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Certifying Environmental Social Responsibility: Special Issue

Certifying Environmental Social Responsibility: Special Issue

09 August, 2018

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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

This Special Issue aims to contribute to the emerging science on how to maintain and rehabilitate biodiversity and ecosystem services effectively in the tropics where agricultural expansion has shaped the landscapes. Food production as a provisioning ecosystem service dominates direct economic value and employment in roughly half the world. Its sustainability, or lack thereof, depends on how the trade-offs between human activities and ecosystem services, beyond the provision of food, are balanced and managed locally and globally.

The Special Issue is a result of a research program by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). The program zooms out from the details of certification schemes as such, and asks the broader questions of when, where and how certification responses arise to what types of issues, by whom they are initiated and what broader consequences they have.

The complete list of articles is:

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Certify and shift blame, or resolve issues? Environmentally and socially responsible global trade and production of timber and tree crops

Certify and shift blame, or resolve issues? Environmentally and socially responsible global trade and production of timber and tree crops

25 January, 2017

Posted by

FTA

Authors: Mithöfer, D,; van Noordwijk, M.; Leimona, B.; Cerutti, P.O.

Certification of adherence to social and environmental standards allows companies involved in the (global) trade of commodities to dissociate themselves from negative impacts in the public eye. It can go beyond compliance with legal requirements. Certification can be an attempt to shift blame to uncertified others, but it can also contribute to resolving the underlying issues of concern. We provide a framework for a study of when, where and how certification schemes emerge and evolve, with specific attention to the degree to which underlying issues get addressed. Three strands of literature are combined in this framework (1) the issueattention cycle as a schematic representation of public concerns shaping policy responses; (2) the management swing potential defined as the gap between best and worst current production systems and the basis for defining standards and (3) global value chains that link distant producers and consumers, and the power relations along these chains, including standards and certification. Based on literature review, we introduce a set of four propositions that inform testable specific hypotheses. We outline questions for reviews, in subsequent papers of this issue, of the experience on timber, oil palm, coffee, cacao and rubber as tropical-forest-margin commodities dominated by global trade.

Publication Year: 2017

ISSN: 2151-3732

Source: International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management 13(1): 72-85

DOI: 10.1080/21513732.2016.1238848

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Making timber certification work for local markets

Making timber certification work for local markets

12 April, 2016

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FTA

Timber certification can have negative impacts on local industries. In this video, CIFOR Scientists working under the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry presented their research in Kalimantan, Indonesia, to help the government formulate suitable local regulations.