From unsafe working conditions in garment manufacturing to the failure to consult indigenous communities with regard to extractive industries that affect them, human rights violations remain a pervasive aspect of the global economy. Advocates have long called upon states, as the primary duty bearers and enforcers of human rights, to hold corporations directly accountable for violations committed throughout the supply chain. More recently, many business and human rights advocates have considered the development and enforcement of private regulatory initiatives (PRIs) to certify that actors along the supply chain conform to certain codes of conduct. Many advocates see these PRIs as holding the potential to create better outcomes-whether for workers, affected communities, or the environment-within a global economy structured by supply chain capitalism. This volume brings together academics and practitioners from a number of regions throughout the world to engage in theoretical analysis, case study exploration, and reflection on a variety of PRIs. Theorizing outward from the work of practitioners and activists on the ground, the book brings essential but often overlooked questions to the scholarly debates on business, human rights, and global governance. Ultimately, the contributions coalesce around one basic claim: that the inequalities and disparities of power and wealth that are a key characteristic of the contemporary global economy can also mark the origins and operation of PRIs, and do so to varying degrees. The collection highlights the need for discussions about labor, environmental, and other human rights accountability to be situated within a broader analysis of the political economy of contemporary supply chain capitalism. It seeks to enrich discussions of PRIs by bringing into the conversation concerns about distributive justice and political economy.

From unsafe working conditions in garment manufacturing to the failure to consult indigenous communities with regard to extractive industries that affect them, human rights violations remain a pervasive aspect of the global economy. Advocates have long called upon states, as the primary duty bearers and enforcers of human rights, to hold corporations directly accountable for violations committed throughout the supply chain. More recently, many business and human rights advocates have considered the development and enforcement of private regulatory initiatives (PRIs) to certify that actors along the supply chain conform to certain codes of conduct. Many advocates see these PRIs as holding the potential to create better outcomes-whether for workers, affected communities, or the environment-within a global economy structured by supply chain capitalism. This volume brings together academics and practitioners from a number of regions throughout the world to engage in theoretical analysis, case study exploration, and reflection on a variety of PRIs. Theorizing outward from the work of practitioners and activists on the ground, the book brings essential but often overlooked questions to the scholarly debates on business, human rights, and global governance. Ultimately, the contributions coalesce around one basic claim: that the inequalities and disparities of power and wealth that are a key characteristic of the contemporary global economy can also mark the origins and operation of PRIs, and do so to varying degrees. The collection highlights the need for discussions about labor, environmental, and other human rights accountability to be situated within a broader analysis of the political economy of contemporary supply chain capitalism. It seeks to enrich discussions of PRIs by bringing into the conversation concerns about distributive justice and political economy.

In Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy, Julia Dehm provides a critical analysis of how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South, in ways that benefit the interests of some actors while further marginalising others. In accessible prose that draws on interdisciplinary insights, Dehm demonstrates how, through the creation of new legal relations, including property rights and contractual obligations, new forms of transnational authority over forested areas in the Global South are being constituted. This important work should be read by anyone interested in a critical analysis of international climate law and policy that offers insights into questions of political economy, power, and unequal authority.

For those troubled by environmental harm on a global scale and its deeply unequal effects, this book explains how international law structures ecological degradation and environmental injustice while claiming to protect the environment. It identifies how central legal concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, territory, development, environment, labour and human rights make inaccurate and unsustainable assumptions about the natural world and systemically reproduce environmental degradation and injustice. To avert socioecological crises, we must not only unpack but radically rework our understandings of nature and its relationship with law. We propose more sustainable and equitable ways to remake law's relationship with nature by drawing on diverse disciplines and sociocultural traditions that have been marginalized within international law. Influenced by Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonialism and decoloniality, and inspired by Indigenous knowledges, cosmology, mythology and storytelling, this book lays the groundwork for an epistemological shift in the way humans conceptualize the relationship between law and nature.

In Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy, Julia Dehm provides a critical analysis of how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South, in ways that benefit the interests of some actors while further marginalising others. In accessible prose that draws on interdisciplinary insights, Dehm demonstrates how, through the creation of new legal relations, including property rights and contractual obligations, new forms of transnational authority over forested areas in the Global South are being constituted. This important work should be read by anyone interested in a critical analysis of international climate law and policy that offers insights into questions of political economy, power, and unequal authority.