Voluntary sustainability standards
Debate: Confused Consumers - An evening about
certification and sustainable food consumption
18 June 2015, Forum, Wageningen
Dr. Verina Ingram
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 businessto-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), 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?
2

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
Caveats:
Many standards time phased
Sustainability implies internalising externalities
The impacts of VSS so far?

3
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
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 30-40 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
Consumer nudging ?
Clay, 2015
Harmonisation
Upscaling
Combined fiscal & policy incentives & penalties
Clay, 2015