ABSTRACT
Little research exists about how and why competitive clusters in LDCs are dealing successfully with their environmental and labor standards, and health-and-safety issues. Small firms are regarded as lacking the technical, institutional and financial resources for social upgrading. This chapter is an attempt to link this literature in order to explain the upgrading of clusters in the environmental sphere, as global chains seem important to push for improvements in environmental standards. This research tries to understand how those interactions have happened and how the different kind of links between clients and firms in certain clusters help to determine environmental changes in clusters. The chapter analyzes how environmental demands have played out in the case of two furniture clusters in Southern Brazil. Firms in those clusters have received different kinds of pressure from global chains in order to improve its environmental standards.
