Recent collaboration between researchers at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the University of Leeds has led to the publication of a new working paper in the NRI series on sustainability standards: 'A Review of the Literature and Knowledge of Standards and Certification Systems in Agricultural Production and Farming Systems'.
The paper outlines the rise of private standards in agriculture and explores their social, economic and environmental impacts.
Compliance with standards is a key feature of trade in agrifood products, and the increasing significance of private standards in agricultural trade is demonstrated by the interest from inter-governmental bodies of the UN and WTO.
As well as charting the emergence of the different standards, the study reviews the market demand and supply of certified products, and summarises the state of the art impact methodologies, activities of standard bodies and the findings or evidence to date. The report discusses the relative efficacy of the different standard systems and sets out what is known by consumers and the public. In conclusion it identifies factors that enable and constrain the success of standards and indicates some areas for a future research agenda.
The report, which is co-authored by Anne Tallontire, Valerie Nelson, Tim Benton and Jami Dixon draws on the findings of the DFID funded NRI project, 'Assessing the poverty impact of voluntary sustainability standards', and on-going work led by the University of Leeds on sustainability standards (e.g. ESRC DFID project 'The governance implications of private standards initiatives') and landscape level analysis of the ecological impacts of different agricultural practices.
Upon reviewing the report, Sir. Jonathon Porritt, environmentalist and writer, co-founder of Forum for the Future and former director of Friends for the Earth, described it as "absolutely fascinating [with] really important insights".
The work was commissioned by the US-based consultancy RESOLVE to provide contributing research for a major new assessment across different sectors of sustainability standards.
To download the report, and for the NRI series on Sustainability Standards see: http://www.nri.org/projects/tradestandards/index.html