Food vs fuel: neo-colonial tendencies in Western debates and policies
Food vs Fuel: neo-colonial tendencies in Western debates and policies
This project consists of a legal and philosophical study of the underlying issues and the consequences for the developing countries with regard to first and second-generation biofuels. In the project it is presupposed that our current framework of international public and private law is failing in implementing the right norms for addressing the problem of a market demand for biomass grown in developing countries.
In the project we will investigate what these right norms could be. We hold that when norms of international public law operate on state level, private law contracts should implement these norms. Multinationals rather than governments have become core powers with regard to the morality of the relationship between emerging economies and the developed countries. This necessitates an analysis of the very basis of our legal systems. As the philosopher Habermas puts it, the current liberal basis of what we see as justice is very much governed by the notion of protecting the individual against unwanted state intervention. This obscures the rights of communities and the duties of multinationals. We will use this point of departure to reflect on the norms that should apply in the contractual relations involved in relations between (often Western) multinationals and developing economies.