The impact of new actors in global environmental politics: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development meets China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since its inception in 1991, the EBRD has had a strong environmental agenda, which it ‘exported’ to post-Communist Europe and Asia. We posit that the post-Soviet states have decreased their carbon emissions more than the average states borrowing from the EBRD as they were more affected by the economic crisis associated with the end of the Soviet Union. However, the post-Soviet states have also been approached by China through a number of regional initiatives launched across Eurasia. Therefore, we further hypothesise that states borrowing from the EBRD that have been aligned with China have higher carbon emissions. We employ a sample of 32 states that borrowed from the EBRD between 1991 and 2015. Through panel-data linear regressions with heteroscedasticity-corrected robust standard errors, we corroborate our hypotheses. This study contributes to a better understanding of new actors in global environmental politics and their role in sustainable development in Eurasia and beyond.