Sustainable Development in Africa-EU relations

Mark Langan, Sophia Price

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351181945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The European Union has been one of the most vocal advocates of 'sustainable development', particularly in its dealings with developing countries. Even prior to the formulation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the EU has insisted upon the need for sustainable approaches to poverty reduction and economic growth in the Global South. When examining EU relations with African countries as part of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, however, it becomes clear that the translation of Europe's sustainability discourse into practice is highly problematic. Notably, there are concerns that the EU's free market approach to development – embodied in its EPA trade deals – is incompatible with genuine, pro-poor forms of sustainable growth. Moreover, the EU is often seen as a hegemonic actor whose trade and aid interventions in Africa often do more to perpetuate poverty than to ameliorate it. This book casts a critical light on Africa-EU relations with regards to the EU's sustainability pledges. It does this through looking at an array of issues – not least trade, aid, the environment, and democratic institutions. In this vein, the book poses a challenge to EU trade and development discourse in the era of the UN SDGs.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal.

INTRODUCTION

The EU and ‘pro-poor’ contributions to sustainable development in the post-2015 consensus

Mark Langan and Sophia Price

ABSTRACT
The EU has expressed a long-standing commitment to sustainable development, from the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam through to the current Europe 2020 strategy for sustainable development and inclusive growth. Commitment at a regional level has been matched by the role the EU has played at a global level, particularly in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This collection examines the EU's role in supporting the post-2015 consensus through a discussion of the EU’s trade and development policy, with a particular focus on the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

The European Union (EU) has expressed a long-standing commitment to sustainable development, from the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam through to the current Europe 2020 strategy for sustainable development and inclusive growth. Commitment at a regional level has been matched by the role the EU has played at a global level, particularly in relation to the United Nations processes aimed at addressing climate change and the setting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and their successor Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The creation of the latter targets was viewed by the European Commission as validation of its long-standing approach:

Sustainability is a European brand. The EU has a strong starting position and track record, with a high level of economic development, social cohesion, democratic societies and a commitment to sustainable development which is firmly anchored in the European Treaties.¹

This collection examines the role the EU has played in addressing and supporting the post-2015 consensus on sustainable development – through a discussion of the EU’s trade and development policy, with a particular focus on its relations with the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States. The rationale for this focus is the longevity of the ACP–EU relationship, which has its roots in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the founding Treaty of the European Economic Community. As such, it is the EU’s longest standing development cooperation relationship, which has undergone continual reform and renegotiation, from the Lomé Conventions, first signed in 1975, through to the present Cotonou Partnership Agreement and its associated Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The renegotiations and ongoing liberalisation of the relationship has placed pro-poor and poverty alleviation strategies at the centre of the ACP–EU partnership and, therefore, presents a useful lens through which to explore the contributions of the EU to sustainable development.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been warmly welcomed by donors, as well as major corporations involved in the UN Open Working Group (OWD), which helped devise the post-2015 agenda. In contrast to the preceding Millennium Goals, the SDGs are widely viewed as a pivot towards economic growth strategies tied to private sector development (PSD).² Goal 8 and Goal 9, for instance, put a firm focus upon the creation of decent jobs and a business ‘enabling environment’. Accordingly, the SDGs are regarded as a vital step towards the building of the economic base for social development, the stimulation of global markets – through improvements to the trade and competitive potential of developing countries – and a shared prosperity conducive to poverty reduction.

In contrast, however, there are a number of critical questions that have emerged to counter such a positive endorsement of the SDGs. First, whether this turn to PSD and growth is in fact something ‘novel’ in donor relations with developing countries. Much of donor praise for the SDGs omits recognition of how PSD and free market policies have been embedded within long-standing development strategies, whether in the time of the Millennium Goals, or further back to structural adjustment programmes.³ Second, whether the enhanced emphasis on growth strategies will lead to a further entrenchment of free market policies that can often be detrimental to the needs of the poor, and to producers and workers in developing countries. Third, in light of these concerns, whether a new and alternative model of development should be sought. Quintos⁴ remarks that the SDGs have in fact mobilised civil society and progressive groups to push for a ‘vision of a new development model to counter the neoliberal assault’.

Despite these concerns, the European Commission has been one of the most vocal supporters of the SDGs. In fact, the concept of sustainable development itself is said to be a European construct, one which demonstrates the EU’s normative power in development agendas. It is in the context of the controversies surrounding the SDGs and their ‘pro-poor’ growth agenda, that this collection examines the contributions of the EU to sustainable development in ACP countries.

The eight contributions to this collection provide a holistic overview of EU sustainable development interventions across an array of thematic areas, including trade, climate change, civil society engagements, private sector development and Aid for Trade, joint parliamentary institutions, and regional integration. They bring together specialists on EU external relations, from a range of perspectives focused around political economy and development studies. Together they provide timely insight into EU trade and development policies in the context of the post-2015 consensus and critically analyse the relationship between EU policy objectives and the material impact of its interventions.

The climate-development nexus, in which policies to address climate change are integrated into broader sustainable development frameworks, is explored by De Roeck, Delputte and Orbie⁵ through the analysis of climate adaption in the framing of EU development discourse. They identify three frames of adaption and find that the human security frame has a strong presence in the climate-development nexus within EU discourse, which translates to various notions of climate resilience. The growth frame presents climate change as a threat to sustainable development, provoking responses based on the creation of ‘enabling environments’ for investment and technologies, whilst the justice/equity frame emphasises inequitable distribution of climate-related impacts. Taken together De Roeck et al. find that there is a bias towards global, top-down framing of climate change adaption, with little role for the agency of developing countries, local actors and civil society. This in turn prompts conclusions about the EU as a global actor in international climate change and development by highlighting its normative aspirations with a distinctly neo-liberal flavour. Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of ‘governmentality’, De Roeck et al. argue the prevalence of the top-down human security and growth frames act as discursive strategies for donors and international institutions to develop a centralised way to deal with climate change in development. In doing so, the structure of the relationship between the Global North and South is embedded, as Northern donors become responsible for the ‘resilience’ of the passive Southern aid recipients. The concept of resilience thus, serves as a discursive tool for rolling out a neo-liberal governmentality vis-a-vis the Global South, focused on individualisation and the ‘disciplining of states, governments and elites’ into accepting a neo-liberal development paradigm.

From a historical materialist position, Price and Nunn⁶ explore similar themes in the development of the ACP–EU relationship and argue that the concepts of sustainable development and poverty reduction are drawn on to legitimate the process of world market expansion. This, they argue, is a multi-scalar process that is further entrenched by the trade liberalisation underpinned by regionalisation projects. The ACP–EU relationship embeds a form of dependent development that is pro-market and that attempts to embed the world market in different national and regional ACP contexts. In developing their analysis of the ACP–EU relationship they position their own theoretical argument in contrast to the other major theoretical interpretations of the relationship: predominantly realist, constructivist, neo-Gramscian and Uneven and Combined Development (U&CD) perspectives. They conclude that reorganisation of the ACP–EU relationship into the EPA trade regime represents an attempt to ensure neo-liberalisation in the name of pro-poor and sustainable development. However, key to this analysis is a rebuttal of the idea that this will be a process of homogenisation and policy convergence, but rather one that produces ‘variegated’ responses that have been embraced and recognised by the EU.

Heron and Murray-Evans⁷ also emphasise this variegation or ‘uneveness’ in the ACP responses to the EU’s promotion of regional integration. They highlight the ‘growing enthusiasm among EU policy-makers’ for the promotion of regionalisation in the ACP as a response to the pressures for the liberalisation of the ACP–EU relationship. They argue that the variances in the ACP’s national and regional responses are due to the degrees of congruence between the institutional development in existing regional projects with those prescribed by the EU. They develop an explanatory model based on the degrees of congruence in order to explain the variances in ACP responses to the EPAs, based on (i) coherence of the EPA group with existing regional institutions; (ii) compatibility of the EPA regional configurations with pre-existing customs union obligations; (iii) delegation of supranational negotiating authority; and (iv) the presence/absence of regional leadership. They conclude that the divergent ACP responses to the EU’s attempts to promote regional integration will have consequences for both governance and development.

Delputte and Williams⁸ further the analysis of institutional factors within the ACP–EU relationship, through a particular exploration of the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA). They take a deliberative approach to explore the parliamentary debate on the trade-development nexus through the EPA negotiations, in order to assess whether the JPA approaches the ideal type of an equal partnership. Through a focus on five key areas (participation, openness, common good, constructive politics and power neutralising mechanisms) Delputte and Williams argue that real dialogue is not always guaranteed and that despite a rhetoric of ‘equal partnership’ the relationship remains asymmetrical. They conclude that ideas ‘do not always travel in reciprocal directions’ which questions the ‘fundamentals of equal partnership between unequal regions’. For Delputte and Williams, it also raises questions about the power, impact and relevance of the JPA, and the broader rationale of the relationship that ostensibly seeks to ‘discuss issues’ and to ‘facilitate greater understanding between the EU and the ACP’.

Keijzer⁹ similarly expands this institutional focus via a broader analysis of the evolution and role of the ACP as a Group. The article, which draws on the literature on international organisation, independence and performance, reviews the organisational formations of the Group and the ACP secretariat’s development cooperation mandate. He argues that the group has ‘performed at a suboptimal level’ and as such has failed to deliver on its supranational objectives. However, its member states have used their membership of the Group to access certain EU benefit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: The EU and ‘pro-poor’ contributions to sustainable development in the post–2015 consensus
• 2. Framing the climate-development nexus in the European Union
• 3. Managing neo-liberalisation through the Sustainable Development Agenda: the EU-ACP trade relationship and world market expansion
• 4. Regional encounters: explaining the divergent responses to the EU’s support for regional integration in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific
• 5. Equal partnership between unequal regions? Assessing deliberative parliamentary debate in ACP-EU relations
• 6. Feigned ambition. Analysing the emergence, evolution and performance of the ACP Group of States
• 7. Promoting sustainable development or legitimising free trade? Civil society mechanisms in EU trade agreements
• 8. The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa: ‘Decent Work’ and the challenge of trade union solidarity
• 9. Oil and cocoa in the political economy of Ghana-EU relations: whither sustainable development?
• Index