda. The fact that it did not do so illustrates that it has discounted the value of establishing its bona fides as a responsible actor in regional sustainable development and the costs associated with not following through on its pledges of transparency and accountability in this policy realm.

Although this outcome might not be surprising, given that the EDB is a relatively new organization and the EBRD is a well-established one with a longer environmentalist pedigree, greater funding, and expertise, our findings are in fact indicative of the likely future of environmentalism on the world stage for precisely this reason. The EDB was established as an alternative to the EBRD for the post-Soviet states and is still seeking to establish its legitimacy. An easy and cost-effective means to do this would be to at least pay lip service to the green agenda that its European counterpart has prioritized as one of its core missions and it is at least rhetorically committed to. The fact that such actions are not evident in the EDB’s social media messaging reveals not only that this commitment was always inauthentic, but that the EDB does not even see the benefits of doing so. Its seeming irrelevancy to the EDB means that this organization feels comfortable funding projects that do not meet global environmental norms. This indicates that these norms are weakening or, at the very least, are not being strengthened by co-opting AuthRIOs into this normative structure. Some authoritarian regimes are improving their environmental policies, although this is a case of reaction to outside influences and wanting to be seen as pro-active on a topic of increasing relevance globally.⁷⁵ With a green agenda increasingly becoming an international norm, China is promoting its own green agenda as an alternative to Western states, thereby trying to control international values and gain legitimacy from a worldwide audience for its autocratic model of governance at national but also at international levels (e.g., Tosun and Shyrokykh 2021). Putin—who until recently was an environmental skeptic—has begun promoting a green agenda. This is due to the EU demanding that states that trade with it need to be more involved in a sustainable agenda. Similarly, governments in Central Asia are promoting a green agenda to increase access to Western investment. It appears that outside pressures from DemRIOs could do more to shape the environmental policies of authoritarian regimes than AuthRIOs. Potentially, this is an area for future study.

One could counter this conclusion by arguing that the EDB simply does not engage in social media to the level of Western countries and therefore the lack of evidence about environmental messaging is simply a reflection of this. While it is certainly true that the overall volume of posts and tweets is vastly unbalanced toward the EBRD, our data collection process revealed that the EDB was definitely willing to engage in social media messaging when it had the opportunity to do so. However, this was only of a particular type and included posts about infrastructure projects,⁷⁶ loans to government-run or government-associated enterprises,⁷⁷ and cooperative agreements reached between the bank and government entities found in member states.⁷⁸ Thus, rather than being seen as a legitimate “green” actor, the EDB’s priority seems to be in signaling to the leaderships of its member states and their citizens the positive economic impact of intra-FSU cooperation— and even then, only among a limited subset of the FSU states that are aligned with Russia, possibly showing that their alignment pays dividends. This makes a great deal of sense since these investments and agreements are indicative of a strategy of securing and facilitating regime survival, which is consistent with the activities of other AuthRIOs (Ambrosio 2008; Pak et al. 2020; Libman and Obydenkova 2021a, 2021b). The EDB is simply following this pattern.

Looking to the future, this is not good news for environmentalism and sustainable development on the world stage. As authoritarian regimes and the RIOs that they establish become more prominent in the international system, the green agenda advanced by democratic states will likely find little purchase outside of their own regions, because alternative—and possibly rival or at least countervailing—AuthRIOs have little reason for adhering to these norms and policies either for themselves or for projects that they fund. Recipient countries will therefore become more likely to accept this form of development assistance as it almost always comes with fewer “green” conditions than those imposed by democratic countries and DemRIOs. This, in turn, will undermine the global fight against climate change and other harmful environmental impacts.

Areas for Additional Research

Since this article offers only a plausibility probe, far more research needs to be done. Some further areas of investigation might include looking at additional cases of AuthRIOs to determine whether their social media messaging reveals the same sort of tepid, rhetorical commitment to environmentalism and whether this actually translates into a seeming lack of need for legitimacy-seeking. If this is the case, then it would further reinforce the notion that the normative strength of environmentalism is weakening.

Furthermore, one could develop a series of in-depth case studies utilizing process-tracing methodology to determine whether environmental concerns were part of the planning and implementation of investment projects or whether other priorities took precedence. The brief discussion above about the Nurek dam illustrates something to this effect and could be expanded upon either in terms of this specific project or others like it. For example, the EDB’s investments associated with the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics might be a fruitful area for research.⁷⁹

Even when environmental results are touted, it might be possible to “fact check” whether the actual outcomes lived up to these claims. This would not necessarily be limited to AuthRIOs, as it could apply to DemRIOs as well, although the differing levels of transparency and accountability between the two types of RIOs will necessarily make one more skeptical of the claims of the former.

One could delve deeper into the distribution of investments made by the EDB and similar types of institutions to determine whether there is a correlation between investment choices and desired geopolitical outcomes. For example, given that the EDB has an official mandate to cooperate with the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, does the EDB reflect Russia’s goals of further binding its members to Moscow?

This article examined the rhetorical outputs of a decision-making process. The next step for research could be to draw the proverbial curtain back and seek to understand why we see this difference. As noted above, autocracies generally prioritize regime survival and elite enrichment over all other concerns. Consequently, the RIOs that they establish reflect this: rather than delegating any substantive institutional power to a RIO, authoritarian regimes are more likely to ensure that the RIOs they create have little institutional autonomy because that would undermine their power at home (Collins 2009). As for the present case, it is possible that the EBRD, as a DemRIO, has a higher level of institutional autonomy to pursue an environmental agenda independently of its members in a manner consistent with the organization’s expressed values; whereas the EDB is more directly tied to the short-term interests of its leaders, rather than longer-term public concerns about climate change. Alternatively, it may well be that the EBRD actually has a limited ability to act independently of its members, but since the majority of its members are committed to promoting an environmental agenda, it is this state-level commitment that is indirectly being transmitted through its social media messaging. Thus, rather than institutional design, the differences we identified between these two development banks may be due simply to the interests and values of its members.

Finally, a far more optimistic scenario is one that sees the EDB members as simply lagging behind their EBRD counterparts, suggesting that, over time, we may see more of a policy confluence between the two. For example, Central Asian countries appear to be more willing to adopt policies and cooperate regionally on issues of sustainable government—even more willing than Russia, the “leading state” within the EDB (e.g., Devyatkin 2020). This is due to a variety of changing circumstances, such as the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic, increased funding by Western countries to promote such policies, and environmental requirements imposed (or strongly suggested) by Western countries on their trading partners in the former Soviet states. If sustainable development policies are actually implemented—that is, if we see a greater willingness to translate environmental interests and commitments into action—this would indicate that a path toward a truly global green agenda remains, notwithstanding the growing power of autocracies globally.

In short, research into the impact of AuthRIOs on environmentalism and sustainable development is only just beginning and this article, and the special issue with which it is associated, is meant to spark a wider research agenda that will become increasingly relevant in the future.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The coauthors of this article are listed alphabetically and they contributed equally to this paper. Anastassia Obydenkova thanks the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) and the Center for Institutional Studies of the HSE University for supporting her research. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their great feedback and insights.

2. See, for example, Ben-Artzi (2016), Obydenkova and Rodrigues Vieira (2020), Gutner (2002), Knill and Liefferink (2007), Obydenkova et al. (2021), Lavelle (2007, 2011).

3. Examinations of AuthRIOs include Allison (2018), Ambrosio (2012), Collins (2009), Obydenkova and Libman (2019), Tansey (2016). Among the very first comparative analyses of sustainable development agenda across AuthRIOs and DemRIOs, see Hall, Lenz, and Obydenkova (2021).

4. For example, there is a growing set of studies on autocracies and environmental conflicts (e.g., Demchuk et al. (2021), Hanaček and Martinez-Alier (2021).

5. See, for example, Wright (2012), de Jonge (2017), Hameiri and Jones (2018).

6. Obviously, as seen throughout this paper, the EBRD’s commitment to this is far greater than the EDB’s.

7. Non–post-communist states have also been recipients of EBRD funds, including Turkey, Cyprus, and Egypt. On the EU and EBRD impact on economic development, also see Nazarov and Obydenkova (2020).

8. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/191209_Runde_Reinvention_or_Restoration_v3.pdf (page 1).

9. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EBRD_EnvProgress_Nov1995.pdf (page ix).

10. https://eabr.org/en/about/facts-and-figures/.

11. See Kozin (2020), Libman and Obydenkova (2014). Some studies argue that differences across sub-national regions of Russia are also influenced by various historical legacies (Lankina, Libman, and Obydenkova 2016b), that is, in addition to current political regime.

12. See, for example, Gronau and Schimdke (2016), Hurd (1999), Lenz and Viola (2017), Zürn (2018).

13. https://www.ebrd.com/news/publications/institutional-documents/basic-documents-of-the-ebrd.html#:~:text=The%20Agreement%20Establishing%20the%20European,force%20on%2028%20March%201991.

14. On multilateral regional development banks (MDBs), see Ben-Artzi (2016), Obydenkova et al. (2021); Other MDBs sponsored by democracies were creatures of the Cold War period and created throughout the 1950s and 1960s—a period of different security concerns and priorities (see Obydenkova and Rodrigues Vieira 2020); Therefore, they did not include any references to the sustainable development in their founding documents.

15. On democratic conditionality, see Börzel and Risse (2016), Börzel (2003), Poast and Urpelainen (2015).

16. The explanatory note to Article 35(2) notes that “Delegates were conscious that there might be little to report initially on the Bank’s environmental impact and that the form of the first annual reports on this subject might be very different from later versions.”

17. https://eabr.org/upload/iblock/d06/FINAL_eng_strategy.pdf.

18. The EBRD’s Founding Document can be found here: https://www.ebrd.com/news/publications/institutional-documents/basic-documents-of-the-ebrd.html.

19. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1313847269314179075 (07/10/2020).

20. Wind farms in, for example, Mongolia (Facebook 19/09/2018), Turkey (Facebook 19/03/2019), and Serbia (Facebook 21/09/2019).

21. Facebook: 31/08/2018.

22. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1277989651438022656 (30/06/2020).

23. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1318190659887661057 (19/10/2020).

24. https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1317046622904344578 (16/10/2020).

25. Facebook: 03/03/2020.

26. Facebook: 25/03/2019.

27. Facebook: 13/03/2019.

28. Facebook: 19/02/2019.

29. Facebook: 19/02/2019.

30. Facebook: 02/04/2019.

31. Facebook: 25/04/2019.

32. https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1323306095151063047 (02/11/2020).

33. Facebook: 09/03/2019; 16/07/2019; https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1334112092610326530 (02/12/2020).

34. Facebook: 18/09/2020.

35. https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1327235616728342530 (13/11/2020).

36. Facebook: 18/08/2019.

37. Facebook: 10/08/2020.

38. Facebook: 23/11/2020.

39. Facebook: 04/03/2020.

40. Facebook: 08/09/2020.

41. Facebook: 05/06/2019; 06/06/2019; 25/04/2019.

42. https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-04-russias-most-radioactive-ship-reaches-dismantlement-milestone.

43. Facebook: 25/09/2019.

44. Facebook: 26/11/2019.

45. Facebook: 28/07/2020.

46. Facebook: 31/10/2020.

47. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1298964528974229511 (27/08/2020).

48. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1311962586674540550 (02/10/2020).

49. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1268860618062217216 (05/06/2020).

50. https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1323210423093612544 (02/11/2020); https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1329764506055155712 (20/11/2020).

51. Facebook: 30/08/2018.

52. https://twitter.com/EBRD/status/1327166813730291712 (13/11/2020).

53. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1319247689947729920 (22/11/2020).

54. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1270989898460409858 (11/06/2020).

55. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1318565149293367296 (20/10/2020).

56. Facebook: 23/08/2018.

57. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1268554115375943685 (04/06/2020).

58. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1301890348214554630 (04/09/2020).

59. https://twitter.com/EBRDgreen/status/1278964696167657472 (03/07/2020).

60. Facebook: 25/11/2020.

61. Facebook: 03/07/2017.

62. Facebook: 21/12/2017.

63. Facebook: 31/10/2017.

64. Facebook: 22/11/2018.

65. Facebook: 01/11/2019.

66. Facebook: 06/11/2019.

67. Facebook: 15/08/2017.

68. Facebook: 11/10/2017.

69. Facebook: 30/06/2017.

70. https://eabr.org/press/releases/rbc-zampred-eabr-sobranie-soveta-antikrizisnogo-fonda-evrazes-sostoitsya-do-kontsa-2011g/.

71. https://eabr.org/press/releases/eksperty-eabr-posetili-dushanbe-dlya-prodolzheniya-konsultatsiy-po-zayavke-respubliki-tadzhikistan-n/.

72. https://eabr.org/press/releases/efsr-profinansiruet-investitsionnyy-proekt-reabilitatsiya-nurekskoy-ges-faza-1-na-summu-40-mln-dolla/.

73. https://eabr.org/press/releases/delegatsiya-proektnogo-bloka-efsr-prinyala-uchastie-v-godovom-sobranii-aziatskogo-banka-infrastruktu/.

74. M. LeGreco and S. Tracy. 2009, “Discourse Tracing as Qualitative Practice,” Qualitative Inquiry 15 (9): 1516–43. doi:10.1177/1077800409343064.

75. Indeed, recent literature on the nexus of the level of democracy and international environmental commitments or other aspects of environmental agenda indicates the importance of political regimes (e.g., Fredriksson and Neumayer 2013; Fredriksson and Wollscheid 2007; Obydenkova and Salahodjaev 2016, 2017).

76. Facebook: 24/07/2017; Facebook: 17/07/2019.

77. Facebook: 12/10/2018; Facebook: 01/11/2018; Facebook: 28/08/2017, Facebook: 24/05/2018.

78. Facebook: 31/10/2017. Facebook: 15/02/2018.Facebook: 28/03/2019.

79. https://eabr.org/press/releases/glava-eabr-v-rossii-bank-realizuet-17-proektov-v-razlichnykh-otraslyakh-ekonomiki-vklyuchaya-energet/; https://eabr.org/press/news/rynok-tsennykh-bumag-sovremennye-metodiki-upravleniya-megaproektami-vozmozhnosti-dlya-bolee-ustoychi/?sphrase_id=92991. https://eabr.org/press/releases/dmitriy-zhurba-o-banke-ego-proektakh-fondakh-pryamykh-investitsiy-i-perspektivakh-na-tekushchiy-god/.