Sustainability standards and certifications are voluntary, usually third party-assessed, norms and standards relating to environmental, social, ethical and food safety issues, adopted by companies to demonstrate the performance of their organizations or products in specific areas. There are perhaps up to 500 such standards and the pace of introduction has increased in the last decade. The trend started in the late 1980s and 90s with the introduction of Ecolabels and standards for Organic food and other products. In recent years, numerous standards have been established and adopted in the food industry in particular. Most of them refer to the triple bottom line of environmental quality, social equity, and economic prosperity. A standard is normally developed by a broad range of stakeholders and experts in a particular sector and includes a set of practices or criteria for how a crop should be sustainable grown or a resource should be ethically harvested. This might cover, for instance, responsible fishing practices that don't endanger marine biodiversity, or respect for human rights and the payment of fair wages on a coffee or tea plantation. Normally sustainability standards are accompanied by a verification process - often referred to as "certification" - to evaluate that an enterprise complies with a standard, as well as a traceability process for certified products to be sold along the supply chain, often resulting in a consumer-facing label. Certification programmes also focus on capacity building and working with partners and other organisations to support smallholders or disadvantaged producers to make the social and environmental improvements needed to meet the standard.
The basic premise of sustainability standards is twofold. Firstly, they emerged in areas where national and global legislation was weak but where the consumer and NGO movements around the globe demanded action. For example, campaigns by Global Exchange and other NGOs against the purchase of goods from "sweatshop" factories by the likes of Nike, Inc., Levi Strauss & Co. and other leading brands led to the emergence of social welfare standards like the SA8000 and others. Secondly, leading brands selling to both consumers and to the B2B supply chain may wish to demonstrate the environmental or organic merits of their products, which has led to the emergence of hundreds of ecolabels, organic and other standards. A leading example of a consumer standard is the Fairtrade movement, administered by FLO International and exhibiting huge sales growth around the world for ethically sourced produce. An example of a B2B standard which has grown tremendously in the last few years is the Forest Stewardship Council's standard (FSC) for forest products made from sustainable harvested trees.
However, the line between consumer and B2B sustainability standards is becoming blurred, with leading trade buyers increasingly demanding Fairtrade certification, for example, and consumers increasingly recognizing the FSC mark. In recent years, the business-to-business focus of sustainability standards has risen as it has become clear that consumer demand alone cannot drive the transformation of major sectors and industries. In commodities such as palm oil, soy, farmed seafood, and sugar, certification initiatives are targeting the mainstream adoption of better practices and precompetitive industry collaboration. Major brands and retailers are also starting to make commitments to certification in their whole supply chain or product offering, rather than a single product line or ingredient .
With the growth of standards and certification as the major tool for global production and trade to become more sustainable and for the private sector to demonstrate sustainability leadership, it is essential that there are ways to assess the legitimacy and performance of different initiatives. Company and government buyers, as well as NGOs and civil society groups committed to sustainable production, need clarity on which standards and ecolabels are delivering real social, environmental and economic results. The ISEAL Alliance has emerged as the authority on good practice for sustainability standards and its Codes of Good Practice represent the most widely recognised guidance on how standards should be set up and implemented in order to be effective. By complying with these Codes and working with other certification initiatives, ISEAL members demonstrate their credibility and work towards improving their positive impacts.
Attempts to address the problems caused by a multiplicity of certification initiatives led to the launch of The State of Sustainability Initiatives (SSI) project, facilitated by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) under the auspices of the Sustainable Commodity Initiative (SCI).
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Origin of global standards
Most sustainability standards that are being adopted today were initiated by social movements in particular countries, such as Rainforest Alliance in the United States and Fairtrade in the Netherlands. Other standards were initiated by individual companies, such as Utz Certified (Ahold), Starbucks C.A.F.E. (Starbucks), and Nespresso AAA (Nespresso). Some standards were launched by coalitions of private firms, development agencies, NGOs, and other stakeholders. For example, the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C) was initiated by an alliance of large american coffee roasters, including Kraft Foods, Sara Lee and Nestle, assisted by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (GIZ). One important facilitator for the development of most global standards were series of local development projects involving NGOs, coffee roasters and producers in different developing countries. For example, the Fairtrade standard was developed based on pilot projects with Mexican farmers. 4C builds on development projects in Peru, Colombia and Vietnam, involving GIZ, major coffee roasters, and local producers.
The most widely established and adopted standards are in agriculture, with 40% of global coffee production certified to one of the main schemes, and approximately 15-20% of cocoa and tea production being compliant with major international standards. Forestry and wild seafood are also sectors in which standards have been influential, with certified production pushing past 10% of the global share. Cotton, palm oil, soy, biofuels and farmed seafood are some of the commodities in which certification is growing the fastest, due in part to major roundtables that have been set up to bring the whole industry together. More recently, standards have started to emerge for mining and the extraction of metals - including gold, silver, aluminium, and oil and gas - as well as for cattle, electronics, plastics and tourism.
Evidence suggests that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) adopted willingly by firms will be much more effective than government regulated CSR so global standards by private companies show promise for effective social impact.
The creation of the ISEAL Alliance in 2002 was the first collaborative effort amongst a group of sustainability standards organisations to agree to follow common good practices in how their standards are implemented and also to work together to drive up the use of standards and certification globally.
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Different sustainability standards
Numerous sustainability standards have been developed in recent years to address issues of environmental quality, social equity, and economic prosperity of global production and trade practices. Despite similarities in major goals and certification procedures, there are some significant differences in terms of their historical development, target groups of adopters, geographical diffusion, and emphasis on environmental, social or economic issues.
One of the major differences to be aware of is based on the level of strictness of the standard. Some standards set the bar high for a sector, promoting the strongest social and environmental practices and working with the top performers to constantly push up sustainability expectations. Other standards are more focused on the elimination of the worst practices and operate at more of an entry-level to get a large proportion of an industry working incrementally towards better practices. Often times there are strategies between standards to move producers along this performance ladder of sustainability. Another important distinction is that some standards can be applied internationally (usually with mechanisms to ensure local relevance and appropriateness) whereas other standards are developed entirely with a regional or national focus.
Additional differences between standards might relate to the certification process and whether it is conducted by a first, second or third party; the traceability system in place and whether it allows for the segregation or mixing of certified and non-certified materials; and the types of sustainability claims that are made on products.
Fairtrade
The Fairtrade label was developed in the late 1980s by a Dutch development agency in collaboration with Mexican farmers. The initiative performs development work and promotes its political vision of an alternative economy, seeing its main objective in empowering small producers and providing these with access to and improving their position on global markets. The most distinguishing feature of the Fairtrade label is the guarantee of a minimum price and a social premium that goes to the cooperative and not to the producers directly. Recently, Fairtrade also adopted environmental objectives as part of their certification system.
Rainforest Alliance
The Rainforest Alliance was created in the late 1980s from a social movement and is committed to conserving rainforests and their biodiversity. One key element of the standard is the compulsory elaboration and implementation of a detailed plan for the development of a sustainable farm management system to assist wildlife conservation. Another objective is to improve workers' welfare by establishing and securing sustainable livelihoods. Producer prices may carry a premium. Yet instead of guaranteeing a fixed floor price, the standard seeks to improve the economic situation of producers through higher yields
and enhanced cost efficiency.
Utz Certified
UTZ Certified (formerly Utz Kapeh) was co-founded by the Dutch coffee roaster Ahold Coffee Company in 1997. It aims to create an open and transparent marketplace for socially and environmentally responsible agricultural products. Instruments include the UTZ Traceability System and the UTZ Code of Conduct. The traceability system makes certified products traceable from producer to final buyer and has stringent chains of custody requirements. The UTZ Code of Conduct emphasizes both environmental practices (e.g. biodiversity conservation, waste handling and water use) and social benefits (e.g. access to medical care, access to sanitary facilities at work).
Organic
The Organic standard was developed in the 1970s and is based on IFOAM Basic Standards. IFOAM stands for International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and is the leading global umbrella organization for the organic farming movement. The IFOAM Basic Standards provide a framework of minimum requirements, including the omission of agrochemicals such as pesticides and chemical-synthetic fertilizers. The use of animal feeds is also strictly regulated. Genetic engineering and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are forbidden.
trustea
The trustea code is designed to evaluate the social, economic, agronomic and environmental performance of Indian tea estates, smallholders and Bought Leaf Factories (BLFs).
It is expected that the compliance with the code not only improves competitiveness of the tea farms but also facilitates the tea farms in achieving compliance with national regulations and international sustainability standards in a step-wise approach. The applicable control points under eleven chapters are required to be adhered to within a four-year period. The India tea code allows producers to show that they operate responsibly- producing quality tea according to strict social and environmental standards. The verification under the code provides manufacturers with the assurance of responsible production and provides opportunities to credibly demonstrate this to their customers.
SuRe® - The Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
SuRe® is a global voluntary standard which integrates key criteria of resilience and sustainability into infrastructure development, through various criteria across governance, social and environmental factors. It is currently developed under ISEAL guidelines by the Swiss Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation (GIB) and the French bank Natixis. GIB and Natixis launched the SuRe® standard at a COP21 event on 9 December 2015.
Other examples
Other types of standards include sector-specific schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO); standards for climate and development interventions like the Gold Standard, retailer-led sustainability certification initiatives such as GlobalGAP; Corporate own-brand sustainability initiatives such as Starbucks' CAFE Practices; and national programmes such as the Irish Food Board's 'Origin Green' scheme.
United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards ( UNFSS)
It is a joint initiative of FAO, UNEP, ITC,UNCTAD and UNIDO on Sustainability Standards.<http://unfss.org/documentation/general-documentation/>
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