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The effective integration of the environmental with the economic and social dimensions of sustainability will only succeed when the core problem perceptions of professionals in these fields adjust as well. Yet, while sustainability integration in general has been thoroughly researched, few studies have analysed the specific role of subjective understandings among professionals. This article bridges this gap by asking how professionals understand and operationalise sustainability integration. Which factors shape their perceptions and practices? We present the results of an online survey that was circulated to a diverse sample of professionals and then analysed using statistical methods. Responses from 508 participants show that sustainability integration is mostly perceived as a balance across all three sustainability dimensions rather than a hierarchy with the environment at its basis. However, perceptions also vary significantly across professional and geographical contexts. This signifies the need to better account for how individual circumstances affect processes of integration.

A recent article in this journal (Jackson 2021) validly emphasized that debates about the Anthropocene need to recognize a diverse range of perspectives, worldviews, and forms of knowledge. In doing so, however, the author mischaracterized scholarship on earth system governance as being antithetical to a critical and pluralistic stance on the Anthropocene. In this commentary we address key concerns about the article: selective and misleading quotations regarding the earth system governance literature’s diversity; unwarranted insinuations that juxtapose the implications of this literature with those of slavery and holocausts; and neglect of the breadth and diversity of scholarship on earth system governance. We underscore the need for scholarly debates on the Anthropocene to be informed by a balanced and rigorous assessment of existing scholarship, and for a constructive dialogue between global and locally situated ways of understanding the earth.

Private governance, in the form of certification schemes, has grown remarkably in the past decades as a response to some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges. Certification schemes denote steering mechanisms that allow enterprises to voluntarily adhere to a set of verifiable principles. While certification has global aspirations, its uptake and growth are heterogeneous across different countries. Yet, few studies empirically analyze such variation. We address this gap by focusing on the Forest Stewardship Council, a major sustainable forestry management certification program. We empirically evaluate uptake and growth across 151 countries and hypothesize that market and socio-political characteristics explain variation in uptake and growth. We find that a value-added wood industry, state-control of the forestry industry and competing certification programs, contrary to the literature, are key drivers.

Nowadays Internet is a successful key for the promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by offering benefits to e-commerce through Internet marketing. A vast majority of SMEs related to agri - food sector has an eminent presence in the Web. This paper studies the characteristics and the connection between Internet and Social media Market of Non Wood Forest Products especially of Mushrooms, Truffles and Herbs of Greek SMEs. The research compares the connection between a social media profile of SMEs and its official website in firms in the above sector. As it derives through this study there is not a specific correlation that improves a connection between the SMEs profile of a social media and its website and Social media predominate in the internet market. Therefore, firm owners should focus on social media profile characteristics and features.

In the past few decades, transnational corporations (TNCs) have become pivotal actors in agri-food governance of sustainable development. Their remarkable growth in both number and size as well as their global reach have made them particularly attractive partners for governments and civil society organisations aiming to foster environmental and social goals by harnessing market forces. In this context, the development of standards and certification schemes that prescribe and monitor environmental and socially responsible behaviour in agri-food supply chains increasingly involves the participation of TNCs. While TNC involvement in sustainable agri-food governance has the potential to achieve great benefits by transforming the market from within, it might also come at a cost. Accordingly, this contribution explores the effects of TNC endorsement of private agri-food sustainability initiatives. Adopting a critical perspective, this contribution argues that while some positive consequences can be identified, for example, a larger penetration of the mainstream market, TNC involvement in agri-food governance will likely also lead to the development of less stringent, comprehensive and inclusive standards. Moreover, the mechanisms with which sustainable development objectives are constituted and implemented by TNCs risk changing the fundamental principles and ideas of sustainable development as equitable and participatory governance. The chapter illustrates its argument with an examination of TNC involvement in a select number of initiatives.

Modern food governance is increasingly hybrid, involving not only government, but also industry and civil society actors. This book analyzes the unfolding interplay between public and private actors in global and local food governance. How are responsibilities and risks allocated in hybrid governance arrangements, how is legitimacy ensured, and what effects do these arrangements have on industry or government practices? The expert contributors draw on law, economics, political science and sociology to discuss these questions through rich empirical cases.

IntroductionThe governance of global food and agriculture is beingtransformed as the food system has become more global-ized and as corporate control of that system has becomemore concentrated. Traditionally the domain of govern-mental and intergovernmental actors, the governance offood and agriculture is increasingly becoming not justinfluenced, but also ‘‘created’’ by corporate actors viaprivate governance mechanisms. These mechanismsinclude industry-set quality and safety standards, privatecodes of conduct, and corporate social responsibility (CSR)initiatives. While the literature has paid considerableattention to the globalization of the agrifood system morebroadly (Bonanno et al. 1994) and has begun to look at therole of corporations in the system (Clapp and Fuchs 2009),empirical research on private governance mechanisms inglobal food and agriculture governance is only just startingto emerge. We still require considerably more insight onthe nature of the private governance mechanisms and theirimpact on fundamental values and core objectives of foodgovernance.The rise of private governance mechanisms in theagrifood system poses challenges for several fundamentalvalues and core objectives of food governance. In partic-ular, the privatization of key aspects of the agrifood gov-ernance system raises questions about their ability touphold democratic legitimacy and to promote sustainabil-ity. How do democratic ideals fit with private actors gen-erating rules and regulations that transcend nationalborders moving to spaces previously occupied by states(Schaller 2007)?

This paper investigates the creation and consequences of private regulation in global food governance. It points to the power to govern and the authority to govern as the two crucial conditions for the emergence and diffusion of private food regulation. More specifically, the paper argues that the power to govern is a function of the structural power of agrifood corporations, particularly retail food corporations in our case. The authority to govern is a function of the perceived legitimacy of retail food corporations as political actors. By linking power and authority to the material and ideational structures existing in the global political economy of food, this paper analyses the processes that serve to create, maintain and reproduce private regulation in food governance. With its analysis, the paper aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical debates on private authority, private regulation and the challenges for sustainability in the global food system. © 2010 Berkeley Electronic Press. All rights reserved.

In the food sector, retailers often present themselves as guardians of consumer interests, with superior efficiency and effectiveness in the governance of food, in relation to public actors. Concerns about retail governance institutions, such as private standards or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), mainly emphasise a lack of input legitimacy, that is legitimacy relying on democratic procedures. Less often concerns are raised regarding output legitimacy, that is legitimacy based on the effectiveness of retail governance institutions. Based on concepts of discursive power, this paper explores how retail corporations establish their claim to legitimacy in food governance via concepts of output legitimacy. The paper pursues its aim by performing a critical discourse analysis of retailers' discursive strategies identified here as imperialist, recursive, symbiotic and ironic.

The objective of this chapter is to explore the democratic legitimacy of transnational corporations (TNCs) in global governance. In pursuit of this objective, the chapter investigates political activities of TNCs within transnational processes of private and public governance. It starts from the recognition that, global governance is increasingly being created not only by (inter)governmental actors but also by private actors. Corporations, in particular, have become key players in the global governance system. On the one hand, they have acquired and expanded a ‘new’ role as a political actor through the creation of private governance institutions, such as private standards, or public-private or private-private partnerships (PPPs). On the other hand, they have expanded their ‘traditional’ political power in terms of influence exercised on public governance output, due to their advantage over other actors in terms of resources, such as exclusive information and financial and human resources. As a result of the central role that TNCs play as political actors in global governance structures and processes today, the question of the democratic legitimacy of their political activities moves into the spotlight. Democracy, after all, is one of the major political achievements of mankind. With the shift of political decision-making to the global level and to non-state actors, as captured in the global governance literature, there is an urgent need to address the question of how to maintain basic requirements of participation, transparency, and accountability.

The global food system and its governance have important implications for the question of sustainability. Engaging over half of the world’s population, agricultural production provides a livelihood for a major proportion of people on the planet, and food is a commodity that touches us all as consumers. Food production and trade, moreover, have important implications for socioeconomic outcomes and, depending on their organization and distribution, can work to either enhance or detract from economic opportunities and environmental and social living conditions.

Agricultural and food objectives have shifted during the past decades from ensuring food sufficiency to striving for food sustainability. At the end of the Second World War, a devastated Europe searched for ways to feed its undernourished population. In the European political agenda at that time, issues of food security, land reforms, increasing productivity and technological improvement scored very high. The aim was to produce enough affordable food for society. At the national levels, state-driven policies supporting the industrialization, intensification and rationalization of agricultural production were put forward with the adoption of the Fordist model of increasing wage/productivity (McMichael 1997) through American led reconstruction programs such as the Marshal Aid (Goodman and Redclift 1991; Marsden et al. 1996; Ward and Almas 1997). At the same time, industrialization – which paid much higher wages than labour in agriculture – occurred in different sectors of the economy and resulted in urbanization and rural exodus. For that reason, subsidies were introduced to keep agricultural labour from lapsing to competitive fields and secure production. The results were rewarding: agriculture began to transform from a relatively backward and highly labour-intensive sector of the economy towards one of increasing technological sophistication (Bowler 1985; Gardner 1996), while the process of business termination slowed down (Van Leeuwen, 2003).