Private Governance and Land Grabbing: The Equator Principles and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels
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First Statement of Responsibility
/ Ariane Goetz
GENERAL NOTES
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7731-1474
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
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Goals, norms, and rules negotiated and implemented by the private sector are one of the global governance approaches under debate for regulating land grabbing. This paper looks at two private governance instruments that are especially relevant: the Equator Principles (EPs) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB). Both instruments promote and introduce sustainability metastandards in the decisionmaking and risk management process of signatory firms, financial institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with regard to land use and access. And they aim to govern two sectors of international investment, namely biofuels and project finance, that are associated with highly land consuming economic activity. Against the background of key features, the paper concludes that the imprecise and voluntary nature, lack of effective sanction and compensation mechanisms, and bias towards client interests highlight that both governance approaches provide insufficient protection of communities or the environment in weak regulatory settings and in view of the intense commercial pressure on land.