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Sensing Reality? New Monitoring Technologies for Global Sustainability Standards

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  • Fred Gale
  • Francisco Ascui
  • Heather Lovell

Abstract

In the 1990s, civil society organizations partnered with business to “green” global supply chains by setting up formal sustainability standard-setting organizations (SSOs) in sectors including organic food, fair trade, forestry, and fisheries. Although SSOs have withstood the long-standing allegations that they are unnecessary, costly, nondemocratic, and trade-distorting, they must now respond to a new challenge, arising from recent developments in technology. Conceived in the pre-Internet era, SSOs are discovering that verification systems that utilize annual, expert-led, low-tech field audits are under pressure from new information and communication technologies that collect, aggregate, interpret, and display open-source “Big Data” in almost real time. Drawing on the concept of governmentality and on interviews with experts in sustainability certification and natural capital accounting, we argue that while these technological developments offer many positive opportunities, they also enable competing alternatives to the prevailing “truth” or governing rationality about what is happening “on the ground,” which is of critical existential importance to SSOs as guarantors of trust in claims about sustainable production. While SSOs are not helpless in the face of this challenge, we conclude that they will need to do more than take incremental action: rather, they should respond actively to the disintermediation challenge from new virtual monitoring technologies if they are to remain relevant in the coming decade.

Suggested Citation

  • Fred Gale & Francisco Ascui & Heather Lovell, 2017. "Sensing Reality? New Monitoring Technologies for Global Sustainability Standards," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 17(2), pages 65-83, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:17:y:2017:i:2:p:65-83
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    3. Pavel Castka & Cory Searcy & Sönke Fischer, 2020. "Technology-enhanced Auditing in Voluntary Sustainability Standards: The Impact of COVID-19," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-24, June.
    4. Viviana D’Angelo & Valeria Belvedere, 2023. "Green Supply Chains and Digital Supply Chains: Identifying Overlapping Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-18, June.
    5. Nick Bernards & Malcolm Campbell‐Verduyn & Daivi Rodima‐Taylor & Jerome Duberry & Quinn DuPont & Andreas Dimmelmeier & Moritz Huetten & Laura C. Mahrenbach & Tony Porter & Bernhard Reinsberg, 2020. "Interrogating Technology‐led Experiments in Sustainability Governance," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 11(4), pages 523-531, September.
    6. Campbell-Verduyn, Malcolm, 2021. "Conjuring a cooler world? Blockchains, imaginaries and the legitimacy of climate governance," Global Cooperation Research Papers 28, University of Duisburg-Essen, Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21).
    7. Mattias Hjort, 2020. "Who should be governed to reduce deforestation and how? Multiple governmentalities at the REDD+ negotiations," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(1), pages 134-152, February.
    8. 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).
    9. Joshua Onome Imoniana & Washington Lopes Silva & Luciane Reginato & Valmor Slomski & Vilma Geni Slomski, 2020. "Sustainable Technologies for the Transition of Auditing towards a Circular Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-23, December.

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