Project overview - Stephanie Viera

Project info

My doctoral research investigates how the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) may influence Brazil’s legal and institutional frameworks for ESG governance. While the directive is part of the EU’s broader strategy to regulate corporate conduct beyond its borders, its effects on third countries like Brazil remain underexplored. I focus not only on the normative power of the EU and its role in shaping transnational standards but also on Brazil’s capacity to respond to, adapt, or contest these pressures within its own constitutional and democratic systems.

Through a document-based legal methodology, I examine how Brazil integrates or resists global ESG norms, identifying structural, institutional, and normative challenges in adapting international sustainability standards. I also assess how these external pressures interact with Brazil’s internal legal traditions, legal pluralism, and regional inequalities. Ultimately, I aim to understand the symbolic and material impacts of the CSDDD on Brazil’s environmental governance and to reflect on the legitimacy and justice of transnational legal processes.

The research draws on critical legal theories, including normative power, legal pluralism, and Southern epistemologies, to explore how sustainability norms travel, transform, and are contested in uneven global systems, bringing together perspectives from both the Global North and the Global South.

Why does this research matter?

This research matters because it questions the fairness, effectiveness, and legitimacy of transnational sustainability governance in the context of Global North–South dynamics. It seeks to promote democratic and constitutional processes for internalizing global norms, especially in countries that face structural inequalities in global value chains.

Key Objectives

To situate the CSDDD within the broader EU ESG legal framework.

To examine how the CSDDD may diffuse sustainability norms through corporate regulation.

To identify Brazil’s legal, institutional, and structural barriers to ESG integration.

To explore how Brazil responds to international ESG pressures within its own governance model.

To assess symbolic and material impacts of the CSDDD on Brazilian environmental law.

To discuss pathways for the democratic and constitutional internalization of transnational norms.

Who do you collaborate with?

Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Joachim Herz Doctoral School of Law)

Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Brazil

Go-Chains research network

Do you have any preliminary findings you want to share?

Preliminary results indicate that while the CSDDD may contribute to the diffusion of sustainability norms worldwide, its effectiveness depends on meaningful domestic adaptation processes. Without acknowledging legal pluralism and Brazil’s constitutional complexities, such efforts risk reproducing global asymmetries and undermining local legitimacy.