Business and Climate Policy: The Potentials and Pitfalls of Private Voluntary Programs

Edited Karsten Ronit

PUBLICATION DATA:

ISBN-10: 92-808-1214-9,
ISBN-13: 978-92-808-1214-5

LANGUAGE:

English

PAGES:

276

PRICE:

US$34.00

PUBLISHER:

United Nations University Press

PUBLISHED:

June 2012

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Climate change has become one of the most important and challenging global policy fields. Attention has primarily focused on the successes and failures of states and intergovernmental organizations but many more actors are involved and contribute to solutions. Business, often seen as spurring climate change, harbours a lot of potential for problem solving. Today, a rich variety of private voluntary programs address climate change.

Privatevoluntary programs are private in the sense that they are initiated by and made up of businesses, voluntary in the sense that businesses are free to join or leave them, and programs in that a variety of formal rules, resources and bodies are often established to administer and evaluate the schemes.

Business and Climate Policy assesses the potentials and pitfalls of existing private voluntary programs. The contributors evaluate how effectively different programs meet public and private goals at the national and international levels, and across industries. The lessons learned presented in this book can help to design new programs and improve those in existence. Such lessons learned are relevant not only within climate policy, but also within the many other policy fields in which private voluntary programs are active.

About the Editor

Karsten Ronit is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.

Table of contents:

Part I: Introduction .
Marrying climate policy and private voluntary programs, Karsten Ronit

Part II: Cross-sectoral and multisectoral programs
Private voluntary programs in environmental governance: Climate change and the financial sector, Jennifer Clapp and Jason Thistlethwaite
Private voluntary programs on climate change: US federal government as the sponsoring actor, Lily Hsueh and Aseem Prakash

Part III: Sectors .
The role of private voluntary climate programs affecting forests: Assessing their direct and intersecting effects, Laura Bozzi, Benjamin Cashore, Kelly Levin and Constance McDermott
Emerging private voluntary programs and climate change: The blind spots of the agrifood sector, Doris Fuchs and Frederike Boll
Climate change, private voluntary programs and the automobile industry, Tony Porter
 

Part IV: Conclusions
Private voluntary programs in climate policy: Potentials and pitfalls, Karsten Ronit