Global Commodities, Sustainable Governance: An Analytic Framework

Abstract

A major challenge confronting the global community is the restructuring of production and consumption relations to meet the requirements of environmental and social sustainability. Two dimensions to this challenge stand out. The first is to reduce the overall scale of production measured in terms of throughput of energy and materials, while simultaneously closing the gap between under- and over-consumers. The second is to ensure the goods that are consumed are appropriately sourced, transformed, transported and disposed of according to the principles of sustainability. The emerging literature on sustainable consumption addresses the first issue related to scale effects. The literature pits analysts who view the capitalist-market system as fundamental to the solution via the system’s role in stimulating innovation and efficiency (e.g. Huber 2000) against proponents of autochthonous communities that eschew exchange relations in favour of self-sufficiency (e.g. Goldsmith 1993). In between lie the environmental nationalists who, building on a conception of the ‘steady-state’ (Daly 1973), view governments as playing a crucial role in regulating production and consumption relations in the interests of sustainability.