Transnational Sustainability Laws

This book examines how voluntary sustainability standards can be used to both regulate and coordinate producers in industries.

Phillip Paiement (Author)

9781108405997, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 November 2017

358 pages
22.6 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

Transnational standards related to the environmental and social sustainability of production processes are becoming commonplace governance tools in the global economy. This book demonstrates how sustainability standards serve two fundamentally different functions: coordination and regulation. Standards can coordinate like-minded businesses in an industry by demarcating common sustainability commitments to distinguish between sustainable and unsustainable sectors of the industry. Yet, standards can also regulate businesses, requiring them to change production and trade practices to align with the sustainability demands of third-parties, including trading partners, advocacy groups, consumers and other civil society constituencies. These two functions reflect the private and public lenses, respectively, through which legal scholars can assess standards as transnational sustainability laws. With key case studies in forestry standards, palm oil standards, and the ISEAL Alliance, this book demonstrates how socio-legal analyses of transnational rulemaking inform debates about global administrative law and the constitutionalization of the global economy.

Introduction
1. Between co-ordination and regulation: the dual functions of voluntary sustainability standards
2. The socio-legal analysis of sustainability standards
3. Governing public forests with private standards: the case of FSC in the Great Lakes region
4. Certifying global palm oil productions: the case of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil
5. Meta-regulating sustainability standards: the case of ISEAL alliance
6. The politics of transnational sustainability laws
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Environment, transport & planning law [LNK], Company, commercial & competition law [LNC], International law of transport, communications & commerce [LBD], Public international law [LBB], Legal history [LAZ], Law & society [LAQ], Comparative law [LAM]