The territorialization of transnational sustainability governance: production, power and globalization in Iceland’s fisheries

To contribute to the literature on transnational sustainability governance hybrids, a new fisheries certification program in Iceland that was originally developed as an alternative to the non-governmental Marine Stewardship Council is examined. While this new program appears on the surface to constitute a purely nationalistic reaction against external non-state authority, the new governance institution is also non-governmental and incorporates international norms and institutions. To explain this new governance hybrid, Robert Cox’s International Political Economy approach to production and power is engaged. This approach theorizes the co-constitution of the social forces of production, state–society complexes and global governance. It is argued that the Icelandic case is not entirely localized or unique; it is part of a broader movement in which social forces of production respond to new market-oriented transnational sustainability governance institutions by developing territorially embedded but transnationally legitimate alternatives.