Summary
Through this roundtable discussion, The UNFSS’s Academic Advisory Council (AAC) members are brought together to foster the debate on sustainability standards and environmental concerns and to discuss the potentiality of sustainability standards to contribute to mitigating the current environmental crisis and/or to prevent harming the environment. Led by the AAC co-chairs, Santiago Fernandez de Cordoba, UNCTAD Senior Economist and Axel Marx, Professor and Deputy Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, this roundtable discusses the following questions:
1. What are the opportunities and limitations of VSS to address climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation?
2. To what extent could sustainability standards contribute to the transformation of the way things are done, and to what degree could they lead the way in addressing environmental concerns?
3. How to balance productive efficiency of agriculture while preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change? Is there a role for VSS to support this balance?
To discuss these questions, the roundtable counts with Dr. Benjamin Cashore, Li Ka Shing Professor in Public Management and Co-Director, Institute of Water Policy, National University of Singapore, Dr. Eric Lambin, Professor at University of Louvain and Stanford University and Dr. Graeme Auld, Professor, Public Affairs Research Excellence Chair, and Director of Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration.