Framing Social Sustainability in Infrastructure Theory and Practice: A Review of Two Road Projects in Mexico from a Business and Human Rights Lens

Laura Treviño-Lozano
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Laura Treviño-Lozano: Sapiens Network, European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, University of Greenwich, London SE10 9LS, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: While it has been more than 30 years since sustainability appeared in the development agenda, it remains a fashionable concept with an underdeveloped social dimension and no common understanding. In infrastructure, social sustainability has been neglected or limited to positive social impacts without considering negative social impacts linked to the prevention and redress of business-related human rights abuses on workers, end-users and communities. Through a literature review, this paper explores how sustainability is framed in theory, particularly its social dimension in the context of infrastructure. Across a qualitative analysis of a socially sustainable road project—Necaxa—and a socially unsustainable—Paso Expres—it further explores the elements that frame social sustainability in Mexican practice of road infrastructure, including the role that businesses and human rights play.

Keywords: socially sustainable infrastructure; business and human rights; road infrastructure; social sustainability; SDG12; Agenda 2030; UNGPs; guiding principles of business and human rights; human rights due diligence; operational-level grievance mechanisms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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