Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

ABSTRACT

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.

KEYWORDS:

• aid for trade
• Australia
• ecologically sustainable development
• international aid

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants in our study for their time and insights. We are also grateful for the helpful comments of the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Brendan Garrett is a former Honours student at the University of Adelaide and a recipient of the Graham Lawton Prize for Geography. He completed his undergraduate degree in Development Studies, and his Honours in Geography, Environment and Population. He has interned with Oxfam South Australia in 2014, as well as volunteering for them extensively. He has also completed a Global Sustainability Studies program at Uppsala University in 2013. Brendan is a contributing author in Managing Conflict in the Developing World: Essays from Emerging Scholars, edited by Michael Cornish (University of Adelaide, 2013), and is currently undertaking a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne.

Thomas Wanner is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and International Development at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. His research and teaching interests concentrate on the political economy of environment and development issues, with a particular focus on international environmental governance, gender and development, and education for sustainability. He is a member of the research network of Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. He is the editor of ergo, the journal of the Higher Education Research Group Adelaide, and associate editor of the International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability and the International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses.

Notes

1 For a critical introduction to neo-liberalism, see Harvey (2005). We take his definition of neo-liberalism, as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ (2), as our working definition.

2 The debate as to whether aid or trade is more effective in achieving poverty reduction in developing countries has a long history in international development, and is often framed as ‘aid versus trade’, ‘trade not aid’ or the contemporary ‘aid for trade’ (see Hunt 2012; Page 2006; Prentis 1953). Our point here is that both are complementary and both are required to achieve the international SDGs (see Lammersen and Hynes 2016).

3 For a critical overview of the concept and history of sustainable development, see Redclift and Springett (2015).

4 We do not intend to assess the extent and success of Australia’s effort in regard to sustainable development in Australia. Our concern in this article is the implications of AfT for the goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development in Australia’s aid program.

5 ‘The 1999 EPBC Act defines “environment” as including: a) ecosystems and their constituent parts, including people and communities; b) qualities and characteristics of locations, places, and areas; c) heritage values of places; d) social, economic and cultural aspects of things mentioned in (a), (b), (c) or (d)’ (DFAT 2014c, 4). When we speak about ‘environment’ in this article, we adhere to this definition—in particular part (a).

6 ‘The Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) is a trade agreement being negotiated by 18 participants representing 46 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing on reducing tariffs on products that benefit the environment. These products include solar panels, wind turbines, and energy efficiency, as well as air pollution, waste and water management technologies’ (DFAT n.d. a).

Additional information

Funding

The research was conducted at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. The research was not funded by any agency or organisation.