A Managerial Approach for the Coherent Development of Sustainable Development Law: The Kenya Electricity Expansion Project before the World Bank and the European Investment Bank’s International Accountability Mechanisms

Abstract

While judicial bodies have proliferated in the last fifty years in a process that has been deemed “quasi-anarchic”(Guillaume,G., 2000) creating a risk of inconsistency in their decisions which would endanger the international law system, quasi-judicial bodies such as Multilateral Development Banks' accountability mechanisms are not spared by this legal phenomenon. They have diverse proceedings and jurisdictions, operate with different sets of environmental and social safeguards, but may confront similar factual scenarios, especially in the case of co-financing. The recent Kenya Electricity Expansion Project presented before the World Bank and the European Investment Bank’s accountability mechanisms illustrates that, through a managerial approach, potentially conflicting findingscan be avoided. This paper aims to show that quasi-judicial bodies can constitute a source of inspiration for the integrated development of international law.

Keywords: Environmental and Social Safeguards, European Investment Bank, Fragmentation, International Accountability Mechanisms, Quasi-Judicial Bodies, Sustainable Development, World Bank