IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cnpexx/v27y2022i2p203-224.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Additionality and Implementation Gaps in Voluntary Sustainability Standards

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Dietz
  • Janina Grabs

Abstract

Voluntary Sustainability Standards have become a popular private governance framework for more sustainable agri-food value chains. However, recent mainstreaming efforts have increased competition between standards and driven down price premiums. This study employs a dataset of 659 Honduran coffee producers to examine whether the most widely used standards in the coffee sector (4C, Fairtrade, Fairtrade/organic, UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance) represent effective solutions for improving the social, environmental and economic sustainability practices of smallholder farmers under such conditions. It presents 54 farm-level indicators, compared across five standard systems, and links field results to a discussion of the strategies and governance prospects of voluntary standards. We find that no scheme has managed to grow substantially while maintaining strong additionality: commercially successful standards show little impact, while stricter schemes create high entry barriers and unresolved opportunity costs. Successful mainstreaming would require better cost coverage of sustainability improvements by value chain actors .

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Dietz & Janina Grabs, 2022. "Additionality and Implementation Gaps in Voluntary Sustainability Standards," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 203-224, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:203-224
    DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881473
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881473
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881473?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.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eva Velasco‐Balmaseda & Izaskun Larrieta‐Rubín de Celis & Nagore Embeita Izaguirre, 2024. "Corporate social responsibility as a framework for gender equality: Mapping of gender equality standards for sustainable development," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(3), pages 1905-1920, May.
    2. Jean‐Christophe Graz & Jimena Sobrino Piazza & André Walter, 2022. "Labour Standards in Global Production Networks: Assessing Transnational Private Regulation and Workers’ Capacity to Act," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(4), pages 912-937, July.
    3. Imbrogiano, Jean-Pierre & Steiner, Bodo & Mori Junior, Renzo & Sturman, Kathryn, 2023. "What enables metals ‘being’ ‘responsible’? An exploratory study on the enabling of organizational identity claims through a new sustainability standard," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:203-224. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cnpe20 .

    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.