ABSTRACT
Eco-consumerism and voluntary corporate responsibility are hailed for being regulation-light and permitting the market to function more efficiently, allowing consumers to guide companies towards better behaviour. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a voluntary certification programme to set standards for sustainable palm oil production. This allows producers to define ethical operating and production standards and then give consumers both‘freedom’and responsibility for choosing products within those highly questionable definitions of sustainability. RSPO, and its network of corporate and NGO stakeholders, extends the‘common sense’that the market is the only logical vehicle for sustainability, while reinforcing the opposite message that the only responsibility of business is to increase its profits. In a sinister twist, the narrative is also used to weaken the legitimacy of the state, small business, and the masses. This carefully framed concept‘sustainability’is used to expose the tenuous legality and unsustainable behaviour of small and medium actors, as they struggle to operate in an economic and legal system built to exclude them. Chapter 5 shows that sustainability and eco-consumerism are just the newest tools in the market toolbox, framed squarely within neoliberal, market ideology.
