PRESERVATION VOLUNTARY OF THE ENVIRONMENT BY COMPANIES TO A PRESERVATION ORDERED?

Abstract

During the Johannesburg Summit, the Secretary General of the United Nations insisted on the need
to mobilize private firms in response to the slowness of government actions, if one wanted to solve
social and environmental problems.
The question therefore arises of whether environmental preservation can be left to businesses which
would voluntarily become responsible actors of their environment (Blin-Franchomme et Desbarats,
2009, p. 19) or whether public authorities should get involved.
In order to answer this question, the present study draws both on the legal framework and the literature in law and management sciences. It demonstrates that a shift can be observed from a voluntary but disorganized taking into account of the environment by businesses (1) to an organized
taking into account by the law (2). The conclusion suggests that the traditional opposition described in the corporate social responsibility literature between hard law originating from the States,
and the conscious efforts originating from businesses, should be overcome. A legal system appears
within which the frontier between these two norms becomes thinner in favor of a continuum of
more or less binding norms which have the advantage of being more flexible and efficient