What is the point of private climate governance? A study of emerging initiatives in Indonesia and Singapore

Despite considerable skepticism, private climate governance initiatives leveraging transnational voluntary standards have grown exponentially in the twenty-first century. Our paper explains this continued proliferation, particularly in areas beyond core global financial centers. While functionalists view private climate governance as arising out of the polycentric nature of contemporary global governance, critical political economists view it as a function of a global shift towards neoliberal environmental governance. However, the adoption of global governance instruments and neoliberal market policies are often selective and coupled to the objectives of elite groups. To evidence this dynamic, we pursue a study of private climate initiatives in Indonesia and Singapore to illuminate the structural conditions and social forces driving their proliferation. We find that private climate governance initiatives are being harnessed by domestic, but increasingly internationalized, fractions of capital for transnational conglomerate expansion out of Indonesia, and for post-industrial economic growth to buttress party-state rule in Singapore, respectively. Private initiatives are being used to consolidate and expand the political and economic power of entrenched domestic elites whose interests and agendas have hampered transformative climate policy change in their respective countries.