22/08/2012 (CSR Asia) - In the realm
of sustainability initiatives, a plethora of certification systems for
different commodities has developed in the last 20 years. Business
leaders and civil society have created “Roundtables” on a range of such
commodities including forestry products, fish, palm oil, and coca. A new
initiative – the Sustainable Rice PlatformDuPont Crop Protection, the
Kellogg Company, Mars Food Europe, Nestlé, and Syngenta. (SRP)– has
recently kicked off with the support of the International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) here in Asia, after being initiated by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Founding corporate members
include:
There is a lot of confusion about the effectiveness
of many of these certification systems. Are they really good for the
environment, people and communities? Can they really deliver sustainable
practices? My view is that global roundtables have the potential to
deliver strong conservation results and rapid change but they are very
challenging to set up and run effectively.
What are they? Roundtable
initiatives bring together diverse stakeholders – brands, retailers,
processors, producers and traders, not-for-profits and academics to work
together to improve the sustainability credentials of a product’s
supply chain and assure consumers of sustainability. The initial aim is
to build consensus round 6-8 key impacts, assess the range of global
performance against those impacts and then develop performance-based
standards to reduce the impacts. The goal is transformation of global
commodity markets.
At the core of the system is a standard which is a
defined set of social, environmental and economic criteria. Each
standard determines who has a voice in setting the performance
requirements, how it evolves over time, who does the audits and
certifies compliance, who accredits the certifiers, and how compliance
is signalled.
By tying the work to sustainability performance, not
practice, the roundtables remain scale and technology neutral, so the
onus is on each producer to find the best way to improve. If done well,
these performance standards encourage innovation rather than compliance.
An example of “success”: Given the
unique nature of sustainability issues facing each commodity, it would
be dangerous to generalise about success. So let’s examine one example:
the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO is one of the
most successful round tables as measured by comprehensiveness: Global
production of certified palm oil production reached 10 percent of global
palm oil production in August 2011 and multi-nationals and industry
players including New Britain Palm Oil and Wilmar have pledged to have
100% of their outputs certified sustainable by 2015.
Conservation NGOs including WWF have evaluated the
RSPO and have said that the best performers in the industry have “turned
commitment into action and transformed the market”. That being said,
they have called for broader commitment amongst members and there is
continued criticism as a result of continued deforestation.
Even though RSPO is considered the most successful
agricultural sector certification program, in recent years some factions
have broken away from the unifying strength of RSPO to set up their own
standards. The result? A mind-boggling variety of palm oil
certifications because, it is hard to please everyone.
What’s next: Rice presents a unique
challenge for any quality control system because it is mostly grown by
hundreds of thousands of poor farmers who have only very small farms of
less than 1 hectare each. Moreover, 90% of rice is grown in developing
countries in Asia, where access to knowledge and support is limited.
The SRP’s underlying philosophy is to “pull
sustainable practices from the front”– meaning that farmers can be
encouraged to adopt sustainable practices by rewarding them with lower
costs and/or higher prices. This is happening on a small scale in
northern Malaysia where Nestlé is offering rice farmers a premium for
farming using specific standards. It is recognised amongst players in
the rice sector that a standard developed by the multi-stakeholder
platform has the potential to be much more successful than individual
players going it alone.
Over the next 3 years, the SRP aims to develop a set
of globally relevant management standards and quantifiable
sustainability targets that suit a range of conditions. Key
environmental challenges to be addressed include the use of water,
fertilizer, herbicide and insecticide. The Platform will seek to
reduce poverty as farmers stand to gain by higher incomes through
reduced input costs, higher production, and/or getting a premium on
their rice. If successful, consumers and processors purchasing rice
grown on the SRP will be assured it is good for the environment and
farmer welfare.
It is too early to tell if the SRP will be
successful. We know from experience that roundtables (and the resultant
certification) are effective if there is sufficient majority of industry
players and a highly recognised certification standard among the end
consumers. In addition, there must be a strong consensus amongst a range
of stakeholders on how to move forward in a unified way.
With many existing roundtable initiatives to learn
from, the SRP has the potential to bring about changes in production
practices as farmers and others in the supply chain support better
practice and performance. Like the RSPO, it will not be a panacea to
solve all of the challenges in the sector. At CSR-Asia we will follows
its developments with interest and hope to see it accelerate positive
change.
