Foreign Direct Investment And The Environment

This conference proceedings analyses the key issues in the FDI and environment relationship.

This conference proceedings analyses the key issues in the FDI and environment relationship.

This book deepens the analysis of the FDI-Environment relationship by concentrating on the mining sector and identifying best practices.

World Bank Discussion Paper No. 306. Describes ways in which the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which has attracted worldwide attention by providing small loans to the rural poor and recording high repayment rates, can achieve sustainability, expansion, and replicability. The Grameen Bank has more than 2 million members, of which 94 percent are women, spread across 35,000 villages

This book links the environment and corruption with China's large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). It investigates the effects of economic development and foreign investment on pollution in China; the effects of corruption and governance quality on FDI location choice in China.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is one of the forces fostering closer economic interdependence among countries. The rapid increase in FDI flows has generated considerable debate about its environmental and social implications in host countries. While much of the debate on these issues has been general in nature, this volume deepens the analysis by examining the FDI-environment relationship in a specific sector and identifies emerging best practices. Empirical evidence from the mining sector is presented, and the key elements of the policy and institutional frameworks that guide investors' envi.

This new book takes as its focus a simple yet critical question: Does foreign direct investment lead to weakened environmental regulation, thereby turning developing countries into "pollution havens"? The debate over this question has never before been the focus of a book about China. Phillip Stalley examines the development of Chinese law governing the environmental impact of foreign investors, describes how regional competition for investment has influenced environmental regulation, and analyzes the environmental practices of foreign and Chinese companies. He finds only modest evidence that integration with the global economy has transformed China into a pollution haven. Indeed, after China opened its domestic market, the entry of foreign films largely strengthened the environmental protection regime, including the oversight of foreign firms' environmental practices. Nevertheless, foreign firms (and the competition to lure them) have posed new challenges to controlling industrial pollution. Stalley identifies the conditions under which foreign investment contributes to and undermines environmental protection, offering readers a solid understanding of China's environmental challenges. He also builds on existing theory and provides hypotheses that can be tested with other developing nations.

Describes patterns of private investment in Latin America and analyzes their impact on the environment, concluding that improved environmental performance can accompany foreign direct investment. Shows how governments of developing countries can attract foreign investors by integrating environmental considerations into their investment promotion efforts, and identifies points of leverage for actions by governments, investors, environmental groups, and customers to increase environmental benefits. Material grows out of a study launched at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy in 1995. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR