Analysis

In their current form, the proposals in the Elements Papers and the Zero Draft inadequately cover the complex and interconnected issues of climate finance and debt distress, which are crucial for realizing sustainable development in Africa. Therefore, the framework should leverage grant-based climate finance to avoid perpetual concession loans. Unlike loans, grants do not add to the already rising debt burden but instead offer a more stable and sustainable avenue to finance climate action. This will be important to break the vicious cycle of "borrow-and-under-develop" that continues to hold Africa back from realizing both its climate and development aspirations.

This essay will harmonize perspectives on responsible sovereign borrowing, re-emphasising the importance of shared responsibilities. It will commence by briefly examining the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing (“the UNCTAD Principles”) and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (“the Agenda”). Additionally, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) proposals on sustainable and responsible borrowing and lending and debt crisis prevention will be appraised. This analysis will consider the applicability of these principles within the specific context of African countries, considering economic, political, and social realities.

This symposium aims to provide a platform for African voices to engage with and critique these foundational proposals. Bringing together perspectives from undergraduate and postgraduate students and early career researchers, the symposium reflects the intellectual dynamism of African youth contributing to global financing debates. These contributions underscore the necessity of ensuring Africa’s priorities and perspectives are central to the FfD4 agenda.

The opacity of the ISDS regime is not a mere oversight but rather a structural feature that prioritizes the investor-centric nature of its proceedings while giving limited consideration to the broader social, environmental, and economic impacts of investment disputes. Local communities often bear the brunt of disruptions caused by these projects, only to face the added burden of compensating the very investors responsible. Such payouts often divert public funds away from essential services, prioritizing corporate interests over the welfare of ordinary citizens. Arbitral tribunals reinforce this exclusivity by systematically excluding the voices of those most affected. While treaties and rules formally acknowledge the role of amicus curiae to lend a veneer of legitimacy, they actively stifle such participation by withholding key information and imposing procedural demands that resource-strapped local communities, academics, and civil society organizations are often unable to meet.

Dzah’s analysis succeeds in meeting the objective stated at the beginning of the book. It does so by diagnosing deficiencies of sustainable development and pointing the reader to a conceptual toolbox from which to draw ethical principles for re-imagining sustainable development. One angle of analysis that could have been addressed in this book is whether there are any drawbacks inherent to African ecocosmologies as a rationality for sustainable development. The analysis leaves the reader with an altogether positive outlook on the legal value of African ecocosmologies.

International law applies to the interchanging relationships and rules between states, including the establishment of norms and standards which govern their activities. This changing landscape of international law is recognised in one of the introductory paragraphs of this book: ‘international law possess an inherent transformative power to renew and remake itself if we are committed to reimagining the discipline and its fundamental characteristics, including the concept of sustainable development’ (pg 2). Sustainable development (SD) has been an integral part of international law discourse before the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Hence, this book focuses on the ahistoricism and influence of international law on the environment and sustainable development in African legal systems through a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens.

This book is about reimagining sustainable development. At a time when many scholars have become disillusioned with the concept and calls for abandoning sustainable development in favour of new concepts abound, Dzah makes an impassioned call for us to retain the idea, whose ancient roots predate its co-optation by Western (legal) hegemony, while think about it in a radically different way. The way in which he suggests we do this, is by turning to African relational ontologies and environmental ethics that (re)conceptualise humans “as mere co-occupants of nature with other species”.

Dr. Godwin Dzah’s thought-provoking book investigates the actual and potential contributions of Africa and its peoples, including through their rich worldviews, to the making and doing of international law, treating sustainable development as a microcosm. At its core is a vision to deploy Africa’s Indigenous worldviews to reimagine sustainable development, advance thinking on how it should be applied in international law going forward.

I am very happy to introduce the symposium on my book, Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies, by Cambridge University Press in May 2024. This symposium features four very thoughtful and critical reviews. These four reflections should be read as companion pieces together with my introduction. They address different aspects of the book, provide points of convergence and divergence, and foreshadow future research. I am grateful to these reviewers for their kind engagement with my book, for their constructive criticisms and positive feedback. I am equally grateful to the editors of AfronomicsLaw.org for curating this symposium.