ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an examination into the emergence of the ‘green economy’ and how this discursive regime is contributing to the popular rise of ‘roundtables’ – industry-led governing tools that are increasingly relied upon to manage and control the production of environmental resources. Lauded by the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Green Economy and Finance Initiatives, roundtables are significantly transforming the way human-environment relations are governed, resulting in uneven and unequal effects. On the one hand, more actors (especially marginalized ones) are presented with opportunities to become involved in decision-making processes, which theoretically yield more transparent, legitimate, and inclusive production decisions. On the other hand, through their industry-dominated nature, roundtables grant corporations far-reaching powers, shaping them into the ultimate authorities in the production, processing, and distribution of environmental resources. Roundtable governing arrangements have emerged in many commodity sectors involving palm oil, cotton, cacao, biomaterials, and most recently beef production. In this chapter, I compare the emergence and functioning of two roundtable arrangements: the well-established Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the up-and-coming Global Roundtable on Sustainable Beef (GRSB). I will use the more established RSPO as a lens through which the GRSB can be analyzed. This chapter analyzes the power relations within these fora, the actual principles and criteria and their effects, and finally, roundtable management approaches to the growing geographical presence of agricultural and livestock disease to demonstrate the creeping authority of capitalist roundtables in the governing futures of environmental resource production. The chapter argues that through roundtable governance initiatives, commercial actors appear to have become more accountable, transparent, and inclusive in their governing actions,
but much of this appears to be symbolic; in many cases roundtable governance often reinforces power inequalities and unsustainable practices inherent to related capitalist industries. It is speculated that the GRSB and beef production may follow the same fate of the RSPO if some lessons are not properly gleaned from the RSPO experience.
