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Today, production takes place in globally fragmented chains and networks of suppliers and corporate groups. In theory, global value chains should allow value and risk to be equally distributed across the points of production. However, in practice gains are not shared but instead amassed by centralized corporate entities. Those entities are often far removed from where production physically takes place and therefore far removed from the negative impacts of the production processes on people and planet. Those risks are borne by jurisdictions, such as developing countries, which may be less well-equipped to mitigate or remedy compounded and multiple social and environmental problems.
Law plays a central role both in enabling these modes of production and in providing solutions to the problem. On the one hand, the dominant conceptualizations of corporate purpose, contract, and tort allow the complexity of global production organized via contractual relationships to remain largely unseen to law. On the other hand, the contradiction between extensive control over some aspects of value chains and utter lack of liability for other value chain related aspects has led to a budding law of value chain liability. Recent regulatory approaches ranging from hard to soft law attempt to deal with the ills of global production by focusing specifically on global value chains.
All this provides context for a critically important analysis to find out how we can achieve global sustainability, contributing to securing a sound social foundation for people everywhere now and in the future while staying within planetary boundaries.
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http://www.smart.uio.no/events/events/20182504-law-and-sustainability-in-global-value-ch.html