Decarbonizing Global Chains with Regulatory Mixes

No one doubts that climate targets can only be achieved if global chains are decarbonized. On how to do it, the debate is raging. More interventionist strategies find increasing support for reasons related to geopolitical, social and environmental interests. Still, both the effectiveness and the distributive impacts of these strategies are highly uncertain. This chapter tackles the decarbonization conundrum by integrating several streams of legal and non-legal research. Empirical studies are drawn upon to identify the main causes of greenhouse gas emissions related to the activities of global chains. These insights are connected to the reflections on regulatory strategies for global chains. The concept of regulatory mixes is introduced to explore the interplay between public and private regulation. It helps understand how the tools composing the mix are selected and how their relationship could unfold over time. The main argument is that the context-dependent nature of each regulatory mix leads to significant cross-regional divergences among the legal regimes for the decarbonization of global chains. Whether some degree of convergence will become possible in the near future depends on the management of the extraterritorial effects and distributive impacts of regulatory interventions on global chains.