Market Movements: Nongovernmental Organization Strategies to Influence Global Production and Consumption

Abstract

SummaryThis article analyzes nongovernmental organization (NGO) ''market campaigns'' that seek to motivate changes in global consumption and production patterns. Through campaigns targeting products as diverse as paper, shoes, and computers, advocacy groups seek to use existing concerns of consumers to influence producers, and simultaneously, to expand and deepen consumer demand for more sustainable products and services. NGOs deploy both negative information to critique leading brands, and positive information to help build new markets for improved products. Successful market campaigns construct networks of actors that identify points of leverage within global production and trading regimes; coordinate research, exposure, direct action, and negotiations with brands; identify solutions; advance new multi-stakeholder standards and monitoring and certification schemes; build new nongovernmental regulatory institutions; and occasionally attempt to strengthen state regulation. Through an assessment of three market campaigns focused on Staples, Nike, and Dell, this article describes the nature of these campaigns, discusses how they function, assesses their central strategies and tactics, and analyzes whether they are actually having an impact. The article concludes by discussing the relevance and implications of these campaigns for the field of industrial ecology, and how industrial ecology might support future efforts to advance more sustainable production and consumption.

Corporate response to CSO criticism: decoupling the corporate responsibility discourse from business practice

“…Corporations in the western world today face pressures to increase their sphere of responsibility (Kolk and van Tulder, 2002;Jenkins, 2003;Margolis and Walsh, 2003;Micheletti, 2003;Spar and LaMure, 2003;O'Rourke, 2005;Segerlund, 2005). This is causing an increased number of ideologically based negotiations in society (Wade-Benzoni et al, 2002).…”

Impacts of nonstate, market-driven governance on Chilean forests

“…Although voluntary in nature, they derive authority through markets. Credible threats of market exclusion, or promises of price premiums can serve to incentivize more responsible social and environmental practices (8). Such governance structures have been praised for their potential to slow deforestation associated with the production of Brazilian soy and beef (9), Indonesian palm oil (10), and boreal timber (11).…”

“…Most ex-post evaluations of NSMD governance in the forestry sector have focused on the legitimacy of the decisionmaking process rather than on the environmental outcomes of the regime (18). Clear assessments of the environmental impacts of this new form of environmental governance are lacking (8,16,19,20), due in part to the short history of NSMD governance and confounding effects of broader market dynamics and government policies (9). Previous assessments generally failed to meet basic standards of rigor such as comparison with a credible control (21).…”

La connaissance et la pratique des réseaux comme projet politique

“…Et, de fait, les stratégies des réseaux militants semblent prendre ce type d'orientation. Dara O'Rourke montre par exemple que, derrière les campagnes qui ont visé certains produits, ce sont aussi des réseaux qui ont réussi à se construire et à trouver des points d'appui pour engager leur action (O 'Rourke, 2005). L'influence comme modalité d'action collective a d'ailleurs pour particularité intéressante de pouvoir entrer dans un processus cumulatif.…”