Quality and legitimacy of global governance: case lessons from forestry

Since the Rio 'Earth' Summit of 1992, sustainable development has become the major policy framework through which the international community deals with pressing environmental issues such as deforestation. Implicit in this approach is the belief that the market provides the best mechanism to bring government, business and society together, and a whole plethora of market-driven schemes have been developed in response. Yet how legitimate are these institutions, and where is their democratic accountability? This book looks at four institutions created to address forest management, namely the Forest Stewardship Council (non-governmental), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (business), the ISO 14000 Series of environmental standards (technocratic), and the United Nations Forum on Forests (governmental). It finds large discrepancies in the approaches taken, and the degree to which the four systems provide for meaningful participation and productive deliberation amongst stakeholders trying to address the global forest crisis