Engender Common Results? Sustainable Development Trade-Offs in the Global Carbon Offset Market

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-29-2019

Publication Title

Academy of Management Discoveries

Volume

5

Issue

4

First page number:

514

Last page number:

529

Abstract

We investigate whether a common mechanism to achieve global sustainability goals produces uniform results in the world’s largest carbon offset market, the UN Clean Development Mechanism. Conventional wisdom suggests that an international regulatory accord designed to stimulate investment in activities to achieve sustainability objectives would yield similar impacts across institutional contexts. But our results illustrate that consideration of various dimensions of sustainability entails inherent trade-offs among local priorities that can contribute to uneven global outcomes. We show that broader country-level sustainability institutions, and the ministerial offices in which sustainability assessments are made, affect preferences for different types of sustainable development. We discuss the implications for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and offer suggestions to regulators and policymakers who design and implement market-based sustainable development systems.

Disciplines

Natural Resources Management and Policy

Language

English

UNLV article access

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