Business and Climate Policy: The Potentials and Pitfalls of Private Voluntary Programs

Climate change has become one of the most important and challenging global policy fields. Attention has focused primarily on the successes and failures of states and intergovernmental organizations, but many more actors are involved and contribute to solutions. Business, often seen as spurring climate change, harbors considerable potential for problem solving. Today, a rich variety of private voluntary programs address climate change.

Private voluntary programs are private in the sense that they are initiated by and made up of businesses. They are voluntary in the sense that businesses are free to join or leave them, and they are programs in that a variety of formal rules, resources, and bodies are often established to administer and evaluate the schemes.

Business and Climate Policy assesses the potentials and pitfalls of existing private voluntary programs. The contributors evaluate how effectively different programs meet public and private goals at the national and international levels, and across industries. The "lessons learned" presented in this book can help to design new programs and improve those in existence. Such lessons are relevant not only within climate policy, but also within the many other policy fields in which private voluntary programs are active.

Karsten Ronit is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.