Sustainability Standards and Global Governance : Experiences of Emerging Economies

The questions agreed by editors and authors in 2015 which this book seeks to answer remain most pertinent: How can public mandatory regulation for sustainability and voluntary standards for the same purpose be designed to promote complementarity between public and private collective action and thus accelerate change? What is the role of global norm-setting institutions, such as the WTO, to ensure that the growing number of voluntary private standards that in fact regulate access to global trade and value chains does not create new barriers? How to ensure that sustainability standards and regulations of dominating markets support innovation in exporting firms in the South and at the same time do not hinder the creation of locally adapted rules and standards for sustainability? How to better understand the needs of smallholders in agriculture and SMEs and enable them to participate in growing sustainability markets? Do corporate social responsibility commitments and sustainability reporting help to align companies’ core objectives and performance indicators with the SDGs? The book provides some answers to these questions, which hopefully will be picked up by its readers, in academia, in public policy and companies’ strategies, and in everyone’s practice, to achieve the accelerated action we need. The book’s insights also inevitably lead to new research questions that can contribute to new and enhanced learning processes