This chapter aims to investigate the extent to which France has attempted to rein in transnational corporations from developing and emerging states by imposing requirements as a matter of regulatory compliance, either directly as an obligation formulated in a rule, or indirectly by offering corporations the opportunity to defend against civil violations. In 2017, France became the first state in the world to adopt a value chain responsibility law for all corporate risks, including human rights-related ones. Section 1 of this chapter analyses the parliamentary debates preceding this Law in order to increase our understanding of the impact that competition in the global marketplace – and, in particular, transnational corporations from developing and emerging states – had on the genesis and the stringency of the Law. Section 2 discusses the avenues available to bring claims against transnational corporations from developing and emerging states in France. Interestingly, several civil liability claims have been brought against the South Korean corporation Samsung and its French subsidiary in criminal proceedings.

In 1971 Norwegian ecophilosophers Sigmund Kvaløy, Arne Næss, and Nils Faarlund traveled to the periphery, to the faraway mountains of Nepal. It was a transformative experience for them. In the lives of the Sherpa, they saw an alternative environmentally friendly way of living. Upon their return to Norway they wrote about Sherpa life as an Oriental harmony juxtaposed with the harsh Occidental values of their own Western culture. This demarcation between Oriental ecological wisdom and the Occidental stupidity of the West eventually came to frame the deep-ecological debate at home and abroad. Sherpa life was to be a model for all Norwegians, and Sherpa-informed Norwegians were to be a subsequent model for the world.