Self-Coordination of Environmental Governance: Positioning and Meta-Regulation as Mechanisms to Achieve Cohesion in Private Regulation – What Role does the Public Sector Play?

Sustainability of the economy is a goal common for some part of the businesses and for some governments. Different steering mechanisms and diversification grow and somehow the cohesion should be achieved. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the self-coordination of private regulation schemes takes place in two different fields of food industry. Positioning as a cohesion mechanism will be discussed analyzing coffee and fish related sustainability standards. The analysis is based on the evaluation of the emergence, implementation and enforcement of most well-known certification schemes on coffee and fish sectors. Benchmarking standards and meta-regulation standards will be discussed as tools for cohesion. Finally, the role of state will be discussed from the Finnish government perspective.