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A crack in the limits: the case of UNEP's failed motor vehicle seminar of 1976 in the context of the polycrisis
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Unit of Economic History.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4352-6323
2025 (English)In: Environmental regulation and the history of capitalism: the role of business from Stockholm 1972 to the climate crisis / [ed] Sandra Bott; Sabine Pitteloud; Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, New York: Routledge, 2025, 1, p. 83-102Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This chapter analyzes the reaction and strategies of the automobile industry and its global federation, the Bureau Permanent International des Constructeurs d’Automobiles (BPICA), to the convening of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Motor Vehicle Seminar, held in October 1976 in Paris. BPICA had since the late 1950s organized its members (national automobile industry associations) to lobby for harmonized technical rules within the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), arguing for the importance of integrating European markets by avoiding raising barriers to trade through dissimilar national regulations. In conversation with literature on business’ role in reshaping global environmental governance, this chapter uses the UNEP seminar as a lens for understanding how the global car industry interpreted the polycrisis facing Western political and business systems in the 1970s, and how it organized transnationally to influence regulatory development on national and international scales. Drawing on fresh archival records, this chapter argues that BPICA and its national automobile industry association members used the UNEP seminar to assist their members in shaping national regulations in the wake of the energy crisis. While the UNEP seminar was thus useful for the automobile industry, it did not fulfill its original objective of limiting the environmental impact of the automobile industry.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York: Routledge, 2025, 1. p. 83-102
Series
Routledge International Studies in Business History
Keywords [en]
automobile industry, global environmental governance, polycrisis
National Category
Economic History
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-237837DOI: 10.4324/9781003515494-7ISBN: 978-1-032-84464-0 (print)ISBN: 978-1-032-84892-1 (print)ISBN: 978-1-003-51549-4 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-237837DiVA, id: diva2:1953447
Available from: 2025-04-22 Created: 2025-04-22 Last updated: 2025-04-23Bibliographically approved

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Näsman, Mattias

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf