Market globalization and the globalization of environmental concerns have spurred demand for greater international accountability for forest stewardship. In response, a range of multi-lateral governmental and non-governmental initiatives have emerged to redefine the rules of global trade, and demand verification of the legality and/or sustainability of forest products originating from within and outside national boundaries. At the same time there is a lack of transparency and shared understanding about the environmental forest policies that already exist within the world's leading forest producing and consuming countries. The result is that many stakeholders have developed perceptions about a country's regulatory environment that are not consistent with what is actually taking place. This book provides a uniquely detailed and systematic comparison of environmental forest policies and enforcement in twenty countries worldwide, covering developed, transition and developing economies. The goal is to enhance global policy learning and promote well-informed and precisely tuned policy solutions.

Setting the Standard chronicles the emergence and implications of an ambitious experiment in civil-society-led global governance: the Forest Stewardship Council. Drawing on a pioneering case study of this negotiation process, this book explores the challenges associated with implementing the FSC's global vision on the ground. Indeed, the establishment of an FSC standard for British Columbia was achieved only after difficult and protracted negotiations at the regional, national, and global levels. This important work also undertakes a detailed comparative analysis of FSC standards and standard-setting processes elsewhere and grapples with the broader implications for global governance and regulatory theory.

In this important book, Lawrence Sager, a leading constitutional theorist, offers a lucid understanding and compelling defence of American constitutional practice. Sager treats judges as active partners in the enterprise of securing the fundamentals of political justice, and sees the process of constitutional adjudication as a promising and distinctly democratic addition to that enterprise. But his embrace of the constitutional judiciary is not unqualified. Judges in Sager's view should and do stop short of enforcing the whole of the Constitution; and the Supreme Court should welcome rather than condemn the efforts of Congress to pick up the slack. Among the surprising fruit of this justice-seeking account of American constitutional practice are a persuasive case for the constitutional right to secure a materially decent life and sympathy for the obduracy of the Constitution to amendment. No book can end debate in this conceptually tumultuous area; but Justice in Plainclothes is likely to help shape the ongoing debate for years to come.

Public concern about worsening global environmental and social conditions has spurred corporate participation in voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Such efforts are promising, but CSR participation has unfolded unevenly across the globe, leading to skepticism about the efficacy of CSR efforts, and to increased pressure on governments to get involved. Corporate Social Responsibility and the State examines CSR governance through the lens of forest certification in Canada, the US, and Sweden. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with experts, Lister offers revealing new information on CSR governance, ultimately demonstrating the importance of voluntary CSR as a supplement to rather than a substitute for strong state regulation. One of the first studies to directly address the role of the public sector in CSR, this book provides much-needed theoretical and practical guidance for understanding a vital new governance approach to effective social and environmental stewardship.

The Forest and the Marine Stewardship Councils constitute new global governance institutions using voluntary certification and labelling as market incentives to encourage sustainable management. Utilizing a comparative political economic framework, the authors analyse shifting British, Canadian and Australian responses to the stewardship councils.

The experience of environmental governance is approached in Improving Global Environmental Governance from the unique perspective of actor configuration and embedded networks of actors, which are areas of emerging importance. The chapters look at existing Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and the broader constellation of partially networked institutions to better understand the involvement of individual actors and how to deepen the networks that include them to generate more effective governance. The book covers a wide range of issued pertaining to environmental governance including trans-boundary air pollution, marine pollution, biodiversity and ozone depletion. It also examines partnerships as a hybrid case of emerging modes of environmental governance. These partnerships are a recent form of actor configuration that warrant attention for dealing with global environmental threats in order to better understand the full potential of actor configurations in the absence of state involvement. In order to test applicability to on-going but stalled processes, the book applies the approach to one of the most difficult issues we face: climate change. By addressing key questions in this important area, the book provides new perspectives in the nexus between agency and architecture in environmental governance in the twenty-first century.

The growing intensity and complexity of public service has spurred policy reform efforts across the globe, many featuring attempts to promote more collaborative government. Collaboration in Public Service Delivery sheds light on these efforts, analysing and reconceptualising the major types of collaboration in public service delivery through a governance lens.

An important read for academics and policy-makers alike, Hard Choices, Soft Law asserts that voluntary standards, or 'soft' law, are an important supplement to international law in a number of areas. This key work firstly outlines the approach taken to combining soft and hard law and trade, environment and labour values in the WTO and NAFTA, and in the prospective Millennium Round. Then, using the forestry sector - a realm where formal international law remains largely absent - the book provides a detailed examination of the role of soft law in action. It demonstrates how soft and hard law can be combined to promote trade, environmental and social cohesion, in ways that also permit sustainable development. The book presents a wealth of knowledge from a range of contributors familiar with the work of the G7/G8, the OECD, the Biodiversity Convention and the Codex Alimentarius.

The response from the jewelry industry to a campaign for ethically sourced gold as a case study in the power of business in global environmental politics. Gold mining can be a dirty business. It creates immense amounts of toxic materials that are difficult to dispose of. Mines are often developed without community consent, and working conditions for miners can be poor. Income from gold has funded wars. And consumers buy wedding rings and gold chains not knowing about any of this. In Dirty Gold, Michael Bloomfield shows what happened when Earthworks, a small Washington-based NGO, launched a campaign for ethically sourced gold in the consumer jewelry market, targeting Tiffany and other major firms. The unfolding of the campaign and its effect on the jewelry industry offer a lesson in the growing influence of business in global environmental politics. Earthworks planned a “shame” campaign, aimed at the companies' brands and reputations, betting that firms like Tiffany would not want to be associated with pollution, violence, and exploitation. As it happened, Tiffany contacted Earthworks before they could launch the campaign; the company was already looking for partners in finding ethically sourced gold. Bloomfield examines the responses of three companies to “No Dirty Gold” activism: Tiffany, Wal-Mart, and Brilliant Earth, a small company selling ethical jewelry. He finds they offer a case study in how firms respond to activist pressure and what happens when businesses participate in such private governance schemes as the “Golden Rules” and the “Conflict-Free Gold Standard.” Taking a firm-level view, Bloomfield examines the different opportunities for and constraints on corporate political mobilization within the industry.