Business and the Planetary History of International Environmental Governance in the 1970s

Abstract

The role of business and multinational corporations (MNCs) in early international environmental governance is not well understood. Typically, historians accord business growing influence after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, coincident with the rise of a market-oriented sustainable development paradigm. In this article, we highlight the considerable involvement of self-styled business actors in the formative 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment and subsequent establishment of the UN Environment Programme. Tracing the interconnected networks of British economist Barbara Ward, Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Canadian oilman-turned-UNEP boss Maurice Strong, we identify business actors as key in the passage from ‘planetary’ to ‘global’ environmental rationales characteristic of environmental politics between the 1970s and 1990s. However, we also show that business was a sought-after (even if often ambiguous) partner in the 1970s’ moment of innovative ‘planetary’ environmental thinking and institution making. The contested status of MNCs in 1970s internationalism shaped this early business involvement in the history of environmental governance.

Introduction: Capitalism and Global Governance in Business History

“…55 Business also contributed to disseminating the concept of sustainable development, replacing the idea of planetary limits. 56 As these examples illustrate, documenting the role of firms and industry, which had a lot to lose from the introduction of new rules, would help identify potential roadblocks and delays in terms of environmental governance. Given the numerous global and sectoral corporate regulations that seemed to be desirable from a societal viewpoint and were demanded by much of civil society, and the few binding regulations that actually came into existence, it seems indeed worth further investigating how business acted as "institutional inhibitors."…”