Changes in policy. technology, and organizational structures have led to a truly
global economy, resulting in both new challenges and new opportunities for global
environmental governance. The private sector has adapted well, reorganizing business
activities into dense networks of global supply chains. These same forces have placed
new constraints on the ability of states to govern global activities. Civil society is
utilizing its network characteristics in an effort to fill these governance gaps. Activists
have begun focusing on consumer and capital markets, targeting the retail and financial
nodes of global supply chains, in an attempt to force corporations to the negotiating table.
This work provides new insights into the complex ways in which the
characteristics of an industry shape the prospects for campaign success and the broader
implications of market campaigns for the possibilities of environmental governance. To
answer these questions. two original theoretical frameworks are developed utilizing
existing literature and the experiences of environmental campaigns targeting the forestry
sector. These frameworks are then applied to case studies taken from the mining industry, namely, the No Dirty Gold campaign and the Global Finance campaign.
Activists have been quite successful in their endeavors. The result has been the establishment of private certification institutions, which commit firms to abide by voluntary environmental codes. Continuing campaign pressure has been resulting in a ratcheting-up of these private initiatives. The wider implications discussed within this study revolve around questions of market campaigns' democratic implications, their effect on the regulatory capacity of the state, and their ability to tackle the core causes of environmental issues. The theoretical frameworks developed in this study render multifaceted results, but the implications drawn from them show market campaigns to be a productive, albeit partial, contributor to global environmental governance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/2329 |
| Date | 10 March 2010 |
| Creators | Bloomfield, Michael John |
| Contributors | Webb, Michael C. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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