IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v24y2007i2p147-163.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regulating sustainability in the coffee sector: A comparative analysis of third-party environmental and social certification initiatives

Author

Listed:
  • Laura Raynolds
  • Douglas Murray
  • Andrew Heller

Abstract

Certification and labeling initiatives that seek to enhance environmental and social sustainability are growing rapidly. This article analyzes the expansion of these private regulatory efforts in the coffee sector. We compare the five major third-party certifications – the Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh, and Shade/Bird Friendly initiatives – outlining and contrasting their governance structures, environmental and social standards, and market positions. We argue that certifications that seek to raise ecological and social expectations are likely to be increasingly challenged by those that seek to simply uphold current standards. The vulnerability of these initiatives to market pressures highlights the need for private regulation to work in tandem with public regulation in enhancing social and environmental sustainability. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Raynolds & Douglas Murray & Andrew Heller, 2007. "Regulating sustainability in the coffee sector: A comparative analysis of third-party environmental and social certification initiatives," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(2), pages 147-163, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:24:y:2007:i:2:p:147-163
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-006-9047-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-006-9047-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-006-9047-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tad Mutersbaugh, 2002. "The Number is the Beast: A Political Economy of Organic-Coffee Certification and Producer Unionism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(7), pages 1165-1184, July.
    2. C. Dolan & J. Humphrey, 2000. "Governance and Trade in Fresh Vegetables: The Impact of UK Supermarkets on the African Horticulture Industry," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 147-176.
    3. Tad Mutersbaugh, 2005. "Fighting Standards with Standards: Harmonization, Rents, and Social Accountability in Certified Agrofood Networks," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(11), pages 2033-2051, November.
    4. Raynolds, Laura T., 2004. "The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 725-743, May.
    5. Jonathan Murdoch & Terry Marsden & Jo Banks, 2000. "Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(2), pages 107-125, April.
    6. Jason Konefal & Michael Mascarenhas & Maki Hatanaka, 2005. "Governance in the Global Agro-food System: Backlighting the Role of Transnational Supermarket Chains," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 22(3), pages 291-302, September.
    7. Bacon, Christopher, 2005. "Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Can Fair Trade, Organic, and Specialty Coffees Reduce Small-Scale Farmer Vulnerability in Northern Nicaragua?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 497-511, March.
    8. Laura T. Raynolds & Douglas Murray & Peter Leigh Taylor, 2004. "Fair trade coffee: building producer capacity via global networks," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(8), pages 1109-1121.
    9. Laura Raynolds, 2000. "Re-embedding global agriculture: The international organic and fair trade movements," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 17(3), pages 297-309, September.
    10. Giovannucci, Daniele & Ponte, Stefano, 2005. "Standards as a new form of social contract? Sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 284-301, June.
    11. Ponte, Stefano, 2002. "The 'Latte Revolution'? Regulation, Markets and Consumption in the Global Coffee Chain," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1099-1122, July.
    12. Giovannucci, Daniele & Koekoek, Freek Jan, 2003. "The State of Sustainable Coffee: A Study of Twelve Major Markets," MPRA Paper 17172, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raynolds, Laura T., 2009. "Mainstreaming Fair Trade Coffee: From Partnership to Traceability," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1083-1093, June.
    2. Sarah Bowen & Tad Mutersbaugh, 2014. "Local or localized? Exploring the contributions of Franco-Mediterranean agrifood theory to alternative food research," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(2), pages 201-213, June.
    3. Joni Valkila & Anja Nygren, 2010. "Impacts of Fair Trade certification on coffee farmers, cooperatives, and laborers in Nicaragua," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(3), pages 321-333, September.
    4. Raynolds, Laura T., 2004. "The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 725-743, May.
    5. Ponte, Stefano, 2008. "Greener than Thou: The Political Economy of Fish Ecolabeling and Its Local Manifestations in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 159-175, January.
    6. Beuchelt, Tina D. & Zeller, Manfred, 2011. "Profits and poverty: Certification's troubled link for Nicaragua's organic and fairtrade coffee producers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(7), pages 1316-1324, May.
    7. Barjolle, Dominique & Quiñones-Ruiz, Xiomara F. & Bagal, Monique & Comoé, Hermann, 2017. "The Role of the State for Geographical Indications of Coffee: Case Studies from Colombia and Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 105-119.
    8. Lauren Rosenberg & Mark Swilling & Walter J V Vermeulen, 2018. "Practices of Third Wave Coffee: A Burundian Producer's Perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 199-214, February.
    9. Franck Galtier & Giovanni Belletti & Andrea Marescotti, 2013. "Factors Constraining Building Effective and Fair Geographical Indications for Coffee: Insights from a Dominican Case Study," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 31(5), pages 597-615, September.
    10. Islam, Md. Saidul, 2008. "From pond to plate: Towards a twin-driven commodity chain in Bangladesh shrimp aquaculture," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 209-223, June.
    11. Luis F. Samper & Xiomara F. Quiñones-Ruiz, 2017. "Towards a Balanced Sustainability Vision for the Coffee Industry," Resources, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-28, April.
    12. Vincent Terstappen & Lori Hanson & Darrell McLaughlin, 2013. "Gender, health, labor, and inequities: a review of the fair and alternative trade literature," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(1), pages 21-39, March.
    13. Vellema, W. & Buritica Casanova, A. & Gonzalez, C. & D’Haese, M., 2015. "The effect of specialty coffee certification on household livelihood strategies and specialisation," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 13-25.
    14. Anne Tallontire & Maggie Opondo & Valerie Nelson & Adrienne Martin, 2011. "Beyond the vertical? Using value chains and governance as a framework to analyse private standards initiatives in agri-food chains," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(3), pages 427-441, September.
    15. Muradian, Roldan & Pelupessy, Wim, 2005. "Governing the coffee chain: The role of voluntary regulatory Systems," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 2029-2044, December.
    16. Hubeau, Marianne & Mondelaers, Koen & Coteur, Ine & Marchand, Fleur L. & Lauwers, Ludwig, 2014. "Chain Governance Systems and Sustainable Capital Use – A Conceptual Approach," 2014 International European Forum, February 17-21, 2014, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria 199340, International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks.
    17. John Cranfield & Spencer Henson & James Northey & Oliver Masakure, 2010. "An assessment of consumer preference for fair trade coffee in Toronto and Vancouver," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 307-325.
    18. Laura Raynolds, 2014. "Fairtrade, certification, and labor: global and local tensions in improving conditions for agricultural workers," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(3), pages 499-511, September.
    19. Vicol, Mark & Neilson, Jeffrey & Hartatri, Diany Faila Sophia & Cooper, Peter, 2018. "Upgrading for whom? Relationship coffee, value chain interventions and rural development in Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 26-37.
    20. Snider, Anna & Gutiérrez, Isabel & Sibelet, Nicole & Faure, Guy, 2017. "Small farmer cooperatives and voluntary coffee certifications: Rewarding progressive farmers of engendering widespread change in Costa Rica?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 231-242.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:24:y:2007:i:2:p:147-163. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.