Governance for global stewardship: can private certification move beyond commodification in fostering sustainability transformations?

Agni Kalfagianni (), Lena Partzsch () and Miriam Beulting ()
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Agni Kalfagianni: Utrecht University
Lena Partzsch: University of Freiburg
Miriam Beulting: University of Freiburg

Agriculture and Human Values, 2020, vol. 37, issue 1, No 5, 65-81

Abstract: Abstract Stewardship—the caring for fellow human beings as well as the nonhuman world—is receiving increasing attention from scholars in the field of global environmental change. Recent publications underscore that stewardship is becoming a key norm within the global international system of states, but that in remaining state-centric, stewardship fails to create a deeper systemic transformation of the international system’s normative structure. In this article, we examine whether stewardship also underpins hybrid governance arrangements, which are a combination of public requirements and private standards, with a specific emphasis on certification. We argue that a stewardship ethos requires citizenship, compassion and sufficiency. We, thus, contribute to the burgeoning literature on certification by focusing on normative principles that are fundamental for sustainability governance, but have so far been neglected in governance research. Empirically, we are able to reveal broader implications of the normative transformations underway in global sustainability governance. To add depth to our analysis, we concentrate on palm oil, an agricultural commodity, which serves for food purposes and as a substitute for fossil fuels to mitigate global warming. Palm oil is representative of the interlinkages between social and environmental objectives, which are at the core of the notion of stewardship as conceptualized in this article. We find that stewardship underpins hybrid governance arrangements but momentarily it is realized only in niches. We argue that in order to move to a state of global stewardship, we need a bolder public policy agenda which respects environmental limits, acknowledges boundaries for the global poor, and allows for the expression of emotions in public dialogue.

Keywords: Hybrid governance; Palm oil; Private certification; Stewardship; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-019-09971-w

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