Hamish van der Ven

University of British Columbia | UBC · Department of Wood Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how humans obtain information about environmental challenges. Yet the outputs of AI chatbots contain biases that affect how humans view these challenges. Here, we use qualitative and quantitative content analysis to identify bias in AI chatbot characterizations of the issues, causes, consequences, and solut...

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are transnational governance instruments that can be leveraged to pursue sustainable development in global value chains. They have proliferated since the 1990s in terms of their number and the share of global production they govern. This paper shares some key insights arising from the considerable body of li...

The contributions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and social media to the climate crisis are often underestimated. To date, much of the focus has been on direct emissions associated with the life cycle of tech products. In this forum article, we argue that this narrow focus misses the adverse and indirect impacts of generative AI and soc...

Practices of stakeholder engagement vary widely across voluntary sustainability standard setters. This study examines how the sponsorship structure of standard setters affects the diversity of stakeholders included in consultations and the influence of stakeholder input on standards. I compare six sustainability standard setters through an original...

Global value chains for commodity agriculture have been the target of a broad array of sustainability governance efforts led by both public and private actors. In this paper, we ask: how do public policies and private standards interact in commodity-exporting countries? To answer this question, we examine the interactions between voluntary sustaina...

The fast fashion industry is subject to growing calls for transparency, from civil society groups as well as consumers. Despite universal pressure on retailers to disclose information on supply chain practices, uptake of transparency policies and practices has been heterogenous amongst large fast fashion companies. In this paper, we explain variati...

Voluntary sustainability standards can be powerful tools for incentivizing sustainable production practices. Most standards rely on stakeholder input to gain legitimacy and set levels of achievement for businesses at an appropriate level. Yet, the effects of stakeholder input are contentious. Whereas some see stakeholder input leading to more strin...

This is the introduction to a special issue on ‘Sustainable Commodity Governance and the Global South.’ A broad range of transnational governance initiatives have emerged to respond to social and environmental challenges caused by commodity production. These initiatives – like voluntary sustainability standards and certifications – tend to target c...

Private organizations play a growing role in governing global issues alongside traditional public actors such as states, international organizations, and subnational governments. What do we know about how private authority and public policy interact? What are the implications of answering this question for understanding support for, and effects of,...

The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but...

Agricultural commodity production in the Global South is accompanied by a range of social and environmental problems ranging from pollution and deforestation to labor rights violations. Accordingly, governments and non-state actors have responded through various governance initiatives aimed at promoting sustainable commodity production. While the e...

The growth of global value chains (GVCs) and the emergence of novel forms of value chain governance pose two questions for normative business ethics. First, how should we conceptualize the relationships between members of a GVC? Second, what ethical implications follow from these relationships, both with respect to interactions between GVC members...

This chapter uses an original dataset comprising information on 123 transnational eco-labeling organizations to probe a series of hypotheses on the conditions for procedurally credible eco-labeling. The hypotheses are divided into three categories that focus on who is governing, where the governance takes place, and what sector or issue area the go...

After reviewing the book’s thesis and the evidence in support of it, this chapter outlines a number of key implications for transnational governance scholarship and practice. It suggests a fundamental rethinking of the sources of rigor and credibility in transnational governance, moving away from a focus on the owners or sponsors of governance and...

This chapter argues that the targets of governance condition the procedural credibility of eco-labeling organizations. Eco-labeling organizations that target large firms and seek global market presence—those that aim big—are more likely to follow best practices than those with narrower ambitions. The chapter details three causal mechanisms through...

This chapter tests the aiming big hypothesis by tracing the origin and evolution of four eco-labeling organizations in sustainable aquaculture: the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP), Friend of the Sea (FOS), and Naturland. The chapter argues that stronger adherence to best practices in the ASC and BAP programs...

This chapter further tests the aiming big hypothesis by tracing the origin and evolution of four ELOs that certify carbon neutrality or carbon reduction efforts: The Carbon Trust, The CarbonNeutral Company, Enviro-Mark Solutions, and Carbonfund.org. Through comparative case studies and careful process tracing, illuminated by both interviews and pri...

Modern consumers are confronted by a growing array of colorful eco-labels on everything from coffee to computers. Yet, not all of these eco-labels are trustworthy. Despite the existence of well-established best practices for eco-labeling, many labels remain little more than superficial exercises in “greenwash.” How can consumers separate greenwash...

This chapter introduces eco-labels, explains where and how they differ, and establishes their empirical and theoretical importance. The book’s central puzzle is set up through an example of how two well-known eco-labeling schemes vary in credibility. The chapter then argues that variation in the credibility of eco-labels can be partly explained by...

Do retailers and supermarkets hold power over third-party transnational sustainability standards? If so, what is the nature of their power, when and how do they use it and to what ends? Using the counterintuitive case of Walmart’s efforts to improve the Best Aquaculture Practices standard for sustainable aquaculture, I develop a conceptualization o...

Why has the market uptake and sophistication of information-based environmental governance (IBEG) programs like eco-labeling increased despite mixed signals on the willingness and ability of individual consumers to support such programs? We argue that the extant literature on IBEG focuses too narrowly on individual consumer purchasing decisions to...

In countries marked by the growing uptake of non-state market driven (NSMD) governance for agricultural commodities (i.e., eco-labels and certification systems), forested areas are steadily decreasing while crop lands are growing. This deforestation continues despite NSMD rules aimed at prohibiting the conversion of forested land to agriculture. In...

This article begins by situating forest certification within a broader set of forest governance institutions and innovations. It then examines how certification has been practiced to date, before investigating whether, when, and how it has achieved its intended impacts. Doing so reveals a number of gaps in existing knowledge that stem from narrow c...

Best practices are increasingly used to govern a range of global issues. Yet, the rise of global governance through best practices has received scant attention in the International Relations literature. How do best practices differ from other modes of governance? How are they constructed? And to what end? We offer a novel conceptualisation of best...

Nonstate and subnational climate governance activities are proliferating. Alongside them are databases and registries that attempt to calculate their contributions to global decar-bonization. We label these registries “orchestration platforms” because they both aggregate disparate initiatives and attempt to steer them toward overarching objectives...

The number of eco-labeling schemes is rising dramatically, yet the rigor and credibility of such schemes remains uneven. Whereas some eco-labeling organizations (ELOs) comply with best practice guidelines designed to increase the credibility of their standards through attention to good operating principles, such as transparency and impartiality, ot...

Despite a considerable push by policy-makers to incentivize green business practices, take-up of environmental initiatives amongst North American retailers has been highly uneven. While some "big-box" retailers have launched ambitious environmental initiatives, others continue to conduct business as usual. This paper asks: why do some mega-retailer...