Voluntary sustainability standards Debate: Confused Consumers - An evening about certification and sustainable food consumption Dr. Verina Ingram 18 June 2015, Forum, Wageningen

What are voluntary sustainability standards VSS?  Voluntary, usually third party-assessed, rules/norms/ standards/guidelines and characteristics relating to environmental, social, economic, ethical, quality and food safety issues  Market driven - developed by private and public sector  Adopted by companies to demonstrate performance of organizations/products to specific goals  Address hotspots along (global) supply chains  Often purport to go beyond legal, technical standards  Often developed by groups of stakeholders and experts

What are voluntary sustainability standards VSS?  Practices or criteria for how a resource is sustainably grown, harvested, processed and traded  A verification process - "certification" - to evaluate compliance with the standard  Often a traceability process to track a product  Resulting in a consumer-orientated label or business- to-business

VSS

Growth in standards & products >459 ecolabels since late 1980s, 197 countries, 25 sectors

Identify & compare standards by country, sector & hotspot Self assess readiness and roadmap to meeting a standard

Growth in coverage

Transforming markets Penetrated mainstream consumer habits and products

VSS in context – not in isolation !  Collaboration private, government, CSO, donor, research to support producers (groups),  Collaboration private, government, CSO, donor, research to support producers (groups), includes ● Capacity building ● Producer and other stakeholder grouping ● Information management systems ● Access to information, services, equipment, farm inputs etc. ● Community, educational and health infrastructure

The impacts of VSS so far? 1  Unrepresentational ? difficult to gauge where “proportional” or “balanced” stakeholder influence occurs in committees  Improved accountability by appointing governors through fair and competitive board elections  Better checks and balances: VSS structures help separate executive, legislative and judicial functions  Equity improved and more equal opportunities by introducing & formalising voting structures and financial supports – voice for otherwise marginalized stakeholders.  Subsidiarity increased: where content and indicators owned and developed at national/regional level, stakeholders empowered to determine terms of participation  Creating new opportunities for stakeholder participation in supply chain decision making

The impacts of VSS so far? Caveats: Many standards time phased Sustainability implies internalising externalities  Improved effectiveness on chain governance through monitoring & evaluations against criteria  Inefficient: heavy reliance on external funds for financial survival.  Coverage : Majority of products sold in developed consumer markets – fewer consumers and uptake in BRICs and developing countries i.e. RSPO  Cost and benefits – business cases; wide variation, ie price premiums and profits and long timescales ie cocoa 6 years  Cost benefit distribution generally higher cost burden for implementation and maintenance by producers ie. Cocoa  Strengthening the reliability and validity of market claims through increasingly independent monitoring and enforcement processes 2

 Re-distribution of power, profits and decision making in global chains – both positive and negative  Continued persistent oversupply of standard-compliant production: supply vs demand  Production is concentrated in mainly advanced, export-oriented economies and products esp. Latin America  Highly variable extent of positive environmental, social and economic impacts per product, VSS and region i.e. IDH & partners “ successfully contributed to scaling sustainability initiatives but had a modest impact on the sustainability commodity chains” (IOB 2014)  Average criteria of VSS declining as standards target mainstream markets – focus ILO labour standards & productivity  VSS contribute to the green economy but cannot be assumed to deliver sustainable development outcomes The impacts of VSS so far? 3

Intended but unspoken impacts?  Security of supply  Public relations  Reputation & risk management  Supplier relations  Bottom line - outperforming the competition ? de Giovanni 2012, Savitz 2012

To sum it up “ Over the past years, certification and standards have helped create awareness about sustainability throughout the value chain from producers to consumers. They have helped focus attention on people, planet and profit. At their best, they have been science - based, created by multi - stakeholder groups and focus on measuring performance and continuous improvement. They have shaped consensus about key issues as well as defined acceptable performance levels. None of them achieve all of these things, however, and some achieve none of them ” Jason Clay, WWF Berlin, May 2015

Issues

Way’s forward ? Better measures of what matters - for those to whom it matters

Clay, 2015 Consumer nudging ?

Clay, 2015 HarmonisationUpscaling Combined fiscal & policy incentives & penalties