This is the introduction to a special issue on ‘Sustainable Commodity Governance and the Global South.’ A broad range of transnational governance initiatives have emerged to respond to social and environmental challenges caused by commodity production. These initiatives – like voluntary sustainability standards and certifications – tend to target commodity producers in the Global South, but are overwhelmingly initiated and managed by organizations from the Global North. The agency and initiative of Southern actors in addressing sustainability challenges in their own backyards remains under-examined. In this introductory paper, we outline a typology of how commodity producers, civil society groups, and governments in the Global South have responded to the challenge of sustainable commodity production. Drawing inductively on the contributions to this special issue, we argue that Southern actors either participate in transnational governance, reinterpret it in their own context, or create their own initiatives entirely. The capacity of actors in the Global South to exert meaningful influence over sustainable commodity governance is relevant to ongoing debates in ecological economics about whether environmental and social goals can be achieved by working within global value chains or whether a wholesale reconfiguration of the global economy is required.

这是关于“可持续商品治理与全球南方”特刊的简介。为了应对商品生产所带来的社会和环境挑战，已经出现了广泛的跨国治理举措。这些举措（例如自愿性可持续性标准和认证）往往以全球南方的商品生产者为目标，但绝大多数由全球北方的组织发起和管理。南方行动者在其后院应对可持续性挑战的机构和倡议仍未得到充分审查。在这篇介绍性文章中，我们概述了全球南方商品生产商，民间社会团体和政府如何应对可持续商品生产挑战的类型。参与跨国治理，根据自己的情况重新诠释或完全制定自己的倡议。南方国家行为者对可持续商品治理施加有意义影响的能力与生态经济学中有关是否可以通过在全球价值链内开展工作来实现环境和社会目标或是否需要对全球经济进行全面重组的辩论有关。