Abstract
Certification and ecolabelling are forms of private governance meant to reflect sustainable development issues. These instruments encourage ‘good’ environmental and social practices, many of which are akin to climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches. To make it clear how effective they can be in that role, we present them here, recalling that they are at once standards for best practices, by definition supposed to inform and guide stakeholders’ choices, and market incentives (bonuses, minimum prices, etc.) to change production practices. Despite their advantages, voluntary sustainability standards are proving to be ambiguous tools for meeting the challenges of climate change.
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- 1.
“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are externalities and represent the biggest market failure the world has seen” (Stern 2008).
- 2.
FAO’s reference book on climate-smart agriculture (FAO 2013), for example, contains only a few anecdotal references to voluntary sustainability standards.
- 3.
We chose not to include the major round tables on soybean (RTRS ecolabel) and palm oil (RSPO), because these, even though they explicitly reference climate requirements, remain chiefly at the business-to-business level. Furthermore, there are fewer ecolabels for such products.
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The authors thank Laure Joanny for her study of label specifications.
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Lemeilleur, S., Balineau, G. (2016). Tackling the Climate Change Challenge: What Roles for Certification and Ecolabels?. In: Torquebiau, E. (eds) Climate Change and Agriculture Worldwide. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7462-8_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7462-8_22
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