No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Authority without Credibility? Competition and Conflict Between Ecolabels In Tuna Fisheries
... Proponents argue that the MSC standards are imperfect but reasonably effective in terms of protecting marine life (Miller & Bush, 2015;Kalfagianni & Pattberg, 2013a, 2013b. The likelihood of overfishing is three to five times smaller for MSC-certified seafood, thus correctly signaling that it is more sustainable, even though causality is hard to establish (Gutierrez et al., 2012). ...
... Territorially confined eco-certification fishery schemes exist (in Canada, Iceland, Japan, and the USA), not only to avoid high certification costs but also to mitigate MSC's market dominance (Foley & Havice, 2016). Other standards focus on specific issues, such as dolphin welfare (Miller & Bush, 2015). ...
... Another point of contention is the MSC standard's omission of other environmental criteria, such as particle emissions by fishery vessels and greenhouse gas impact of the entire supply chain (Parkes et al., 2010). Furthermore, the MSC standard does not address social aspects and constrains stakeholder influences, which has driven excluded stakeholders to take issue with the scheme's effectiveness (Gulbrandsen & Auld, 2016;Miller & Bush, 2015). The contested nature of the MSC standard's effectiveness is directly related to its narrow scope. ...
Voluntary standards certifying environmental qualities of labeled products have proliferated across sectors and countries. Effectuating these standards requires the collaboration among and between creators (typically firms and non-governmental organizations) and adopters (firms across a particular supply chain). However, the need to collaborate does not rule out the presence of controversy. Drawing on the case of the Marine Stewardship Council, a leading seafood standard to conserve the world’s threatened marine fauna, we analyze how this controversy, from economic and sociologic vantage points, impacts a sustainability transition. In essence, interest divergence drives controversy over standard design, which spurs controversy over standard effectiveness and prompts the proliferation of competing standards. Controversy is magnified by the opacity or non-transparency of the fields which such standards seek to govern. We conclude that, while interest divergence and field opacity entail inherent controversy over voluntary environmental standards, the impact of this controversy on sustainability transitions is typically predominantly positive.
... Proponents argue that the MSC standards are imperfect but reasonably effective in terms of protecting marine life (Kalfagianni & Pattberg, 2013a, 2013bMiller & Bush, 2015). The likelihood of overfishing is three to five times smaller for MSC-certified seafood, thus correctly signaling that it is more sustainable, even though causality is hard to establish (Gutierrez et al., 2012). ...
... Territorially confined ecocertification fishery schemes exist (in Canada, Iceland, Japan, and the USA), not only to avoid high certification costs but also to mitigate MSC's market dominance (Foley & Havice, 2016). Other standards focus on specific issues, such as dolphin welfare (Miller & Bush, 2015). Seafood guides are an alternative source of influencing consumers. ...
... Another point of contention is the MSC standard's omission of other environmental criteria, such as particle emissions by fishery vessels and greenhouse gas impact of the entire supply chain (Parkes et al., 2010). Furthermore, the MSC standard does not address social aspects and constrains stakeholder influences, which has driven excluded stakeholders to take issue with the scheme's effectiveness (Gulbrandsen & Auld, 2016;Miller & Bush, 2015). The contested nature of the MSC standard's effectiveness is directly related to its narrow scope. ...
Voluntary standards certifying environmental qualities of labeled products have proliferated across sectors and countries. Effectuating these standards requires the collaboration among and between creators (typically firms and non-governmental organizations) and adopters (firms across a particular supply chain). However, the need to collaborate does not rule out the presence of controversy. Drawing on the case of the Marine Stewardship Council, a leading seafood standard to conserve the world’s threatened marine fauna, we analyze how this controversy, from economic and sociologic vantage points, impacts a sustainability transition. In essence, interest divergence drives controversy over standard design, which spurs controversy over standard effectiveness and prompts the proliferation of competing standards. Controversy is magnified by the opacity or non-transparency of the fields which such standards seek to govern. We conclude that, while interest divergence and field opacity entail inherent controversy over voluntary environmental standards, the impact of this controversy on sustainability transitions is typically predominantly positive.
... Although prior work has examined blockchain's roles in improving institutional governance by creating and maintaining distributed ledgers of information (Berg, 2017), in little research have scholars examined how this technology can help fight various gaps in the existing governance arrangements especially in the context of M&M SCs. By bridging these gaps, powerful and dominant groups' ability to exploit the disadvantaged group can be reduced (Miller and Bush, 2015) and socio-economic empowerment can be promoted. ...
... Misleading persuasive practices. Several SC governance arrangements have been operating despite the lack of evidence that these arrangements have contributed to sustainability improvements (Miller and Bush, 2015). Firms continue to engage in unsustainable activities under the name of sustainability (Bl€ uhdorn, 2007). ...
This chapter examines blockchain’s roles in promoting ethical sourcing in the mineral and metal industry. It gives detailed descriptions of how blockchain-based supply chain networks’ higher density of information flow and a high degree of authenticity of information can increase supply chain participants’ compliance with sustainability standards. It gives special consideration to blockchain systems’ roles in overcoming the deficits in the second-party and third-party trust. It also demonstrates how blockchain-based supply chain networks include outside actors and configures the supply chain networks in a way that enhances the empowerment of marginalized groups.KeywordsCobaltCorporate social responsibilityDodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection ActEnvironmentalSocial and governanceLithium ion batteries
... Although prior work has examined blockchain's roles in improving institutional governance by creating and maintaining distributed ledgers of information (Berg, 2017), in little research have scholars examined how this technology can help fight various gaps in the existing governance arrangements especially in the context of M&M SCs. By bridging these gaps, powerful and dominant groups' ability to exploit the disadvantaged group can be reduced (Miller and Bush, 2015) and socio-economic empowerment can be promoted. ...
... Misleading persuasive practices. Several SC governance arrangements have been operating despite the lack of evidence that these arrangements have contributed to sustainability improvements (Miller and Bush, 2015). Firms continue to engage in unsustainable activities under the name of sustainability (Bl€ uhdorn, 2007). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine blockchain's roles in promoting ethical sourcing in the mineral and metal industry.
Design/methodology/approach
It analyzes multiple case studies of blockchain projects in the mineral and metal industry.
Findings
It gives detailed descriptions of how blockchain-based supply chain networks' higher density of information flow and high degree of authenticity of information can increase supply chain participants' compliance with sustainability standards. It gives special consideration to blockchain systems' roles in overcoming the deficits in the second party and the third-party trust. It also demonstrates how blockchain-based supply chain networks include outside actors and configure the supply chain networks in a way that enhances the empowerment of marginalized groups.
Practical implications
It suggests various mechanisms by which blockchain-based supply chain networks can give a voice to marginalized groups.
Originality/value
It demonstrates how blockchain is likely to force mineral and metal supply chains to become more traceable and transparent.
... Constituted as social innovations, they can generate more effective regulations for the sustainable reconversion of food production (Henman and Dean 2010;Cadman 2011). However, because these are voluntary certifications that lack formal mechanisms of state legitimacy, 6 their capacity to exert their authority depends on continuous acceptance by the social actors who configured the governance of the value chains on the local scale (Bostrom and Hallstrom 2010;Ponte et al. 2011;Miller and Bush 2015). ...
... As a result, external agents elaborate discursive strategies and actions with the goal of negotiating acceptance of their authority in the governance of the value chain. However, local actors will accept or reject the rules of certification schemes according to their own interests and needs (Bostrom and Hallstrom 2010;Schouten 2013;Miller and Bush 2015). ...
The present article analyzes the process of the construction of legitimacy of the Chakay Collective Brand (Marca Colectiva Chakay) that developed in the spiny lobster fisheries in the Sian Ka’an and Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserves, in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The information obtained from 64 interviews with members of the six cooperatives that operate in the study area revealed how the Mexican civil association that promoted this certification initiative placed its own economic interests above conservationist arguments, and how its actions generated problems by (i) excluding diverse local fishers from the design and instrumentation of the certification, and (ii) producing unequal economic benefits for the organizations and localities where this activity is practiced. The study demonstrates that fishing certifications proposed from the Global South (Southern Certifications) can reproduce problems of legitimacy similar to those that conventional certifications (pragmatic legitimacy) confront, with scant benefits for small-scale, artisanal fisheries in developing countries. We conclude that constructing moral (i.e., a balance between strong and weak networks) and cognitive (i.e., sociocultural proximity) legitimacy is crucial for instrumenting certifications that will be more effective in attending to the socioeconomic and environmental challenges of fishing in specific territorial contexts.
... Trust in labels and producers may also be undermined by occasional scandals involving acts of deliberate falsification in the production of ecological products, including food [56]. Regulatory weaknesses and imperfect regulatory systems have enabled the misapplication of environmental labelling on the marketplace [57,58], thereby undermining the credibility of the overall system [59]. For example, more than half of all end consumers in the United States (USA) expressed a lack of confidence in a product's ecological characteristics, as confirmed by its environmental labelling [60]. ...
This research paper explores the role of environmental labelling in shaping the purchasing and consumption behaviours of Generation Z. The study aims to provide insights into the comprehension, perception, and attitude of this generation towards environmental labelling and to investigate how these factors impact their purchasing decisions. The results of this study provide valuable insights into the role of environmental labelling in shaping the behaviours of young consumers and suggest that it still matters to this generation. The study also highlights the importance of trust in environmental labelling for influencing purchasing decisions. Our research paper provides new insights into the role of environmental labelling in shaping the behaviours of Generation Z, which is a critical demographic group for sustainable consumption. We found that this generation is highly aware of environmental issues and is motivated to make eco-friendly purchasing decisions. However, our study also highlights that the lack of trust in environmental labelling can be a significant barrier to sustainable consumption. This study contributes to the literature on environmental labelling and consumer behaviour among Generation Z.
... The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is perhaps the most rigorous and best-known certification organization (World Wildlife Fund 2012; Miller and Bush 2015). Fisheries that wish to display the MSC logo on their products pay a third-party auditor to investigate their fishery and compare it to the MSC's standards. ...
Ecolabels and green taxes aim to achieve more sustainable market outcomes by affecting suppliers’ production and sales behaviour, consumers’ purchasing behaviour, or both. In this chapter, we present the economic rationale for how these approaches may impact suppliers and consumers in various settings and review recent published empirical research on the topic. We focus specifically on examples where ecolabels and green taxes have been used to protect oceans and fisheries by reducing plastic waste and reducing purchases of less sustainable seafood. We conclude by discussing other possible policy instruments and highlight important avenues for future work in pursuing more sustainable market outcomes.
... The intention of the MSC was to influence consumer choice, reward sustainable fisheries, minimise impacts on the ecosystem, and develop effective and responsive management. Several studies highlight the credibility of the scheme [101,102], and that MSC certification has led to many improvements in the management of fisheries [103]. However, others remain unconvinced that the approach reduces the decline of stocks overall [104], benefits the wider environment (e.g. ...
Having left the European Union, the UK Fisheries Act (hereafter referred to as the Act) provides a framework that may advance sustainable marine resource management. This requires the bias towards social-economic concerns to be recognised, and greater emphasis to be placed on securing the natural capital to support fisheries. A Joint Fisheries Statement (JFS) to be published in 2022 by the UK’s devolved fisheries authorities will set out how the objectives of the Act will be achieved. While recognising the value of principles of the Act, this article challenges the current management framework in light of the wider challenges in fisheries practice. It argues for more emphasis on ecological and fisheries regeneration, and maximising societal benefits rather than yields. Three recommendations are provided: (1) an integrated and more holistic Fisheries-Energy-Environment Nexus resource management approach would better utilise systems thinking to optimise trade-offs and synergies between competing domains to achieve fisheries, conservation and other environmental goals (e.g. delivering the national net zero strategy); (2) the use of best available technologies as is reasonably practicable to monitor compliance and facilitate enforcement should be a regulatory requirement under the JFS; (3) the fisheries and marine conservation science community should work with other stakeholders to change the media narrative, public opinion, and political direction away from a “business-as-usual” model that risks long-term degradation of the marine fisheries resource.
... Accordingly, many studies also concentrate on the important role of third-party environmental certifications in eliminating greenwashing [39]. Green certification systems are widely regarded as an innovative strategy to solve the problem of sustainable development [39][40][41][42][43], and green labels tend to symbolise credibility and influence [44,45]. Relevant studies show that the banking [46], oil and gas [47], hospitality [2], tourism [32], ISO14001 certification [48], and other industries believe that the third-party label certification system should be adopted, with penalties implemented, if necessary, to limit greenwashing. ...
This study analyses the relationship between greenwashing behaviour, a lack of government supervision, and imperfect green certification mechanisms in China. To improve green governance and greenwashing governance in light of rent-seeking behaviour between high-pollution enterprises and third-party green certification institutions (GCIs), we construct a tripartite game model for the green governance system using an evolutionary game and analyse the interaction and evolutionary trajectory between the three parties. Our results indicate that increasing local government incentives and penalties not only facilitate strengthened green governance by high-pollution enterprises that do not greenwash but also help third-party GCIs to decline to engage in rent-seeking. However, increased incentives lead to relaxed governmental supervision. In addition, the government’s incentives and penalties only meet conditions that each agent’s total incentives and penalties exceed its speculative gain, and green governance systems can be effectively prevented from resulting in unsatisfactory and unstable strategies. Moreover, the accountability that higher levels of government have to local governments effectively enables high-pollution enterprises’ refusal to greenwash and third-party GCIs’ refusal to engage in rent-seeking. Our results counsel further research on environmental regulation, green governance, and enterprises’ greenwashing, with theoretical and practical applications for both policymakers and enterprises.
... The empowered space of MSIs is the element that has attracted the most criticism. In terms of inclusiveness, the formal bodies of MSIs usually present high barriers to entry for marginalized stakeholders (Miller & Bush, 2015), which is linked to inadequate representation of interests (Baur & Palazzo, 2011;Reinecke & Donaghey, 2021). For instance, it is often taken for granted that environmental NGOs (such as Greenpeace or the WWF) will represent the interests of Earth and its ecosystems, yet these organizations necessarily prioritize some environmental issues and interests over others (e.g., Bendell, 2005). ...
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)—private governance mechanisms involving firms, civil society organizations, and other actors deliberating to set rules, such as standards or codes of conduct, with which firms comply voluntarily—have become important tools for governing global business activities and the social and environmental consequences of these activities. Yet, this growth is paralleled with concerns about MSIs’ deliberative capacity, including the limited inclusion of some marginalized stakeholders, bias toward corporate interests, and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in their role as regulators. In this article, we conceptualize MSIs as deliberative systems to open the black box of the different elements that make up the MSI polity and better understand how their deliberative capacity hinges on problems in different elements. On the basis of this conceptualization, we examine how deliberative mini-publics—forums in which a randomly selected group of individuals from a particular population engage in learning and facilitated deliberations about a topic—can improve the deliberative capacity of MSIs.
... Input legitimacy includes the perceptions of stakeholders on the dynamics of participation of various categories of actors and groups in the design and operation of initiatives, and on the balance in the type, origin and function of stakeholder participation. The idea here is that stakeholders need to perceive that there is meaningful participation of all actors and interests (Bäckstrand 2006;Bernstein 2011;Partzsch 2011;Slager et al. 2012)-and particularly of marginalized groups (e.g., Miller and Bush 2015;Ponte 2014;de Bakker et al. 2019). Process legitimacy relates to perceptions on procedures allowing or limiting participation and democratic process, the quality of governance procedures, the levels of trust accruing in the system, and appropriate accountability and transparency. ...
In this article, we examine selected sustainability initiatives from the perspective of local communities to improve our understanding of how putative participatory schemes manage legitimacy. Understanding the legitimacy dynamics of sustainability initiatives is important, as it potentially minimizes the power gaps likely to open across scales and jurisdictions. We analyze selected sustainability initiatives in southern Tanzania dealing with wildlife, forest, and coastal resources and find that they have generally struggled to manage input, process, and impact legitimacy—except for the community-based forestry initiatives. They have been more inclined towards providing training on conservation issues than facilitating alternative livelihood activities. While they are perceived as having achieved some improvements in environmental conditions, they have had minimal effects on socio-economic and livelihood outcomes. This has culminated into significant levels of community dissatisfaction with their performance, which questions their long-term viability.
... For wood and woodbased products, legality can be governed by international treaties (e.g., the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna [CITES, 27 U.S.T. §1087]) and by national laws and policies (e.g., the United States' Lacey Act [18 U.S.C. §42-43; 16 U.S.C. §3371-3378]) and wood identification can play a critical role in enforcement. Sustainability is a more elusive concept and legitimate disagreements as to what constitutes sustainability can occur between otherwise similarly minded parties (Miller and Bush, 2015;Ruggerio, 2021). In addition to the conceptual or theoretical differences that may exist between the principles and details subtending sustainability criteria, there is also the question of real-world implementation and enforcement of sustainability measures along supply chains Chappin et al., 2015;Dieterich and Auld, 2015) to ensure that a product labelled as sustainable is in fact sustainably sourced. ...
Availability of and access to wood identification expertise or technology is a critical component for the design and implementation of practical, enforceable strategies for effective promotion, monitoring and incentivisation of sustainable practices and conservation efforts in the forest products value chain. To address this need in the context of the multi-billion-dollar North American wood products industry 22-class, image-based, deep learning models for the macroscopic identification of North American diffuse porous hardwoods were trained for deployment on the open-source, field-deployable XyloTron platform using transverse surface images of specimens from three different xylaria and evaluated on specimens from a fourth xylarium that did not contribute training data. Analysis of the model performance, in the context of the anatomy of the woods considered, demonstrates immediate readiness of the technology developed herein for field testing in a human-in-the-loop monitoring scenario. Also proposed are strategies for training, evaluating, and advancing the state-of-the-art for developing an expansive, continental scale model for all the North American hardwoods.
... Although consumer awareness about their environmental footprints is increasing, it has yet to become a way of life (Szerényi et al. 2011 (Miller and Bush 2014). Compliance to sustainable fishery measures is very costly coupled with the lack of a governance system to strictly regulate fishing practices. ...
New variants of canned skipjack tuna have been developed by large manufacturers of canned tuna in the Philippines. This study analyzes the expenditure and price elasticities of canned tuna and determines the implications for sustainable fishery. An AIDS (almost ideal demand system) model incorporating an income group variable was used to estimate these elasticities. This study utilized a pooled time series data of 459 weekly point-of-sale observations from 2010–2012 of three store branches of a large supermarket chain in southern Philippines. The point-of-sale data suggest that canned tuna consumption is composed mostly of tuna in sauce with vegetables followed by tuna in oil and tuna in sauce without vegetables. For both high-and low-income groups, the expenditure elasticities have the expected positive signs – indicating that as the income of consumers’ increases, the quantity demanded for canned tuna in three product mediums also increases. For high-income consumers, consumption of tuna in sauce with and without vegetables is more responsive to income changes. The own-price elasticities of the three product mediums across high-and low-income store branches have negative signs – suggesting that as their own price increases, the quantity demanded for these products decreases. The cross-price elasticities suggest that tuna in sauce with vegetables is a substitute for tuna in oil and in sauce without vegetables for both income groups. Thus, promoting more use of vegetables through product development may lead to a lower volume of tuna meat used in canned tuna products, which contributes to addressing tuna resource sustainability. © 2021, Department of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
... PRIs can improve the reputations of industries, leading to improved financial performance (Barnett andKing, 2008, Lenox 2006) and staving off sanctions (Bartley and Child 2014). To achieve these reputational benefits, the institution must be perceived as credible by key external stakeholders (see Arevalo and Aravind 2017, Cashore et al. 2003, King 2014, Miller and Bush 2015. Accordingly, a key objective in the design and ongoing development of PRIs is to ensure the perceived credibility of the institution, since doing so gives PRIs their legitimacy as a form of regulation (Cashore 2002, Potoski andPrakash 2005). ...
The forces that threaten to break apart private regulatory institutions are well known, but the forces that sustain them are not. Through a longitudinal inductive study of the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) program in the Canadian mining industry, we demonstrate how private regulatory institutions are sustained by strategically manipulating different aspects of an institution’s stringency. Our findings show how shifts in external conditions decreased benefits of participation for firms, triggering institutional destabilization. We demonstrate how the interdependent mechanisms of hollowing—actions that ratchet down aspects of stringency associated with high compliance costs—and fortifying—actions that ratchet up aspects of stringency associated with low compliance costs—worked together to stabilize the institution by rebalancing the competing pressures that underpin it. However, these same mechanisms can hinder the ability of these institutions to substantively address the targeted issues, even as they become more stringent in some areas. Our study advances research on private regulation by showing how different aspects of stringency can be simultaneously ratcheted up and ratcheted down to sustain private regulatory institutions. Further, in positioning institutional stability as an ongoing negotiation, we elucidate the key custodial role of governing organizations like trade associations in institutional maintenance.
Funding: Financial support fromthe Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant 752-2012-2294] is gratefully acknowledged.
... MSC) (Kirby et al., 2014), but none of these consider elasmobranchs conservation as the only objective of their certification. On the contrary a "shark-free" label, applied to anchovies, would be comparable with the "Dolphin Safe Tuna" label that was developed in the nineties and is still used (Gardiner and Viswanathan, 2004;Gopal and Boopendranath, 2013;Kirby et al., 2014;Miller and Bush, 2015). ...
Purpose
The objective of this study is to assess if Italian fish consumers are sensible to shark protection and if they would contribute paying more for small pelagic fishes coming from fisheries that are certified as “shark-free”.
Design/methodology/approach
Contingent valuation is used to estimate willingness to pay with a double approach, including a dichotomous choice and an open-ended question. Inconsistency between the two answers is allowed. This allows the correction of two sources of bias (i.e. preference uncertainty and anchoring effect) and has permitted that the two estimation methods converged to the same result.
Findings
Consumers show interest for the “shark-free” label. Premium price is estimated at +26%. Variables affecting willingness to pay (WTP) in the sample are age, income, environmental attitude, knowledge of organic labels and frequency of small pelagics' consumption. Results need to be confirmed by a replication on a larger (probabilistic) sample and with a different distribution of bids.
Originality/value
Ecosystems provide different benefits to humankind, including non-use services, such as the satisfaction to know that a species is well conserved. Generally, appreciation is higher for what are considered charismatic species. In this paper, the authors investigate if sharks can be considered charismatic species despite their “bad reputation”. The interest in shark survival is measured indirectly using a “shark-free” label on a commercial species like anchovy, allowing to increase the value added of this low-price species.
... A country and landscape context, particularly in-field assessments, can facilitate the effective inclusion of implementation and compliance status in evaluations of biodiversity outcomes. This confounder may be further considered between certification schemes within a comparative context of complementary or competitive alternatives (Gulbrandsen 2005;Miller and Bush 2014;Chaudhary et al. 2016;Tysiachniouk and McDermott 2016). ...
... Among the excluded items were, for example, articles on meta governance as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of a meta labeling scheme (Mundle et al., 2017;Samerwong et al., 2017) and articles on governance and legitimacy aspects of a domain-specific meta type certification without any consumer perspective (Upham et al., 2011). Other examples of exclusions are articles on multi-dimensional sustainability labeling (Kocsis and Kuslits, 2019) and articles discussing potential conflicts or competition among existing sustainability labels (Li & van 't Veld, 2015;Miller and Bush, 2015) if they did not mention or discuss a meta sustainability label scheme. An overview of the search and screening process is given in Fig. 2. ...
Nudging consumers to make sustainable consumption decisions is what sustainability labeling is all about. However, the current sustainability labeling landscape is up against the challenge of too much, too complex, too similar, and too ambiguous information. Therefore, sustainability labeling schemes are looked upon as failing to support sustainability-involved consumers sufficiently. Meta sustainability labeling has been proposed as a means to reduce these challenges and strengthen the benefits of sustainability labeling. However, there is a need for systematically taking stock of and synthesizing what is known and what is yet unknown about meta sustainability labeling as input to decisions and development work regarding this instrument. This systematic literature review investigates how a meta sustainability label has been defined and assessed compared to existing, single-issue sustainability labels. First, four characteristic elements of a meta sustainability label are identified: multi-dimensionality, meta, multi-level, and universal. Second, a distinction between a meta sustainability label scheme and an integrated sustainability label scheme is proposed, the distinguishing characteristic being the (graphical) communication to the consumer. Third, benefits and disadvantages as well as facilitators of and impediments to implementing a meta sustainability scheme are identified. There is no consensus in the literature about the likelihood of a meta sustainability label doing a better job than existing sustainability labeling schemes. Perhaps the most important finding is that the debate regarding meta sustainability labeling is still in its infancy and lacks a proper evidence base. Thus, we encourage marketing and sustainability researchers to continue investigating meta sustainability labeling as a potentially useful tool for sustainability transformation.
... La construcción de la legitimidad es un proceso dinámico, multidireccional y cambiante, fruto de las negociaciones entre los diversos actores que participan en la instrumentación de las certificaciones. Así, los agentes externos desarrollan estrategias discursivas y acciones con el fin de participar en la gobernanza de los territorios, las cuales son aceptadas o rechazadas por los actores locales de acuerdo con sus intereses y necesidades (Bostrom y Hallstrom, 2010;Shouten, 2013;Miller y Bush, 2014). ...
Este artículo analiza las diversas formas de legitimidad (cognitiva, moral, pragmática) que se articularon en la organización de la Marca Colectiva Chackay, en la pesca de langosta espinosa que se desarrolla en las reservas de Sian Ka’an y Banco Chichorro, Quintana Roo. Con base en 36 entrevistas semiestructuradas a los miembros de las seis cooperativas pesqueras que operan en el área de estudio, fue posible analizar la legitimidad, representación y dificultades de inclusión de los pescadores locales, en el diseño e instrumentación de esta iniciativa de certificación ambiental. El trabajo muestra que el predominio de los intereses económicos sobre los argumentos conservacionistas de la asociación civil que impulsó la iniciativa, condicionó su relación con los actores que definen la gobernanza local (cooperativas de pescadores, ONG, instancias gubernamentales). Concluimos que los instrumentos de gestión ambiental deben prestar especial atención a la gran heterogeneidad de prácticas sociales y económicas de los actores que participan en una actividad productiva, en un contexto territorial específico.
... Regime architects also need brand recognition-credible, widely recognized certification labels-and they invest time and expense into marketing these labels as emblems of virtue, safety, or purity (Conroy 2007). They may seek endorsements from respected NGOs, activists, or celebrities (Miller and Bush 2015). In the absence of a familiar and trusted certification badge, voluntary regulatory regimes may fail to cohere. ...
In Islam, the extension of religious regulation and certification to new product types and economic sectors—“halalization”—has become widespread. There are now Islamic mortgages, halal ports, halal refrigerators, halal blockchain, and shariah-compliant cryptocurrencies. Yet classical secularization theory says religious authority cannot regulate modern economic activity. So what explains halalization? I point to an elective affinity between fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and twenty-first-century markets. Contemporary fiqh offers widely respected religious jurists who issue fatwas certifying products. Entrepreneurs empanel the jurists on certification boards, allowing fiqh to function as a regime of voluntary regulation layered atop secular state law instead of conflicting with it. Indeed, secular liberal markets provide ideal conditions for halalization and religious meaning-making through consumption. Case studies of Islamic finance and halal logistics show how entrepreneurs assuage consumers’ religious anxieties—and generate new ones—in the context of globalization and liberalization in secular markets.
... Equally, they may neglect to problematize to what degree their view of a future worth having is representative of a diversity of interests or may replicate powerful actors' view of the world (Vellema and van Wijk 2015: 106). Both issues bring into sharp relief the significance of the process of setting standards and sustainability agendas in terms of who can or cannot contribute to their formulation, whose priorities ultimately are heeded, and what implications these normative choices entail across VCs/PNs (Miller andBush 2015, Bremer et al. 2016: 23). ...
Abstract:
Sustainability is an increasingly prominent buzzword across studies on global and regional value chains and production networks. Its omnipresence, however, is driven by a wide variety of motivations and understandings including ethical awareness, supply security, efficiency or risk aversion. Given the term’s malleable meanings, diverse stakeholders across varied contexts use ‘sustainability’ without problematizing what it is or is to entail, creating a need to interrogate the meanings, assumptions and framings of sustainability in value chain and production network studies, and their implications.
Through a meta-study of sustainability in existing value chain and production network studies, this paper asks: what understandings of sustainability shape value chain and production network studies, and with what implications? It makes a contribution by reviewing existing studies in terms of dimensions of sustainability explored, and by developing a typology which categorizes the links between sustainability and value chains/production networks. The paper argues that both the trade-offs between different dimensions of sustainability as well as the power dimension of setting sustainability agendas are generally underexplored in the studies investigated. Given blind spots around defining sustainability, acknowledging trade-offs between different dimensions of sustainability, and a lack of engagement with power disparities, a more systematic re-think of the value chain and production network lenses to account for sustainability would be welcome.
... Collaborative approaches to the design of certifications can be perceived as more credible than unilateral action and offer opportunities to create higher levels of acceptance and environmental reputation among corporate stakeholders 3 (Prakash and Potoski, 2007;Peters, 2010;Montgomery et al., 2012;Miller and Bush, 2015). Unilateral corporate commitments are often less institutionalized and allow firms to easily change their commitments (e.g., opportunistically lower the level of sustainability requirements). ...
The purpose of this study is to examine the proliferation of retail-driven sustainability certification schemes focusing on the role of certification and its design from a corporate perspective. It does so by exploring three different cases of certification design in the food retailing industry: unilateral Tesco Nurture, collaborative GlobalGAP, and multi-stakeholder UTZ certifications. Using case study methods and viewing the certifications through the application of collective action logic and dynamic capability theory, we provide new insights important to researchers, retailers, and supply chains. The results of this study show that retail efforts to develop certifications are driven by better alignment with the business’ goal of improving the sustainability performance of supply chains. Retail-driven certifications can enable stronger brand assurance, stakeholder satisfaction, competitive development of certified supply volumes, and dynamic capabilities that contribute to effective, efficient and faster upgrades to sustainability practices in the supply chain. The contributions of this study also identify numerous factors that influence the development of certifications via collaborative/multi-stakeholder or unilateral efforts. There are three major factors: 1) trade-offs between different aspects of certification design and institutional-stakeholder context, 2) challenges of ‘collective’ bargaining, and 3) generation of dynamic capabilities. From results, we posit the co-existence of multiple certifications, called “standards multiplicity,” as advantageous for facilitating retailers’ engagement with sustainable supply chain management. Finally, conclusions and implications allow us to predict the evolving complexity of retail-driven certifications will enable dynamic capabilities, opportunities for creating competitive advantage, and open a dialogue for other industries to learn from these insights.
[Citatiom: Chkanikova, O., & Sroufe, R. (2021). Third-party sustainability certifications in food retailing: Certification design from a sustainable supply chain management perspective. Journal of Cleaner Production, 282, 124344.]
... For example, dolphin protection campaigns in the United States spread the narrative that countless dolphins die as a result of tuna fishing activities; this narrative led to "Dolphin-safe" tuna labels and the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act (Wright, 2000). The effectiveness of these programs has since been questioned (Murphy, 2006;Miller and Bush, 2015). In academia, climate change-related papers written in narrative style were cited more often than papers written objectively (Hillier et al., 2016). ...
Seal hunting in Canada is a historically controversial topic. Animal rights groups have campaigned that Atlantic Canadians inhumanely slaughter thousands of “baby” seals every year. The work of these animal rights groups has led to changes in national fisheries regulations and markets. The market changes have greatly affected the livelihoods of many Atlantic Canadians, but even more so of the Inuit who also hunt seals in Canada’s Arctic regions. Animal rights groups largely excluded and ignored the Inuit who depended on the larger Atlantic Canadian seal market. However, Inuit have recently mobilized though social media to reclaim the narrative surrounding seal hunting. Their campaign has helped change national policy. The Government of Canada has since created a scheme to increase market access to Inuit-harvested seals. Yet, little information is available for this scheme and its effectiveness needs to be further investigated.
... The governance of voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives with a focus on responsible management remains a much-researched topic (Bernstein, 2011;Mena & Palazzo, 2012). Prior research has shown that multi-stakeholder initiatives can only gain high degrees of input legitimacy if their governance structures balance stakeholder voices and ensure high levels of inclusiveness within decision-making (Gilbert & Rasche, 2008;Miller & Bush, 2015). Input legitimacy refers to the belief that "decisions are derived from the preferences of the population in a chain of accountability linking those governing to those governed" (Mayntz, 2010: 10). ...
This chapter discusses the relationship between the United Nations (UN) system and the private sector against the background of responsible management practices. The first part discusses the relationship between the UN and private enterprises from a historical perspectives, starting from the 1970s until today. The second part introduces the UN’s flagship initiative for responsible management: the United Nations Global Compact. It reviews the underlying rationale of the initiative as well as its governance framework and perceived legitimacy. The third section discusses the move from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the SDGs, and shows that the SDGs are better aligned with responsible management concerns due to their more explicit emphasis on partnerships and their recognition that social, environmental and economic problems are interconnected. The final section outlines a research agenda that emphasizes areas of scholarly activity related to the UNGC and the SDGs that have so far been neglected.
... A number of articles delineate criteria for assessing the input legitimacy of MSIs (e.g., Mena & Palazzo, 2012). One much-studied topic is how (a lack of) inclusiveness in standard-setting processes affects input legitimacy (e.g., Gilbert & Rasche, 2007;Miller & Bush, 2015;Pichler, 2013;Ponte, 2014), both in the context of certification and principle-based MSIs. Although many MSIs have set up governance structures that are supposed to enable equal participation of stakeholder groups, many studies show that these structures are seldom enacted in practice. ...
Although the literature on multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainability has grown in recent years, it is scattered across several academic fields, making it hard to ascertain how individual disciplines, such as business ethics, can further contribute to the debate. Based on an extensive review of the literature on certification and principle-based MSIs for sustainability (n = 293 articles), we show that the scholarly debate rests on three broad themes (the “3Is”): the input into creating and governing MSIs; the institutionalization of MSIs; and the impact that relevant initiatives create. While our discussion reveals the theoretical underpinnings of the 3Is, it also shows that a number of research challenges related to business ethics remain unaddressed. We unpack these challenges and suggest how scholars can utilize theoretical insights in business ethics to push the boundaries of the field. Finally, we also discuss what business ethics research can gain from theory development in the MSI field.
... PRIs can improve the reputations of industries, leading to improved financial performance (Barnett andKing, 2008, Lenox 2006) and staving off sanctions (Bartley and Child 2014). To achieve these reputational benefits, the institution must be perceived as credible by key external stakeholders (see Arevalo and Aravind 2017, Cashore et al. 2003, King 2014, Miller and Bush 2015. Accordingly, a key objective in the design and ongoing development of PRIs is to ensure the perceived credibility of the institution, since doing so gives PRIs their legitimacy as a form of regulation (Cashore 2002, Potoski andPrakash 2005). ...
... The problem of environmental degradation has become the world's attention (Bronfman, Cisternas, López-Vázquez, De la Maza, & Oyanedel, 2015;Choudri et al., 2017;Miller & Bush, 2015). Environmental problems that often arise such as global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, accumulation of inorganic waste and environmental pollution by chemicals. ...
Environmental responsibility is a crucial aspect which determines the environmental solving problems in term of enhancing the pro-environmental behavior. This study aimed to examine the relation between the environmental responsibility and pro-environmental behavior of the undergraduate students. The sampel of this descriptive correlational study was 106 students of biolgy education department which was taken randomly. This study showed that the undergraduate students were in high criteria of environment responsibility (ER). This was represented by feeling guilty which was the highest percentage and followed by responsibility feeling and responsibility judgment respectively. In addition, the undergraduate students were in positive pro-environmental behavior (PEB). The regression model was y = 23.876 + 0.623x; while ER contributed as high as 22.1% to the undergraduate student’s PEB. This implied that to improve the undergraduate student’s PEB is by strengthening their ER.
... Within a governance complex as characterized above, co-existing governance systems are often found in a situation where they need to compete for legitimacy (Cashore, 2002). This competition as suggested by Miller and Bush (2015), especially in the case of VSS initiatives, may lead to displacement or substitution of a stringent environmental governance system of a weaker one. Or, on the contrary, a new governance system may complement the existing regulatory framework while also contributing to opening up and broadening the scope of 6 Loorbach, Frantzeskaki & Thissen (2011) also used the term "complex" to refer to governance as a meta-level pattern of societal interactions between governing actors within social-political situations. ...
Despite the proliferating amount of literature regarding legitimacy of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) initiatives, little is known about the dynamics of the VSS initiative's legitimacy and its legitimization process at the grassroots level. In an attempt to fill this gap, our study compares discourses in both the national context of Indonesia as well as the sub-national context of the Melawi District, in West Kalimantan province, to uncover RSPO's legitimization process and its effect on VSS initiatives in both contexts. We found that there is a lag in the phases between the national and local levels of the RSPO toward political legitimacy. While in the national context the process had progressed from Phase I (initiation phase) to Phase II (gathering wider support and contestation phase), the legitimization process of the RSPO in Melawi context, however, was found to be lagged behind. We argue that the observed lag in the RSPO's legitimization process is the result of Indonesia's decentralization policy, the spatial-temporal trajectory of oil palm development in Indonesia, as well as the voluntariness of the RSPO itself. On the other hand, similarities in the discourse involved in the legitimization process is found in both the national and the local context, in which strong market logic and development paradigms are embedded in the discourses and sustainable palm oil certification is understood by many of the actors as nothing more than a marketing strategy.
... Within a governance complex as characterized above, co-existing governance systems are often found in a situation where they need to compete for legitimacy (Cashore, 2002). This competition as suggested by Miller and Bush (2015), especially in the case of VSS initiatives, may lead to displacement or substitution of a stringent environmental governance system of a weaker one. Or, on the contrary, a new governance system may complement the existing regulatory framework while also contributing to opening up and broadening the scope of 6 Loorbach, Frantzeskaki & Thissen (2011) also used the term "complex" to refer to governance as a meta-level pattern of societal interactions between governing actors within social-political situations. ...
Despite the proliferating amount of literature regarding legitimacy of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) initiatives, little is known about the dynamics of the VSS initiative's legitimacy and its legitimization process at the grassroots level. In an attempt to fill this gap, our study compares discourses in both the national context of Indonesia as well as the sub-national context of the Melawi District, in West Kalimantan province, to uncover RSPO's legitimization process and its effect on VSS initiatives in both contexts. We found that there is a lag in the phases between the national and local levels of the RSPO toward political legitimacy. While in the national context the process had progressed from Phase I (initiation phase) to Phase II (gathering wider support and contestation phase), the legitimization process of the RSPO in Melawi context, however, was found to be lagged behind. We argue that the observed lag in the RSPO's legitimization process is the result of Indonesia's decentralization policy, the spatial-temporal trajectory of oil palm development in Indonesia, as well as the voluntariness of the RSPO itself. On the other hand, similarities in the discourse involved in the legitimization process is found in both the national and the local context, in which strong market logic and development paradigms are embedded in the discourses and sustainable palm oil certification is understood by many of the actors as nothing more than a marketing strategy.
... IUUfishing is an important concern, and rules to limit bycatch are implemented. Certification is an increasingly important practice exercising influence on tuna chain governance (Miller and Bush 2015). ...
This paper investigates the interface between scholarship on seafood supply chains and the fields of legal pluralism and governance studies. This particular interface has largely been explored with regard to global supply chains, and it is to broadening this perspective that the paper is devoted. Five case studies from South Asia—ranging from low-price sardines destined for local markets to high-value tuna for export—provide the material for comparison. These five supply chains vary in length, age, volume and value, visibility, and governance styles, with governance emerging not only from within the chains but also from their socio-legal environments. Legal pluralism characterizes all of them, with complexities generally increasing not only according to the chain’s length but also according to the engagement of actors affiliated to alternative legal systems. Customary law emanating from non-state authorities is demonstrated to play an important role, alternatively weaving together with regulations from governments, as well as private sources. Whereas conflict characterizes some chains, others possess long histories of socio-legal accommodation.
... Those selling to retailers are not only faced with inexact specifications for 'sustainability' , they are also required to meet a variety of other product specifications, such as price point, quality and safety, product form (whole, fillets) and process form (raw, cooked, breaded). Suppliers are therefore forced to constantly assess the credibility of sustainable seafood programmes as well as governmental claims of 'sustainably regulated' 74,75 , and to ensure traceability is documented throughout the value chain, in order to maintain their own credibility and (by extension) the credibility of the retailers to whom they sell 76,77 . Given the coordination failures of the first three iterations of the theory of change, what might characterize an improved v4.0? ...
The sustainable seafood movement is at a crossroads. Its core strategy, also known as a theory of change, is based on market-oriented initiatives such as third-party certification but does not motivate adequate levels of improved governance and environmental improvements needed in many fisheries, especially in developing countries. Price premiums for certified products are elusive, multiple forms of certification compete in a crowded marketplace and certifiers are increasingly asked to address social as well as ecological goals. This paper traces how the sustainable seafood movement has evolved over time to address new challenges while success remains limited. We conclude by exploring four alternative potential outcomes for the future theory of change, each with different contributions to creating a more sustainable global seafood supply. The decades-long movement for sustainable seafood is centred on a ‘theory of change’ that emphasizes third-party initiatives for certification and consumer signalling. The evolution of that theory, and its potential futures, shows the challenges of management and co-ordination with multiple actors.
... The number of these certifications has increased dramatically since 2000 to include more than fifty different programs globally with different standards and focus on sustainable, responsible, organic, and "fair." The variety of claims made by these certification schemes, as well as their level of independent assessment, has also led to very different levels of perceived credibility and authority in the market (Auld, 2014;Bailey et al., 2016a;Miller & Bush, 2015). Arguably the most advanced standard for capture fisheries, the Marine Stewardship Council, established in 1997, has the longest and broadest presence in the market relative to other ecolabels, having certified 12 percent of global capture fisheries production (Parkes et al., 2010;Stemle et al., 2016). ...
Seafood has emerged as a key testing ground for understanding the role of different value chain actors in driving sustainability. The conventional view, developed in the late 1990s, is that sustainable seafood is driven by the choices and practices of consumers in major importing markets, such as the United States and the European Union. This view led to the development of a range of boycott and buycott initiatives in the 2000s. Many of the buycott initiatives have been formalised into consumer-facing tools, such as certification, recommendation lists, and traceability. More recently celebrity chefs have also joined in, shaping sustainable seafood as cuisine. While these initiatives and tools initially assumed a demand-shapes-supply mode of political consumerism, they have all broadened to include multiple modes of political consumerism. The future of the sustainable seafood movement is therefore dependent on a clearer articulation of diverse modes of political consumerism.
... Certification and Fair Trade USA (FT-USA). Seafood certifications, which usually go hand-in-hand with associated eco-labels, are voluntary (although sometimes coerced (Miller & Bush, 2014)) and convey an issue of resource sustainability, low environmental impact, and/or responsible fisheries or aquaculture production practices. Environmentally focused certification programmes for capture fisheries certify the fishery and this approach is mainly employed by companies that own, control or have significant influence overfishing activities such as fishermen, vessel owners, or even a buyer or group of buyers that buy all the product from the entire fishery (a "monopolistic" buyer). ...
Approaches to counter the overfishing and aquaculture production crisis include those imposed by public governing bodies, as well as those implemented by businesses and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). In the case of the latter, private actors govern fisheries consumption and production through corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this contribution, we focus on three key tools that businesses are increasingly turning towards in an effort to meet the one particular CSR goal of sustainable seafood sourcing. In this context, the key tools of certifications, fisheries improvement projects (FIPs) and traceability are reviewed, and their potential as well as limits in contributing to continual improvement in pursuit of global seafood sustainability are analyzed. We argue that seafood CSR has created its own whimsical and fantastical world, a Seussian world, in which company image has become more important than sustainability performance. We posit four important barriers that must be overcome to bring seafood CSR back to reality. Specifically, we suggest moving away from the business case for CSR, reducing accessibility barriers for small‐scale and developing world fisheries, reconciling different labels and sustainability concepts, and better recognizing the imperative role of the state in governing fisheries and seafood.
span lang="EN-US">Solving natural disaster problems, especially floods, requires community participation. One of the efforts that can be done is by implementing the environmental supplement book of flood disasters based on innovation learning model for natural science and environmental learning (ILMIZI). The purpose of this research was to implement a supplementary book to improve university students’ higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and pro-environmental behavior (PEB). This was an experiment method consisting of experimental class and control class. The samples were 115 university students with 60 university students in experimental class and 55 university students in control class. The data analysis was a t-test that aims to test the significance of the difference in the mean HOTS and PEB scores for the experimental class and the control class. In addition to the t-test, descriptive analysis was also carried out by comparing the HOTS and PEB scores between the experimental class and the control class. The results of this study indicated that the t-test results were significant, which means that supplement books could increase HOTS and PEB of university students. The results of the descriptive analysis showed that university students were still weak in flood mitigation efforts related to the provision of disaster evacuation tools. In an effort to prevent disasters, it was necessary to innovate environmental learning to support sustainability. A conclusion can be drawn that the use of supplementary books can increase university students’ HOTS and PEB.</span
This chapter presents the analytical framework of liquid institutionalization. This analytical framework consists of five analytical concepts: liquid institutionalization, blue governance arrangements, institutional change, reflexivity and power. Liquid institutionalization is defined as an ongoing process of structuration/elaboration in which blue governance arrangements are continuously negotiated, while in a permanent state of “flux and becoming,” as a consequence of high ambiguity and reflexivity, without a solid stabilization in institutionalized blue governance arrangements. Characteristic of liquid institutionalization is its liquid ontology, a detailed understanding of institutional change and stability and how governance arrangements institutionalize, due to the interplay of political modernization and interactions in policy practices. As an ideal-type liquid institutionalization emphasizes continuous processes of structuration. Its ambiguity makes it possible to continuously negotiate the rules of the game. To understand this permanent state of negotiation and change, liquid institutionalization is conceptualized as a form of reflexivity and power. The chapter concludes with a continuum of liquid institutionalization, consisting of four ideal types based on the building blocks elaboration/structuration—maintenance/stabilization, forms of institutional change and forms of reflectiveness/reflexivity.KeywordsLiquid institutionalization; Blue governance arrangements; Liquid ontologyInstitutional changeReflexivityPower
Voluntary standards are key instruments to address sustainability concerns in value chains. The legitimacy of these initiatives has been debated, particularly related to acceptance by Global South stakeholders. The governance literature has predominantly argued that initiatives employing democratic approaches to governance are more likely to increase their legitimacy. In this article, we use a configurational approach to test this proposition in relation to standard acceptance by southern producers. A qualitative comparative analysis of eight cases was carried out, linking three elements of input legitimacy (inclusion, participation, and accountability) to the outcome of standard uptake in the Global South. While our findings suggest that an inclusive governance structure is important, overall, they show no evidence to explain the presence or absence of standard acceptance in the Global South. We conclude that theoretical assumptions about democratic legitimacy cannot be confirmed and argue for further opening up the scholarly debate to include conceptualizations, methods, and approaches inclusive of different ways of creating and perceiving legitimacy.
This book provides the first systematic and accessible text for students of hospitality and the culinary arts that directly addresses how more sustainable restaurants and commercial food services can be achieved.
Food systems receive growing attention because they link various sustainability dimensions. Restaurants are at the heart of these developments, and their decisions to purchase regional foods, or to prepare menus that are healthier and less environmentally problematic, have great influence on food production processes. This book is systematically designed around understanding the inputs and outputs of the commercial kitchen as well as what happens in the restaurant from the perspective of operators, staff and the consumer. The book considers different management approaches and further looks at the role of restaurants, chefs and staff in the wider community and the positive contributions that commercial kitchens can make to promoting sustainable food ways.
Case studies from all over the world illustrate the tools and techniques helping to meet environmental and economic bottom lines. This will be essential reading for all students of hospitality and the culinary arts.
Available from: https://www.routledge.com/The-Sustainable-Chef-The-Environment-in-Culinary-Arts-Restaurants-and/Gossling-Hall/p/book/9781138733732
This chapter seeks to explore the concept of eco-labels as a method used by firms to promote products with high levels of sustainability performance. The authors examine what this means to the firms involved in terms of implementation and impact on profit. However, they also examine what can happen when a firm fails to live up to the required standards, whether these standards are above required performance or even the minimum mandated performance. The authors use the case of the automotive sector to demonstrate several categories of failure and provide a concluding remark with several pathways forward for future research in this topic.
For many coastal nations in the Western Indian Ocean, and notably the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles, the tuna fishery is considered one of the main pillars of economic development, providing jobs and substantial revenues while ensuring food security. However, the fishery is also an illustration of the paradox behind the idea of the blue economy, where economic growth and sustainable use of resources are promoted as jointly achievable. We show that a sustainability narrative, in which the idea of fishing within ecological limits is present within government policy, public discourse, and practices, is, however, in contradiction with the realities of accumulation and growth that prevail in the fishery. When measures towards ecological preservation are to be taken, geopolitics of access to the sea and tuna enter the stage and change the position and narrative of the same actors, governments, and industrial actors that promote sustainability. We emphasize the difficult and nearly impossible path of practicing sustainability in the current model of growth-driven tuna fisheries. We argue for the need to repoliticize the practice of sustainability through the questioning of what we see in tuna fisheries: a hegemonic narrative of sustainability and implicit growth, without positive socio-ecological transformations.
An essential contribution to sustainable development is the integration of environmentally and socially responsible practices into globalised economic systems, including highly branched supply chains spread across developed and developing countries. Due to the complexity of global production networks, a further increase of social and environmental risks is to be expected. To mitigate these risks, existing sustainability governance instruments need to be analysed, evaluated and further developed; new instruments need to be generated against the background of experience and conclusions from previous initiatives. This chapter presents a systematic literature review conducted on behalf of GIZ, aiming to accumulate and expand knowledge on major governance mechanisms for sustainability in global supply chains (Fischer and Jentsch, Ergebnisse der Studie “Einflussmechanismen für Nachhaltigkeit in globalen Lieferketten”, working paper no. 29. Institut für Technologie und Arbeit e.V., Kaiserslautern, 2016). The chapter elaborates especially on private regulation as one of the governance instruments, which is currently gaining greater importance in sustainability related public, scientific and political discourse. The study findings were exemplified and interpreted taking into consideration the aspects of effectivity and legitimacy of private standards as well as the key factors of influence on their design, application and impact.
Ric O’Barry was angry. The entire car journey from his hotel in The Hague to the Netherlands’ main airport Amsterdam Schiphol was one long, unremitting complaint against Earth Island Institute (EII), the custodians of the Dolphin Safe label. Everyone knows the label on canned tuna—the image of a jumping dolphin on cans of tuna across the globe—whether they are aware of it or not. Now Ric O’Barry was furious or rather livid, with EII and its label. ‘I have been fighting the tuna industry for 40 years! I don’t want my salary coming from them! The whole thing is corrupt!’ They, EII, had never told him that some of the money he was paid had come from the tuna industry, O’Barry said. The tuna industry! He was on the point of exploding. The Dutch scenery of polders and windmills passed him by largely unnoticed.
At the end of the twentieth century private tools emerged and were applied in the market alongside the public one to achieve more sustainable tuna fishing. It fitted the Zeitgeist of an era of retracting governments and growing importance of the market [175]. The idea was that the market was able to design a self-regulating principle which would ultimately succeed in serving the sustainable consumer through certification and proprietary labels. Judging by the number of certificates, eco-labels can be called an unequivocal success. When you look at a can of tuna in the supermarket, study the packaging of frozen tuna or even read the wrapper around fresh (or thawed) tuna, you encounter various labels for the sustainability certification programmes for tuna. Some with credibility, even backed by a extensive chain of custody, others purely fictitious. The labels serve consumer power driven by demand, providing them with a tool to steer the global value chain towards sustainable fishing. You can choose what you eat. Meanwhile the system is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. There are so many different labels that consumers have lost track of what they stand for. A brief inventory.
Formalised ‘sustainable’ business practices have challenged a legacy of economic and production rate prioritisation for three or so decades. Despite these years of effort and substantial work to encourage advances, sustainability in trade practice appears, at surface, as something of a new movement with some recently significant advances. The challenge of balancing industry requirements with social and environmental protection is intricate and as such progress toward improved outcomes is gradual. While continuous and consistent improvements emerge, various approaches of benefit and disadvantage are accepted and maintained toward improved sustainability. The business case often requires achieving sales and facilitating market entry for newly ‘sustainable’ products, which can distract from associated outcomes
This chapter will explain how international trade has influenced societal and environmental outcomes. Codes of Conduct informed by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Social Accountability (CSA) as foundational toward improving and correcting such influence is explained, and then sustainability certifications as a complementary mechanism. Their unique market and extra business position provision a significant level of influence in sustainable extraction, production and trade practice. A history of sustainability certifications provides more specific foundational understanding of somewhat humble beginnings, to the range of labels and certifications that currently operate, and increasing expectations that exist. Further information is provided for the certifications, labels and industries discussed in this book, and the chapters are summarised as an introduction to the content of the book.
Coffee represents the highest proportion of agricultural area certified as compliant to sustainability standards. It is one of the longest certified agricultural commodities. Sustainability certifications have been useful in transforming the coffee industry, through this high proportion of certified area but not without shortcomings. This chapter will discuss experience with sustainability certifications in Costa Rica between 2009-2017. While market access proved a consistent benefit and valuable for producers, alongside various other benefits, since 2009 some farmers evolved past a need, interest or reliance on the more popular sustainability certifications. While a contribution via fast tracked sustainable practice is possible from fairtrade and rainforest alliance standard requirements, affordability compared to benefit became an inappropriate element for some small producer organisations. This was particularly the case when they did not already have a stable footing in the international market. Increasing preference for noncertified direct trade markets which consistently offer superior prices exists. Alignment with sustainable and fair trade practices and outcomes through noncertified markets must therefore be assured. Certified and noncertified direct trade markets equally require improvement in the Costa Rican coffee industry which will most likely involve internal work from the certifications, and assistance from appropriately informed and resourced government, private and/or NGO effort.
Although the literature on multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) for sustainability has grown in recent years, it is scattered across several academic fields, making it hard to ascertain how individual disciplines such as business ethics can further contribute to the debate. Based on an extensive review of the literature on certification and principle-based MSIs for sustainability (n=293 articles), we show that the scholarly debate rests on three broad themes (“the 3Is”): the input into creating and governing MSIs; the institutionalization of MSIs; and the impact that relevant initiatives create. While our discussion reveals the theoretical underpinnings of the 3Is, it also shows that a number of research challenges related to business ethics remain unaddressed. We unpack these challenges and suggest how scholars can utilize theoretical insights in business ethics to push the boundaries of the field. Finally, we also discuss what business ethics research can gain from theory development in the MSI field.
Including the work of thirty four authors through thirteen chapters, this book provides a balanced critique of a range of international sustainability certification schemes across nine agricultural and natural resource industries. Certification schemes set standards through intra-market private and multi-stakeholder mechanisms. While third party verification is often compulsory, they are regulated voluntarily rather than legislatively. This book examines the intricacies of certification schemes and the issues they seek to address and provides the context within which each scheme operates. While a distinction between sustainability certifications and extra-market or intra-business codes of conducts is made, the book also demonstrates how they often work towards similar sustainability objectives. Each chapter highlights a different sector, including animal welfare, biodiversity, biofuels, coffee, fisheries, flowers, forest management and mining, with the contributions offering interdisciplinary perspectives and utilising a wide range of methodologies. The realities, achievements and challenges faced by varying certification schemes are discussed, identifying common outcomes and findings and concluding with recommendations for future practice and research. The book is aimed at advanced students, researchers and professionals in agribusiness, natural resource economics, sustainability assessment and corporate social responsibility.
Private governance regimes—instances where nonstate actors set rules that govern their behavior and/or the behavior of others—are increasingly common intermediaries between activists and corporations. Activists are often thought to drive corporations to participate in private governance. By participating, corporations hope to be shielded from activist pressures. Yet there are many instances where activists oppose particular private governance regimes, even ones that are seen as leaders in a sector. Why is this? This article contributes answers to this question by examining how activists’ different strategic orientations affect their perceptions of private governance. It unpacks three distinct ideal-type strategic orientations—prefiguration, targeting, and cooperation—activists may hold in their efforts to transform markets and the different forms of private governance each orientation will prefer. It then details how market entry conditions, sequencing and interactions, and feedbacks affect how activists are likely to engage the private governance regimes that develop in a given sector.
In recent years a wide range of non-state certification programs have emerged to address environmental and social problems associated with the extraction of natural resources. This book provides a general analytical framework for assessing the emergence and effectiveness of voluntary certification programs. It focuses on certification in the forest and fisheries sectors, as initiatives in these sectors are among the most advanced cases of non-state standard setting and governance in the environmental realm.
This article outlines a framework for the analysis of economic integration and its relation to the asymmetries of economic and social development. Consciously breaking with state-centric forms of social science, it argues for a research agenda that is more adequate to the exigencies and consequences of globalization than has traditionally been the case in 'development studies'. Drawing on earlier attempts to analyse the cross-border activities of firms, their spatial configurations and developmental consequences, the article moves beyond these by proposing the framework of the 'global production network' (GPN). It explores the conceptual elements involved in this framework in some detail and then turns to sketch a stylized example of a GPN. The article concludes with a brief indication of the benefits that could be delivered by research informed by GPN analysis.
Market-based instruments of fishery governance have been promoted in the past two decades
on the basis of two widespread expectations: that complying with sustainability standards
will lead to environmental benefits; and that certifications will not discriminate against
specific social groups, countries or regions.This paper assesses whether these assumptions hold
through the analysis of how the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label for capture
fisheries has managed ‘supply’,‘demand’ and ‘civic’ concerns in the market for sustainability
certifications. The MSC has created and now dominates the market for ‘sustainable fish’,
but success has been accompanied by serious challenges. The MSC has so far failed to
convincingly show that its certification system has positive environmental impacts, and it
has marginalized Southern fisheries, especially in low-income countries. As an institutional
solution to the global fishery crisis, the MSC seems to be better tuned to the creation of a
market for ‘sustainable fish’ rather than ‘sustainable fisheries’.
Civil society organisations are employing both adversarial and collaborative strategies to challenge purchasing practices of large corporations as a cause of poor employment conditions for a largely female workforce. This paper draws on analysis of global production networks, labour agency and gender to examine linkages and tensions at the intersection between commercial dynamics of dominant firms and their societal embeddedness in diverse localities of consumption and production. It contrasts two campaigns, one adversarial, the other collaborative, on corporate purchasing practices pursued by smaller, women-oriented NGOs to improve working conditions of a feminised labour force in fruit and garment GPNs. It analyses how the positioning of lead firms within GPNs affects their engagement with social actors. Brand exposure to reputational risk allows civil society organisations to exploit leverage points opened up at different GPN nodes to pressure for commercial change. It argues this is not coincidental. It often plays out within a gender contested terrain where women workers bear the brunt of adverse purchasing practices. But GPNs also open up new channels for women’s voice and organisation. The paper considers the extent to which these forms of civil society engagement reflect a fundamental challenge to GPNs, or new forms of incorporation by firms adapting to their social critics. It assesses this in light of a process of gender transformation within global markets, where women now participate as more informed workers, consumers and activists.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was created as a conservation tool – intended to provide “the best environmental choice in seafood” to consumers and to create positive incentives that would improve the status and management of fisheries. During its 15 years, the MSC, which has an annual budget of close to US$20 million, has attached its logo to more than 170 fisheries. These certifications have not occurred without protest. Despite high costs and difficult procedures, conservation organizations and other groups have filed and paid for 19 formal objections to MSC fisheries certifications. Only one objection has been upheld such that the fishery was not certified. Here, we collate and summarize these objections and the major concerns as they relate to the MSC’s three main principles: sustainability of the target fish stock, low impacts on the ecosystem, and effective, responsive management. An analysis of the formal objections indicates that the MSC’s principles for sustainable fishing are too lenient and discretionary, and allow for overly generous interpretation by third-party certifiers and adjudicators, which means that the MSC label may be misleading both consumers and conservation funders.
This paper develops a critical framework on international management and production that draws from the literatures on global commodity chains and global production networks (GPNs), from institutional entrepreneurship, as well as from neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy. The framework views GPNs as integrated economic, political, and discursive systems, in which market and political power are intertwined. The framework highlights the contingent stability of GPNs as well as the potential for actors to engage politically in contestation and collaboration over system governance and the distribution of benefits. The framework offers a multidimensional and multi-level approach to understanding power relations, ideology, and value appropriation in GPNs. The framework is valuable for examining the intersection of GPNs with charged political and social issues such as sweatshops and incomes for coffee growers, and the role of geography as a source of stability and tension in these networks. 2
In recent years, transnational and domestic nongovernmental organizations have created non–state market–driven (NSMD) governance systems whose purpose is to develop and implement environmentally and socially responsible management practices. Eschewing traditional state authority, these systems and their supporters have turned to the market’s supply chain to create incentives and force companies to comply.
This paper develops an analytical framework designed to understand better the emergence of NSMD governance systems and the conditions under which they may gain authority to create policy. Its theoretical roots draw on pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy granting distinctions made within organizational sociology, while its empirical focus is on the case of sustainable forestry certification, arguably the most advanced case of NSMD governance globally. The paper argues that such a framework is needed to assess whether these new private governance systems might ultimately challenge existing state–centered authority and public policy–making processes, and in so doing reshape power relations within domestic and global environmental governance.
This paper deals with the challenging task of permanently organizing projects that include a broad range of actors: enterprises, social movement organizations and state actors. It focuses on a special type of standardization activity, namely eco-labelling, and is based on case studies of two Swedish projects/organizations: labelling of organic food and sustainable forestry. In this paper, I theorize about the concept of inclusiveness, which is seen as being instrumental for the creation of regulatory credibility and authority and argue that different types of members/participants have different types of power resources, which the standardization organization (SO) seeks to mobilize and control. The combination of these individual power resources brings action capacity and symbolic resources to the SO, including an image of independence. Moreover, the SO provides an organizational setting that, inter alias, helps interdependent actors to maintain a hold on each other, and forces them to engage in a dialogue and repeated interaction over time. This interaction can, in turn, result in common expectations and under- standings that are essential for the operations of non-state governance. However, the case studies also indicate difficulties in organizing such complex networks. It can, above all, be difficult to prevent a power shift in favour of organizations with large power resources. Key words. credi- bility; eco-labelling; environmental governance; inclusiveness; organiz- ing; private authority; standardization organization This article deals with the challenging task of permanently organizing projects that include a broad range of actors. More specifically, it regards
be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Market-based non-state governance arrangements, many examples of which are seen in the environmental field, require the active approval of a broad group of stakeholders. This paper makes the theoretical argument that credibility is a key issue in the establishment of such arrangements, and examines empirically the effort to develop a trustworthy eco-labelling scheme for seafood in Sweden. Many policy actors view eco-labelling as a particularly credible instrument that consumers and businesspeople can use to demonstrate environmentally friendly behaviour. But establishing credibility is complicated, especially if the issues are controversial and if there is mistrust among the groups. This paper analyses the challenges involved in practising six standard-setting ideals, the fulfilment of which is seen to establish credibility: inclusiveness, independence, auditability, scientific validity, global applicability and the balancing of feasibility versus environmental stringency. The ideals are subjects of framing, debating, power struggles and negotiation; and are dependent upon context, situational and historical factors. The assumed positive relationship between ideals and credibility is complicated because of the challenges involved in practising the ideals. This article draws upon the literature on non-state authority, governance and standardization.
The study of environmental impacts of seafood production as a result of ecolabelling and certification is a young yet rapidly growing discipline that lacks theoretical models. Pieces of the model have been suggested in the literature, and these pieces are formalized here realizing the current operating parameters of the global seafood industry. The derived pull-threshold model assumes that if producers exceed the threshold, there is no incentive to improve while if too far below, improvement is most likely beyond technical or financial means. Thus, a single certification is only a marginal solution to the larger picture. Those producers immediately below the certification threshold are within range or ‘pull’ of the threshold to improve as a result of certification. Results from a single threshold model applied to compliance data indicated that a maximum improvement of 12.5%, achieved when the pull was the greatest and the threshold was at the lower end of the impact distribution. When impacts were continuous (e.g. escapes in aquaculture), greater improvement was observed with thresholds targeting the producers at the higher end of the impact distribution. In all cases, improvement was maximized with a triple threshold model, indicating that single threshold scenario will not drive the greatest movement towards environmental improvement throughout the industry. Innovation is potentially more important in reducing environmental impacts of seafood production and needs to be accounted for as the seafood certification or ecolabelling continues to mature.
Nonstate certification programs have formed in the past 20 years to address social and environmental problems associated with production practices in several economic sectors. These programs embody the idea that information disclosure can be a tool for NGOs, investors, governments, and consumers to support high performers and hence, advocates hope, place upward pressure on sector-wide practices. Many unanswered questions remain, however, about information disclosure's practices and outcomes. We compare the use of procedural and outcome transparency in the rule-making and auditing processes of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We highlight key differences in how transparency relates to accountability and legitimacy of the programs. The MSC uses transparency and stakeholder consultation instrumentally, whereas the FSC treats them as ends unto themselves. This underscores the importance of considering transparency alongside other governance aspects, such as who the eligible stakeholders are and who gets decision-making power. (c) 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After a brief description of purse seining and the other methods used to catch yellowfin tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean, some consideration s are made on the tuna--dolphin association and the solution of the problem of dolphin mortality in the eastern Pacific. The association has been observed in other ocenas, but the frequency of setting in the eastern Pacific is much greater. The mortalities of dolphins through fishing have declined from about 133 000 in 1986 to around 2600 in 1996. The impact of recent levels of mortality on the dolphin populations is not significant from the population point of view. The mortality levels for all the stocks are less than 0.1%, much lower than the 2% value used as a conservative (low) estimate of net recruitment. All dolphin stocks have population sizes between 400 000 and 2 200 000, and most have remained stable for a decade or more. Fishing operations can cause ecological impacts of different types: bycatches, damage to the habitat, mortality caused by lost or discarded gear, pollution, generation of marine debris, etc. A brief discussion follows, with a more detailed look at the bycatches. For convenience we can separate the effects of the fishery on the target species, and on other species. Of the different ways of purse seining for tunas, sets on dolphins catch tuna close to the optimum size to maximize yields and to allow for reproduction, and result in discards of tunas of less than 1% of the catch. Sets on logs catch small tunas, and result in the highest tuna discards (20--25%). School sets fall in the middle from the point of view of the sizes caught. Obviously, from the ecological point of view, sets on dolphins are the best way to harvest yellowfin tuna. After a discussion of the different ecological impacts a fishery can cause to other species on the habitat, a comparison is made of the bycatches generated by the different types of purse seine sets. Billfishes, sharks, mahi-mahi, wahoo and sea turtles are taken as incidental catches by purse seiners. Log sets produce, by far, the largest bycatches, followed by school sets and dolphin sets in that order. The bycatch levels in log sets are usually tens to hundreds of times those in dolphin sets. The difference can be attributed to the selection caused by the speed of movement of the tuna--dolphin group (slow-moving species or individuals cannot keep up with the group), an effect that may be magnified by the chase that precedes the dolphin sets. Log sets, on the other hand, are made on a drifting community. The alternatives left to the fishers if they were forced to switch from the current fishing methods to others are briefly discussed, considering their feasibility, and comparing their ecological costs. From the ecological point of view, and considering that the dolphin mortality is clearly sustainable, the impacts caused by the other types of sets, especially log sets, could be more significant than those caused by the dolphin sets. Some of the species taken in log sets are endangered (e.g. sea turtles), others have unknown status and potential vulnerability because of their low reproductive and juvenile survival rates (e.g. sharks). Overall, the biodiversity of the eastern Pacific appears to be better preserved by a fishery directed to dolphin sets than the other alternatives proposed for the purse seine and for other gears.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global private governance system overseeing the sustainability and biodiversity
of the world forestry system through certification of forests and forestry processes and products, and is perceived as the
strongest of the various certification schemes available (Domask, Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society, 2003; Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). It has seen more success in developed than developing countries in terms of amount of forest certified and number of chain-of-custody
certificates issued, raising questions as to its ability to promote biodiversity Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). A number of challenges have risen to the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC as a global governance system: alternative
certification schemes, output and market access, cost of certification, plantations, and illegal logging. I examine each of
these challenges as they pertain to the dimensions of pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC. I conclude with a discussion
of theoretical implications for global governance systems using ecolabel schemes, as well as a discussion of practical implications
for the FSC in particular.
Associative behaviour is defined as the spatial relationship between an animal (or a group) of a given species and another animal of another species, which is based on a decision by at least one of the two individuals to maintain contact with the other associate, but not for the purpose of feeding on the other. This definition is expanded to include objects and topographic structures (seamount, island, etc) that are not the exclusive habitat of the associated animal.Associations between fish and objects, mammals, topographic structures and other species of fish are reviewed, and the different hypotheses for these associations analysed. Finally, a generalisation of the meeting point hypothesis, fitting all types of association, is proposed. This hypothesis, initially applied to the association between tuna and floating objects, proposes that fish make use of animate or inanimate targets to increase the encounter rate between isolated individuals or small schools and other schools in order to constitute bigger schools that are more efficient to the survival of the species.It is strongly recommended to move from the scientific description of the association to specific experimental studies aimed at identifying ethological processes. This would provide a better understanding of the dynamics of associative behaviour of pelagic species, which in turn would permit better stock assessment and fishery management.
Recently, third-party certification (TPC) has emerged as a significant regulatory mechanism in the global agrifood system. It reflects a broader shift from public to private governance. Traditionally, government agencies were responsible for monitoring food safety and quality standards. However, the globalization of the agrifood system, the consolidation of the food retail industry, and the rise in private retailer standards have precipitated a shift in responsibility for this task to third-party certifiers. This development is reconfiguring social, political, and economic relations throughout the contemporary agrifood system. In discussing the rise of TPC, this paper focuses on the role and implications for three key stakeholder groups: supermarket chains, producers, and non-governmental organizations. We conclude that TPC reflects the growing power of supermarkets to regulate the global agrifood system. At the same time, TPC also offers opportunities to create alternative practices that are more socially and environmentally sustainable.
Which SUVs are most likely to rollover? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are the most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public discourse, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that information is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, focus on the needs of ordinary citizens. © Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
What institutional arrangements should a well-functioning constitutional democracy have? Most of the relevant literatures in law, political science, political theory, and economics address this question by discussing institutional design writ large. This book moves beyond these debates, changing the focus to institutional design writ small. In established constitutional polities, the book argues that law can and should - and to some extent already does - provide mechanisms of democracy: a repertoire of small-scale institutional devices and innovations that can have surprisingly large effects, promoting democratic values of impartial, accountable and deliberative government. Examples include legal rules that promote impartiality by depriving officials of the information they need to act in self-interested ways; voting rules that create the right kind and amount of accountability for political officials and judges; and legislative rules that structure deliberation, in part by adjusting the conditions under which deliberation occurs transparently or instead secretly. Drawing upon a range of social science tools from economics, political science, and other disciplines, the book carefully describes the mechanisms of democracy and indicates the conditions under which they can succeed.
IntroductionEarly campaignsFrom stick to carrot: The Marine Stewardship CouncilSustainable seafood goes mainstreamThe future of sustainable seafoodThe blue revolutionReferences
Governance, from local to global levels, relies increasingly on private governance arrangements. Private actors, specifically corporations and civil society organizations, increasingly design, implement and monitor rules and standards that guide and prescribe behavior in a range of policy areas, including sustainability, banking and international security, to name a few. Even though the involvement of private actors in global politics is not a new phenomenon, the creation of cooperative arrangements in the form of organizations that lead to private regulation – thus complementing traditional ways of political influence – is relatively novel. This paper focuses on private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of sustainability. It starts from the observation that, despite seemingly performing similar roles and functions, organizations differ both in terms of outputs they produce as well as rules of participation and decision-making. Accordingly, the paper evaluates whether organizations providing a more inclusive and participatory approach in relation to others have different implications for the quality and relevance of rules (outputs). Hence, it aims to shed light on the way private rules and standards are decided and the associated implications, in view of their increasing role and relevance in sustainability governance. In more detail, we contend that there is no linear relation between democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. While inclusiveness and representativeness in the standard-setting process will probably lead to more stringent and comprehensive rules, those regulatory systems with high stringency will be the ones least taken up. Empirically, the paper illustrates its argument with a comparison of five private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of fisheries sustainability: the Marine Stewardship Council, Friend of the Sea, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the Global Aquaculture Alliance and GlobalGAP.
Research has recognized that states enable or constrain private governance initiatives, but we still know too little about the interactions between private and public authority in the governance of various social and environmental problems. This article examines how states have responded to the emergence of forest and fisheries certification programs, and how state responses have influenced the subsequent development of these programs. It is argued that historical and structural differences in the management of forest and fisheries have resulted in divergent state responses to certification programs, but that both trajectories of interaction have led to a strengthening of the non-state program. The article draws upon these cases to inductively identify types of interaction between state policies and non-state certification programs, the causal mechanisms that shed light on interaction dynamics, and the conditions under which state involvement is likely to result in either strengthening or weakening of non-state programs.
The willingness of public authority to delegate social and environmental regulation to the private sector
has varied from sector to sector, but has often led to the establishment of ‘voluntary’ standards and certifications
on sustainability. Many of these have taken the form of ‘stewardship councils’ and ‘sustainability
roundtables’ and have been designed around a set of institutional features seeking to establish
legitimacy, fend off possible criticism, and ‘sell’ certifications to potential users. The concept of ‘roundtabling’
emphasizes the fitting a variety of commodity-specific sustainability situations into a form that
not only ‘hears more voices’ (as in ‘multi-stakeholder’), but also portrays to give them equal standing
at the table of negotiations (roundtable), thus raising higher expectations on accountability, transparency
and inclusiveness. In this article, I examine to what extent these expectations are being met through the
comparative case study of two sustainability certifications in the biofuel industry – in the context of a
wider set of experiences in the agro-food and forestry sectors. I show that ‘roundtabling’ entails an ever
more complex web of governance systems and procedures to meet ‘good practice’ in standard setting and
management. This is opening space for competing initiatives that are less democratic, quicker, and more
aligned with industry interests to establish substantial presence in the market for sustainability certifications.
These tend to more easily discriminate on the basis of size (against small players) and geography
(against actors in the South). The article concludes with a reflection on what can be done, through appropriate
regulation, to address this situation.
In recent years a startling policy innovation has emerged within global and domestic environmental governance: certification systems that promote socially responsible business practices by turning to the market, rather than the state, for rule-making authority. This book documents five cases in which the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification program backed by leading environmental groups, has competed with industry and landowner-sponsored certification systems for legitimacy. The authors compare the politics behind forest certification in five countries. They reflect on why there are differences regionally, discuss the impact the Forest Stewardship Council has had on other certification programs, and assess the ability of private forest certification to address global forest deterioration.
To turn current patterns of consumption and production in a sustainable direction, solid and understandable market information on the socio-ecological performance of products is needed. Eco-labelling programmes have an important role in this communication. The aim of this study is to investigate what gaps there may be in the current criteria development processes in relation to a strategic sustainability perspective and develop recommendations on how such presumptive gaps could be bridged. First a previously published generic framework for strategic sustainable development is described and applied for the assessment of two eco-labelling programmes. Data for the assessment is collected from literature and in semi-structured interviews and discussions with eco-labelling experts.The assessment revealed that the programmes lack both an operational definition of sustainability, and a statement of objectives to direct and drive the criteria development processes. Consequently they also lack guidelines for how product category criteria might gradually develop in any direction. The selected criteria mainly reflect the current reality based on a selection of negative impacts in ecosystems, but how this selection, or prioritization, is made is not clearly presented. Finally, there are no guidelines to ensure that the criteria developers represent a broad enough competence to embrace all essential sustainability aspects.In conclusion the results point at deficiencies in theory, process and practice of eco-labelling, which hampers cohesiveness, transparency and comprehension. And it hampers predictability, as producers get no support in foreseeing how coming revisions of criteria will develop. This represents a lost opportunity for strategic sustainable development. It is suggested that these problems could be avoided by informing the criteria development process by a framework for strategic sustainable development, based on backcasting from basic sustainability principles.
Here, the author reviews arguments about the uses of collaborative and performance-based information in environmental politics. The use of information is considered as a way to transform treadmill politics. In particular recent experiments in participatory forest standard setting and certification operate to generate information about forest practice and policy for interested parties. The case that environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or other civil society groups armed with collaborative and performance-based information can push more effectively for social change is considered, as is the role of the state in (potentially),fostering information provision as public policy. Results presented here follow the completion of 40 interviews with certification actors in the United States, archival research on key documents, analysis of transcripts of industry and NGO conferences on cerrtification, and field tours with managers of certified lands.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has continued to strengthen its position in the market based on its credibility as a transparent, accountable and science-based third party certification scheme. However, the consolidation of MSC's credibility risks being undermined by the poor representation of developing world fisheries and concerns that the scheme provides little incentive for continual improvement for fisheries once certified. This paper argues that the challenge of maintaining credibility while increasing access and fisheries improvement constitutes a 'devils triangle'. In the absence of a clear policy from MSC for balancing this triangle fisheries are taking their own actions to differentiate themselves both above (MSC-plus) and below (MSC-minus) the certification threshold. To avoid further undermining of the MSC the organisation should internalise such externally-led differentiation by moving towards an internally controlled tiered certification system based on its already existing metric-based principle indicator system. Doing so would communicate on equity and continual improvement both before and after certification, and create on-going incentives for fishers to enter into the MSC programme.
Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency. By Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 282p. $28.00.
One of the cornerstones of Woodrow Wilson's policy agenda, even before he formally sought the presidency, was transparency. To neutralize corporate misbehavior, for instance, he called for “turn[ing] the light” on corporations: “They don't like light. Turn it on so strong they can't stand it. Exposure is one of the best ways to whip them into line.” Although the authors of this superb work do not acknowledge Wilson's part in the evolutionary line of transparency policy, they do show by means of thorough and enlightening description and analysis the fruit finally borne of ideas like those Wilson espoused. Indeed, the authors tell a story of policy design that demonstrates the continuing value of careful legislative craftsmanship and policy refinement over time, based on feedback from administration and enforcement. It is a tale of effective legislative governance, particularly at the national level, that far too many American citizens, and even political leaders, believe is impossible or at least unlikely anymore.
Third-party certification (TPC) is becoming an integral component of the global agrifood system. However, little is known about its functions, structures and practices. In this article we examine the emergence of TPC as a governance mechanism, its organisational structure, and its practices. Distinguishing between two forms of ‘independence’– organisational and operational – we argue that TPC exhibits organisational, but not operational independence. Thus, in contrast to the view of TPC as an objective governance mechanism, we argue that TPC is embedded in social, political and economic networks. This finding, we argue, raises questions as to how TPC is structured and operates, who gets to decide the ways it is structured and operates, and the ways that TPC might differentially impact on actors in the food and agricultural sector.
ABSTRACT The globalization of socio-economic relations is a central topic of discussion in both the general literature on economy and society and in the area of food and agriculture. Many maintain that we are in a transition from one era, termed Fordism, to another, called Global Post-Fordism. We use the case of two fisheries eco-labeling programs to inform discussions regarding the emergence of stabilizing socio-economic mechanisms in the Global Post-Fordist era. We argue that recent developments in the tuna-dolphin case, the first major experiment with eco-labeling in the fisheries industries, combined with the Marine Stewardship Council, an initiative designed to regulate and certify a system of global “sustainable fisheries” through an eco-labeling program, provide valuable insights into the ideological and organizational structure of salient global actors in the Post-Fordist era. The discussion addresses (1) the contested terrain within the “North” and between the “North” and the “South” regarding eco-legislation to regulate the global fisheries; (2) the fracturing of the environmental movement into “mainstream” and “grassroots” camps and the resulting inability to maintain a coordinated agenda to counter the globalization project; and (3) the emergence of new forms of supranational state-like regulatory mechanisms that combine science with free trade and environmental ideals and propose to resolve the global fisheries crises by providing sustainable socio-economic coordination. We conclude that the emergence of these supra-national state-like NGOs raises important implications for the sovereignty of nation-states and democratic action on the part of subordinate groups opposed to the globalization project.
Two global certification and ecolabelling systems – the generic global dolphin-safe ecolabel and the global Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabel – are assessed for their present and potential contributions to improving biodiversity conservation in marine capture fisheries. The dolphin-safe ecolabel appears to have played a minor role in a reduction of dolphin mortality in tuna fisheries, but dolphin populations in the worst-affected area have not recovered, and it appears that the current level of dolphin by-catch sanctioned by present-day fishery management and the ecolabel is not effective enough to achieve population recovery. The MSC ecolabel has established a poorly expressed environmental standard that has resulted in variable interpretations by certifiers, creating an apparently systematic bias in application of the standard to the certified fisheries. Without substantial revision of both these systems, it seems unlikely that they will be able to make major contributions to marine biodiversity conservation because of barriers created by limitations in programme design, lack of robust linkages between the certification standard and biodiversity conservation outcomes, and unclear standards and their inconsistent application in the certification of fisheries.
The failure of the worlds’ governments to agree on a binding global forest convention at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit led many leading environmental groups to advance eco-labelling ‘forest certification’ programmes that, they hoped, would achieve greater success in implementing sustainable forest management. Eschewing traditional State-centered authority, supporters of this ‘non-State market driven’ (NSMD) approach turn to customers of wood products to create compliance mechanisms, either through positive incentives such as market access or price premiums, or negative incentives such as ‘direct targeting’ or ‘boycott’ campaigns. Understanding how such systems might ‘ratchet up’ global forestry standards, we argue, requires that existing scholarship place greater attention on the role of public policies in helping to facilitate the impacts of private solutions. Specifically, we argue that scholars and practitioners need to assess strategic decisions not only on the basis of their appropriateness at present, but what they might do to trigger a global ‘race to the top’ at a later time.
Ecolabelling is an increasingly important tool used in the promotion of sustainable forestry and fishery products around the world. Whether the consumer is actually paying a price premium for ecolabelled products is of fundamental importance as it indicates a return on the investment of sustainable practices, providing an incentive for producers to undertake such practices. This article seeks to address the question of whether or not an actual premium is being paid by consumers for ecolabelled seafood by conducting a hedonic analysis of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)‐certified frozen processed Alaska pollock products in the London metropolitan area in the UK market using scanner data. Regression results show a statistically significant premium of 14.2%. This implies the presence of market differentiation for sustainable seafood and the potential of the MSC’s fisheries certification programme to generate market incentives for sustainable fisheries practices.
Increasingly, companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility
(CSR) in supply chains. This is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders. Yet, a
wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low
exigencies, using them as a legitimacy front. This strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards
among stakeholders and their long-term trust in these instruments of CSR, meaning that all expenses for their implementation
are of no avail for the companies. Therefore, this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection, implementation
and improvement in order to achieve a company's aim, but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards.
This research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research, comparing four different social and environmental
standards, revealing weaknesses and strengths. It exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders
and identifies the need for more empirical data.
Providing a complete portal to the world of case study research, the Fourth Edition of Robert K. Yin's bestselling text Case Study Research offers comprehensive coverage of the design and use of the case study method as a valid research tool. This thoroughly revised text now covers more than 50 case studies (approximately 25% new), gives fresh attention to quantitative analyses, discusses more fully the use of mixed methods research designs, and includes new methodological insights. The book's coverage of case study research and how it is applied in practice gives readers access to exemplary case studies drawn from a wide variety of academic and applied fields.Key Features of the Fourth Edition Highlights each specific research feature through 44 boxed vignettes that feature previously published case studies Provides methodological insights to show the similarities between case studies and other social science methods Suggests a three-stage approach to help readers define the initial questions they will consider in their own case study research Covers new material on human subjects protection, the role of Institutional Review Boards, and the interplay between obtaining IRB approval and the final development of the case study protocol and conduct of a pilot case Includes an overall graphic of the entire case study research process at the beginning of the book, then highlights the steps in the process through graphics that appear at the outset of all the chapters that follow Offers in-text learning aids including 'tips' that pose key questions and answers at the beginning of each chapter, practical exercises, endnotes, and a new cross-referencing tableCase Study Research, Fourth Edition is ideal for courses in departments of Education, Business and Management, Nursing and Public Health, Public Administration, Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science.
This paper examines how the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has set up a complex network for environmental governance that certifies sustainably produced forests and forests products with a ‘tick-tree’ symbol. Behind this symbol are complex processes of verification which bind together science and policy to support better forestry and which I examine using concepts from science and technology studies. I show how the FSC explicitly builds a heterogeneous network to seek scientific robustness for its standard and industrial support for its implementation. This ‘credibility alliance’ works across the science-policy interface, so that its heterogeneity is not merely a description of but an explanation for its continued survival and support.
In recent years intersectoral partnerships for sustainable development have been on the rise in many global commodity chains. Taking the coffee chain as an example, we explore the role of partnerships with the help of Global Commodity Chain analysis and Convention Theory. By means of production standards, partnerships are able to influence sustainability challenges at the production level. However, these partnerships show an imbalance in actor involvement, compete with each other and mainly create a parallel production integrated into the conventional chain. While being important initiators of change, partnerships are unable to turn the coffee chain into a sustainable chain.