Archna Negi Jorge Antonio Pérez-Pineda Johannes Blankenbach Editors Sustainability Standards and Global Governance Experiences of Emerging Economies Sustainability Standards and Global Governance Archna Negi • Jorge Antonio Pérez-Pineda • Johannes Blankenbach Editors Sustainability Standards and Global Governance Experiences of Emerging Economies 123 Editors Archna Negi Jorge Antonio Pérez-Pineda Centre for International Politics, Faculty of Economics and Business Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD) Universidad Anáhuac México School of International Studies Estado de México, Mexico Jawaharlal Nehru University Formerly with the Mora Institute/Instituto de New Delhi, India Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora Mexico City, Mexico Johannes Blankenbach Business & Human Rights Resource Centre Berlin, Germany Formerly with the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Bonn, Germany ISBN 978-981-15-3472-0 ISBN 978-981-15-3473-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3473-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Foreword Sustainability standards are an important element of any strategy that aims at accelerating action towards implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. These agendas were both adopted in 2015, the year in which the collaborative work on this book commenced. Spirits were high then, and confidence in the ability of multilateralism to tackle global challenges grew again. In the end of 2019, it is a source of deep joy to see the final product and to know that it will soon be shared across the network of authors, their institutions and the communities of research and practice that they belong to. The intellectual adventure that lured the editors and authors into writing was based on the hypothesis underlying any international cooperation initiative: putting resources together beyond national borders increases our understanding of global problems and our possibilities of implementing solutions to them. In fact, the interest in learning from others across the world in order to increase the shared body of knowledge has always been an important motive of scientific activity. And a success factor, too, as intellectual curiosity and cooperation helped to push the geographical and epistemological boundaries of the known world ever further. Five years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement, we know that “we are not on track” as the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, put it in September 2019 when speaking at the SDG and climate action summits. More ambition and more action are needed, domestically and globally, as well as renewed investment in international cooperation. Global greenhouse gas emissions are growing instead of falling, and global trade is stalled by tensions between what used to be strong trading partners. At the same time, companies and investors are increasingly realising that the sustainable development goals and the climate agreement actually speak the language of reason in a world threatened by unmitigated climate change, social polarization and unrest. In this situation, it is most useful to be presented an analysis of what sustainability stan- dards are, their strengths and weaknesses, and under which conditions their potential can best be realised, particularly in emerging economies. v vi Foreword The questions agreed by editors and authors in 2015 which this book seeks to answer remain most pertinent: How can public mandatory regulation for sustain- ability 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 inno- vation 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. I thank the editors of this book, Archna Negi, Jorge Antonio Pérez-Pineda and Johannes Blankenbach, for their dedication and perseverance, as well as all con- tributors, for their interest in understanding the potential and the problems of sustainability standards in making global trade more compatible with social inclusion, the reduction of inequalities, sharing benefits and significantly reducing the environmental burden of production, consumption and trade of goods and services. May this book find avid readers and practitioners ready to invest in change! December 2019 Imme Scholz Acting Director German Development Institute/ Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Bonn, Germany Preface Complex interfaces and dynamics of a global nature mark not only the subject matter of this book but also the process through which it was produced. The unique nature of this book necessitates a brief introduction to the project from which it resulted. We believe that it represents an innovative experiment in ‘knowledge cooperation’ that involved a coming together of scholars and practitioners from the global South and North to jointly ponder upon the conceptual aspects of a chosen theme, enriched by empirical insights from the ‘emerging economies’. This project has taken shape under the knowledge cooperation component of the Managing Global Governance (MGG) programme run by the Bonn-based German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The MGG programme, initiated in 2007, is a training and dialogue programme designed for young professionals from the ‘emerging powers’ and Germany to converge under the broad theme of ‘global governance’ (See https://www.die-gdi.de/en/managing-global-governance/). The ‘MGG Academy’ has run for about 13 years now (until 2020), having completed 17 MGG courses so far—located mainly in Bonn. The MGG programme has created a rich alumni and partner network amongst a group of countries—Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Germany/Europe—which are a part of the programme (as were Egypt and Pakistan for some years). MGG works with young professionals as well as senior experts located in government bodies, research institutions, aca- demia, think tanks, civil society organizations, private sector organizations, etc. to jointly discuss and contribute to knowledge cooperation on issues of global gov- ernance. This book project was one such activity that emerged from ‘knowledge cooperation’ within the MGG alumni network, led and supported by the DIE. The project was initiated in January 2015, when the theme for the project was finalized and a Call