IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ipewps/324644.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The New Development Bank and the ecological transition: Decoupling development finance from core currency hegemony?

Author

Listed:
  • Godinho, Enzo
  • Mattos, Beatriz

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of the New Development Bank (NDB) in challenging global financial hierarchies while fostering an ecological transition. The NDB, established by BRICS, has a mechanism of providing development finance in local currency, which could reduce dependency on core currencies like the dollar (USD) and the euro (EUR), offering an alternative for peripheral economies to finance sustainable development. Given the institutionalization of the green economy agenda and the rise of green finance, the paper raises elements to assess the NDB's contribution to the ecological transition through its investment strategy. Our analysis builds on structuralist and dependency theories, identifying three interlinked hierarchies - productive, currency, and environmental - that shape global financial asymmetries. We examine the NDB's project portfolio from 2016 to 2024 and the interplay between the projects' area of operation, currency of funding, and country of implementation. The findings indicate that, while the NDB has made strides in funding sustainable infrastructure, its operations remain largely embedded within dominant currency systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Godinho, Enzo & Mattos, Beatriz, 2025. "The New Development Bank and the ecological transition: Decoupling development finance from core currency hegemony?," IPE Working Papers 260/2025, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ipewps:324644
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/324644/1/1933769688.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruno Bonizzi & Annina Kaltenbrunner & Jeff Powell, 2022. "Financialised capitalism and the subordination of emerging capitalist economies," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 46(4), pages 651-678.
    2. Bonizzi, Bruno & Kaltenbrunner, Annina & Powell, Jeffrey, 2019. "Subordinate financialization in emerging capitalist economies," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 23044, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    3. Jeffrey Althouse & Romain Svartzman, 2022. "Bringing subordinated financialisation down to earth: the political ecology of finance-dominated capitalism," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 46(4), pages 679-702.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leandro M. Bona, 2024. "The Challenges of Overcoming the External Constraint in Latin America: An Examination of the Potentials and Challenges of Green Financing Using a Political Economy Perspective," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 67(3), pages 280-290, December.
    2. Daniele Tori & Özlem Onaran, 2022. "Financialisation and firm-level investment in developing and emerging economies," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 46(4), pages 891-919.
    3. Valdecantos, Sebastian, 2025. "The green transition dilemma: The impossible (?) quest for prosperity of South American economies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    4. Schedelik, Michael & Nölke, Andreas & May, Christian & Gomes, Alexandre, 2022. "Dependency revisited: Commodities, commodity-related capital flows and growth models in emerging economies," IPE Working Papers 201/2022, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    5. Gräbner-Radkowitsch, Claudius & Strunk, Birte, 2023. "Degrowth and the Global South: The twin problem of global dependencies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    6. Hannes Warnecke-Berger, 2022. "The financialization of remittances and the individualization of development: A new power geometry of global development," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(4), pages 702-721, June.
    7. Yuegang Song & Ruibing Wu, 2022. "The Impact of Financial Enterprises’ Excessive Financialization Risk Assessment for Risk Control based on Data Mining and Machine Learning," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 1245-1267, December.
    8. Pablo Gabriel Bortz & Nicole Toftum & Nicolás Hernán Zeolla, 2021. "Old Cycles and New Vulnerabilities: Financial Deregulation and the Argentine Crisis," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(3), pages 598-626, May.
    9. Emon Kalyan Chowdhury, 2024. "Do weather patterns effect investment decisions in the stock market? A South Asian perspective," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(2), pages 162-171, March.
    10. Tausch, Luca & Althouse, Jeffrey, 2025. "Ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) as a multi-tiered hierarchy: Investigating the interdependence of global and domestic environmental inequalities to explain China's rise," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    11. Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, 2021. "Beyond the Stereotype: Restating the Relevance of the Dependency Research Programme," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(1), pages 76-112, January.
    12. Perry, Keston K., 2020. "The New ‘Bond-age’, Climate Crisis and the Case for Climate Reparations: Unpicking Old/New Colonialities of Finance for Development within the SDGs," SocArXiv h9s2z, Center for Open Science.
    13. Althouse, Jeffrey & Cahen-Fourot, Louison & Carballa-Smichowski, Bruno & Durand, Cédric & Knauss, Steven, 2023. "Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    14. repec:osf:osfxxx:pjt7x_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Braun, Benjamin, 2021. "From exit to control: The structural power of finance under asset manager capitalism," SocArXiv 4uesc, Center for Open Science.
    16. repec:osf:socarx:4uesc_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Raluca Florentina CRETU & Florin DOBRE & Radu Florin CHIOTA & Carina Ilinca GOMBOS, 2023. "The Influence Of The Budget On National Security In The Context Of Economic Crisis," Proceedings of the INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 17(1), pages 175-183, November.
    18. Ganguly, Arpan & Spinola, Danilo, 2024. "Growth and distribution regimes under global value chains: Diversification, integration, and uneven development," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 634-649.
    19. Sophie van Huellen & Fuad Mohammed Abubakar, 2021. "Potential for Upgrading in Financialised Agri-food Chains: The Case of Ghanaian Cocoa," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(2), pages 227-252, April.
    20. Jorge Garcia-Arias & Alan Cibils & Agostina Costantino & Vitor B. Fernandes & Eduardo Fernández-Huerga, 2021. "When Land Meets Finance in Latin America: Some Intersections between Financialization and Land Grabbing in Argentina and Brazil," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-37, July.
    21. Kaldor, Yair, 2022. "Financialization and Fictitious Capital: The Rise of Financial Securities as a Form of Private Property," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 54(2), pages 239-254.
    22. Fevereiro, José Bruno R.T. & Genovese, Andrea & Purvis, Ben & Codina, Oriol Vallès & Passarella, Marco Veronese, 2025. "Macroeconomic models for assessing the transition towards a circular economy: A systematic review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • O44 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Environment and Growth
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ipewps:324644. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iphwrde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.