Peter Dauvergne (2018)

The power of environmental norms: marine plastic pollution and the politics of microbeads,
Environmental Politics, DOI:
10.1080/09644016.2018.1449090

ABSTRACT:

Emerging environmental norms gain strength and diffuse more quickly when
scientific evidence of harm is consolidating, when activism is
intensifying, and when political and corporate resistance is relatively
weak. The anti-microbead norm – that plastic microbeads should be
removed from personal care products – has been gaining global influence
since 2012; witness the upsurge in anti-microbead activism, public
concern, voluntary corporate phasedowns and governmental bans. By 2018,
the world was on track to eliminate microbeads from ‘rinse-off’ products
within a decade, reducing microplastics flowing into oceans by 1–2%.
This confirms the power of environmental norms, but how and why this
phaseout is occurring – unequally across jurisdictions, with firms
creating loopholes, missing deadlines and limiting the scope of reforms
– also reveals innate weaknesses of bottom-up, ad hoc norm diffusion as
a way of improving marine governance. These weaknesses are heightened
when economic stakes are high, solutions are complex and costly,
authority is fragmented across jurisdictions and corporate resistance is
strong.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LIF8aDtH5IjejTsWtIhcSi0Li5cGEOs1
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2018.1449090