The rise of global environmental governance regimes allegedly contradicts the process of an environmental "race to the bottom" (RTB) that results from capitalist globalization. We examine new developments in this areastimulating the e-waste recycling market" (emphasis added, UNEP 2012:42).The UNEP report highlights two points that our research addresses. First, we situate our findings in the context of a renewed debate over one of the central sociological concepts underlying early analyses of corporate globalization, that of a "race to the bottom" (RTB). While RTB predicts that competition for corporate investment will lead to a decline in regulations for competing countries (Daly and Cobb 1994), our case suggests that the global expansion of regulations will accompany transnational corporate (TNC) investment. However, the content and aims of this regulatory framework are fundamentally different from the kinds of regulations that RTB predicts would be dismantled, and in the end they leave unchanged or even accelerate the status-quo with regard to the toxic waste trade. This is because LDCs will still receive a disproportionate burden of toxic wastes, and global waste TNCs will expand their opportunities to profit from new facilities. Thus, our findings suggest that, rather than being abated by the expansion of global environmental governance, the RTB in the hazardous waste trade has become more complex as certain industries still successfully advocate for the dismantling of some global regulations-particularly the Basel Convention's North/South hazardous waste export ban-while also promoting an overall increase in other regulations that help expand the importation of hazardous wastes into less developed countries.
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