Disrupting Anthropocentric Supply Chains to Recentre Nature

Ursula Davis, Lucy McCarthy, Anne Touboulic and and Errolinda Ward

Chapter 7 in A Research Agenda for Contract Law, 2026, pp 163-180 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, we question the efficacy of existing policies and legal frameworks that seek to drive environmental and socially sustainable supply chains. For instance, the recently adopted European Sustainability Reporting Standard mandates large businesses to report on the socio-environmental impacts of their supply chain activities as well as acknowledging how climate and environmental changes affect their own operations. Whilst this is a step in the right direction, we argue these frameworks do not go far enough in that they still centre business as the dominant voice. The legitimacy of ‘the business’ remains unquestioned in the current ecological crisis. We propose to widen our perspective as to which voices should be accounted for in order for supply chains to be ecologically sound and socially just. Contracts are a fundamental mechanism through which supply chain relationships are formed but also through which businesses pass on socio-environmental responsibility; yet there is no contract with nature. We consider key natural resources as a focal point in this chapter: water and land. We use these to demonstrate the shortcomings of current supply chain practices and explore ways in which we could rethink our approaches to care for the more-than-human.

Keywords: Supply Chain Contracts; Anthropocentrism; Planetary Boundaries; Supply Ecosystems; Natural Capital Accounting; Recentring Nature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035342570
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