Transnational delegation, accountability and the administrative governance of biofuel standards

Abstract

The TBGI Project: Transnational initiatives to regulate business activities interact increasingly with each other and with official regulation, generating complex governance ensembles. Heterogeneous actors and institutions interact at multiple levels and in various ways, from mimicry and cooperation to competition and conflict. The TBGI Project investigates the forms, drivers, mechanisms, dynamics, outputs and impacts of transnational business governance interactions (TBGI) from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. It is led by Stepan Wood, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Society and Sustainability at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. Abstract The European Union’s 2009 Renewable Energy Directive delegated to privately run ‘voluntary schemes’ the task of monitoring biomass production sites and ensuring their compliance with the Directive’s sustainability requirements. This chapter assesses the consequences of the Commission’s delegation for the administrative governance architectures of non-state sustainable biofuel standards operating outside the EU, focusing in particular on the effects this governance interaction has on the involvement of vulnerable stakeholders in the governance of sustainable biofuels. Utilizing the Transnational Business Governance Interactions framework complemented by the theory of governance assemblages, this research provides a meso-level analysis of the character and effects of the EU’s interaction with non-state governance schemes. Drawing on the Commission’s assessment reports of the voluntary schemes with which it works, the chapter concludes that the Commission has avoided its role in reviewing the transparency of these non-state bodies, thereby stimulating the growth of a field of sustainability governance with decreasing levels of accountability and accessibility for vulnerable stakeholders.