Can Non‐state Governance ‘Ratchet Up’ Global Environmental Standards? Lessons from the Forest Sector

Abstract

The failure of the worlds’ governments to agree on a binding global forest convention at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit led many leading environmental groups to advance eco‐labelling ‘forest certification’ programmes that, they hoped, would achieve greater success in implementing sustainable forest management. Eschewing traditional State‐centered authority, supporters of this ‘non‐State market driven’ (NSMD) approach turn to customers of wood products to create compliance mechanisms, either through positive incentives such as market access or price premiums, or negative incentives such as ‘direct targeting’ or ‘boycott’ campaigns. Understanding how such systems might ‘ratchet up’ global forestry standards, we argue, requires that existing scholarship place greater attention on the role of public policies in helping to facilitate the impacts of private solutions. Specifically, we argue that scholars and practitioners need to assess strategic decisions not only on the basis of their appropriateness at present, but what they might do to trigger a global ‘race to the top’ at a later time.

The Future of Non-State Authority on Canadian Staples Industries: Assessing the Emergence of Forest Certification

“…For example, do supporters see the FSC as primarily useful for influencing a country's domestic forestry debates, or more important for its indirect effects, as a lever to improve forest practices elsewhere? That is, it matters very much in the early days of NSMD "institutionalisation" (Bernstein and Cashore 2007) whether certification is used as a baseline for improving forest practices in some of the most critically sensitive, yet under-regulated forests, such as in the tropics, or as a gold standard that few firms operating anywhere would actually be able to meet. In the former case, we would expect, and as is consistent with the empirical record in Canada, that those firms that are relatively highly regulated will support FSC certification, in the hopes that their endorsement might pressure their less regulated competitors to improve their forestry practices.…”

“…The answer, we suspect, rests, in part, on where the environmental activists view forest certification's biggest impact (Cashore et al 2007). For example, do supporters see the FSC as primarily useful for influencing a country's domestic forestry debates, or more important for its indirect effects, as a lever to improve forest practices elsewhere?…”

“…Six key features distinguish NSMD governance from other forms of public and private authority (Cashore 2002;Cashore, Auld, and Newsom 2004;Bernstein and Cashore 2007). The most important feature of NSMD governance is the lack of state sovereignty used to enforce compliance.…”

Indigenous Peoples in UN REDD+ Negotiations: “Importing Power” and Lobbying for Rights through Discursive Interplay Management

“…Correspondingly, the diversity of actors in the forestry sector has been dealt with in analyses of market driven governance, certification schemes, and private rule-making (cf. Cashore 2002, Bernstein and Cashore 2004, Gulbrandsen 2004, Pattberg 2005, Cashore et al 2007). Also, a broad literature deals with nonstate actors in global environmental negotiations (cf.…”

Setting the bar: an international comparison of public and private forest policy specifications and implications for explaining policy trends

“…The logic of the 'California effect' is that the existence of prescriptive government regulations would create incentives for the emergence of unlikely coalitions of environmental group and business officials who collectively focus their efforts on increasing regulations in less regulated regions. Likewise, Cashore et al (2007) have theorized about whether there might be a public/private 'California effect' in which the most heavily regulated forestry firms support global certification systems as a means to create a more level playing ground.…”