Voluntary Corporate Environmental Initiatives: A Typology and Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Voluntary corporate environmental initiatives are any nonstatutory initiatives that aim at improving corporate environmental performance. These types of initiatives have emerged as an important new policy tool for environmental management in North America. The focus of this paper is on the merits and shortcomings of three major categories of voluntary initiative: self-regulation, the voluntary agreement, and the voluntary challenge. Using data collected from eighteen new and two previously documented case studies of voluntary initiatives, the authors present some of the key characteristics of these types of initiatives and speculate on their role in North America's environmental policy regime. Industry respondents in the case studies identified the threat of regulation, public image, financial considerations, and peer pressure as key motivating factors in their decision to participate in a voluntary initiative. From a policy perspective, issues of concern are the effectiveness of nonstatutory initiatives relative to regulations, the degree of flexibility that they offer, and the role of public involvement. It is concluded that considerable research is still needed to confirm the contentions of proponents or opponents of voluntary initiatives.

The Governance of Sustainable Development: Taking Stock and Looking Forwards

“…Public participation is widely and sometimes rather uncritically identified as a`good thing', but we need to know more about how it should be governed, its opportunity costs, and, ultimately, what it actually delivers in terms of human development`on the ground' ( instruments of governing, not only in an abstract theoretical manner (although of course such work has its value), but drawing on empirical evidence which explores the interrelationships with other modes including systems of regulation and centralised planning. In the past, Environment and Planning C has published many papers on these themes, including those by Hanju« rgens (1998), Hansen et al (2002), Labatt andMaclaren (1998), andSunnevÔg (2000). Some have been relatively empirical (Cherp et al, 2004;O'Doherty et al, 2003), whereas others have had a more normative flavour (Toke, 2005;Zhang, 2000).…”

Rainforest Alliance Certification of Kenyan tea farms: a contribution to sustainability or tokenism?

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