Project

Private Governance and the Emergence of the Sustainability Marketplace (Louise Nakagawa)

With the growing debate about environmental degradation and social conflicts in the search for more sustainable production processes, emerging market structures architected on a new type of institutional arrangement nominated private governance.

PhD student: Louise Nakagawa

Guided by a new set of rules, policies and social and economic agents, arenas or roundtables are made with the goal of reducing the conflict between participants and ensure the legitimacy of their activities toward international market through certification systems. Therefore, the aim of this research is to use and adapt the concepts of Economic Sociology and Institutional Theory to describe and understand the emergence and dynamics of these roundtables, using as case studies two important global initiatives related to agricultural production of commodities that seek to establish sustainability criteria from creating a new market: Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) and Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS).

Supervisor in Wageningen: Otto Hospes. Promoter in Brazil (Federal University of ABC): Prof. Arilson Favareto