Digital Commons Network^™

Board Rooms And Jail Cells- Assessing Ngo Approaches To Private Environmental Governance, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Staff of the Nature Conservancy often find themselves in corporate board rooms. Staff of Greenpeace often find themselves in jail cells. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) prides itself on its non-confrontational, collaborative deal making, partnering closely with corporations like chemical giant Dow and agricultural lightning rod Monsanto. Both Dow and Monsanto, in fact, are members of TNC’s Business Council along with the likes of BP, Shell, and Cargill. Greenpeace, on the other hand, prides itself on direct action, civil disobedience, and non-violent confrontation. Greenpeace has launched combative operations against Dow, Monsanto, and other TNC collaborators. While business partners praise TNC’s cooperative …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food and environment are cultural stalwarts. Picture the red barn and solitary farmer toiling over fruited plains; or purple mountains majesty reflected in pristine waters. Agriculture and environment are core, distinct, American mythologies that we know are more intertwined than our stories reveal.

To create policy at the interface of such centrally important and overlapping American ideals, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal oriented policy.

American mythologies of food and environment …