Empowering people in the face of rapid globalization
As residents of a multicultural country built by colonialism, migration and trade, Canadians feel the effects of globalization acutely. Most of us want globalization to be equitable and sustainable. We want the rules and institutions that govern globalization to benefit ordinary people, advance social justice and protect the environment. But do they?
A huge and bewildering variety of rules and institutions are aimed at managing cross-border flows of goods, services, money, people, ideas, disease, pollution and violence. Some are created by governments, but many are created by non-governmental actors in business, labour and civil society.
Consumer labels are the most visible examples of the massive growth in overlapping and competing efforts to regulate globalization. These efforts have multiplied to the point that ordinary consumers face a variety of different labels all promising the same thing: this fish is sustainable, that coffee is fair trade, these clothes are sweatshop-free, this food is organic, that online retailer is trustworthy, and so on.
But, which of these labels are credible? Which labelling schemes really enhance sustainability or social justice? And does duplication and competition among schemes lead to higher or lower standards?
Stepan Wood, Canada Research Chair in Law, Society and Sustainability, and his research team are making sense of all this complexity. Their ground-breaking research will answer a critical but largely overlooked question: How can these overlaps and intersections in transnational law and governance be exploited to empower weaker actors—like consumers, workers, First Nations, environmentalists and subsistence producers—to advance social justice and protect the environment?