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Business to the rescue: private sector actors and global environmental regimes’ legitimacy

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Abstract

In 2006, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted decision VIII/17 to further involve the private sector in the activities of the Convention. This initiative mainly aims at improving the current regime’s legitimacy. By increasing business involvement, decision VIII/17 can be viewed within the context of the current academic debate on the ‘privatisation’ of environmental governance, which refers to the growing importance of private actors in the formulation of environmental policies. Against this background, this article aims at: (1) assessing the extent to which decision VIII/17 might reverse the CBD’s legitimacy crisis and (2) analysing the issues at stake when private sector actors are involved in environmental regimes. In order to do so, the article analyses the consequences of decision VIII/17 in terms of internal—representation and transparency—and external—institutional efficiency and implementation—legitimacy. The study is based on an extended empirical scrutiny of the negotiations linked to decision VIII/17. While adopting a general conceptualisation of legitimacy, the value added by the study is to broaden the usual understanding of business strategies towards environmental issues. In particular, this article shows how decision VIII/17 has generated several reactions—defensive as well as proactive—among the business community. At the practical level, the article proposes several recommendations to secure a constructive participation of all categories of business actors in biodiversity governance. At the theoretical level, it calls for a change in deterministic visions of economic actors’ interests.

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Notes

  1. This expression has been quoted in plenary by an environmental non-governmental organisation during the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP 8) in Curitiba, Brazil, 27/03/2006.

  2. Nutraceuticals are diet supplements having positive effects on human health.

  3. In particular, decisions III/6, IV/12, V/11 and VI/16 of the CBD.

  4. Notably, some CBD Secretariat members used to be employed by IUCN (interview with CEBDS representative, 30/03/2006).

  5. During COP 8, the ‘industry group’ gathered several corporations involved in the negotiations of the convention. Observation data of the ‘industry group’ meeting on 22nd March 2006 reveals that there is no strong unity among its members, which come from very different economic sectors. However, the ‘industry group’ meetings are used as a way to gather and exchange information among industry representatives.

  6. See http://www.cbd.int/business/.

  7. ‘Greenwashing’ is a denunciation of the ‘beneficial actions for the environment’ undertaken by corporations while continuing in parallel their usual activities.

  8. For more information see the website of the Finance Initiative of the United Nations Environment Program available at http://www.unepfi.org/about/background/index.html.

Abbreviations

ABS:

Access and Benefit Sharing

B&B:

Business and Biodiversity

CBD:

Convention on Biological Diversity

CEBDS:

Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development

COP 8:

Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity

CSR:

Corporate social responsibility

GMO:

Genetically modified organism

IUCN:

World Conservation Union

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks for insightful and invaluable research assistance to Prof. Daniel Compagnon, Prof. Peter Newell and Prof. Mathew Paterson. This research has contributed to the work package 2 (Mobility) and the thematic area of Global Environmental Governance (5.3.1) of the European GARNET network project. The final paper has also benefited from commentary at the CSGR/GARNET conference held at Warwick University (17–19 September 2007), from careful and thoughtful comments on earlier drafts by two anonymous reviewers and from language assistance by Antoinette Valsamakis and Federico Federici. However, the author bears sole responsibility for any omissions that may remain.

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  1. SPIRIT Research Centre (Political Science, International Relations, Territory), Political Institute of Bordeaux, Sciences Po Bordeaux, 11 Allée Ausone – Domaine Universitaire, 33 607, Pessac Cedex, France

    Amandine J. Bled

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Bled, A.J. Business to the rescue: private sector actors and global environmental regimes’ legitimacy. Int Environ Agreements 9, 153–171 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-009-9092-z

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