Abstract
Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, the corporate disregard of the connection between economics and ecology has come to an uncomfortable reckoning. Unprecedented shifts to mitigate global warming and other environmental and social crises are needed. This introductory chapter sets out the aims of the volume: to investigate how we can integrate sustainability into the heart of new and existing business practices, and enhance the practical understanding and embeddedness of sustainability into business within legal and regulatory landscapes. The chapter introduces the volume’s analytical approach, drawing on two elements that have not been sufficiently discussed in existing literature on regulatory approaches for sustainable business: a sustainability-research informed understanding of the global goals that diverse regulatory approaches are or should be attempting to achieve, and a gendered perspective of how these goals are shaped and how business should engage with these issues. It introduces the forthcoming chapters and offers first reflections on the directions to take to innovate business for sustainability in the Anthropocene.
Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar Publishing, in print 2022)., Ch. 1.
Preprint available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4006934