Charting a Functionalist Business-Centred Approach to Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 through Business-to-Business Arbitration

The aim of this article is to establish a link between business-to-business arbitration and sustainable development, and to demonstrate the potential impact of a functionalist business-centred approach to this relationship. While the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 acknowledges the importance of civil access to justice for sustainable development, it does not fully define access to justice, thereby leaving open to interpretation what types of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms Agenda 2030 envisages, and which parties should have access to them. Building on Cappelletti and Garth’s work on waves of access to justice, the article proposes a ‘functionalist business-centred approach’ to access to justice. Using legal functionalism, this article argues for a novel interpretation of access to justice in the sustainable development discourse that would expressly include business-to-business arbitration as a civil justice institution on the premise that without business-to-business arbitration, access to justice as a sustainable development goal as expressed in SDG 16.3 cannot be fully actualised.