Solidarity, sustainability and the role of business

Beate Sjåfjell positions the international debate on a Declaration on on human rights and international solidarity within a research-based concept of sustainability. She analyses the role of business in strengthening or undermining solidarity and the role of law in ensuring that business promotes solidarity. Sjåfjell understands sustainability as securing social foundations for humanity now and for the future, while mitigating pressures on planetary boundaries. Sjåfjell finds that while the Revised Draft Declaration touches on several key sustainability issues, it does not take what she sees as a necessary comprehensive approach. Sjåfjell analyses the important role business has played and continues to play in the current state of unsustainability. While business in aggregate contributes to economic development, providing jobs, goods and services, and tax revenues, business in aggregate is also involved in illicit financial flows, destruction of the environment and exploitation of people. Sjåfjell analyses the regulatory framework for European-based business, encompassing international, EU and national laws and policies, and shows its weaknesses, gaps and incoherences. She identifies the prerequisites for law for sustainability. These include taking an objective-oriented approach with strong—or rather real—sustainability as the legislative goal, providing social justice for current and future generations within planetary boundaries. This requires a policy-coherence approach that embraces complexity and uncertainty, as well as employing evidence-based law in context.