The forest stewardship council: Risk and potential of private forest governance created by Philipp H. Pattberg

Among the many organizations active in the forestry sector, the Forest Stewardship Council is claimed to be one of the most effective, in terms of its effect on forestry and the political discourse. This article takes the first decade of private forest politics as a starting point for an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of private systems of rules operating on the transnational level. It points to four open questions: (a) the problem of uneven geographic representation and the resulting disadvantages for developing countries; (b) the question of long-term financial support for private politics; (c) the problem of competing schemes and the resulting contradictory signals toward consumers and policy makers; and (d) generic structural limitations to market-based governance. These empirical observations, derived from analyzing one prominent private system, are generalized to a wider set of private systems of rules operating at the global level to assess the future of private governance in sustainability politics.