Standards
Certification schemes have emerged sector by sector and do not all share the same scope. For example, they may cover certain important risk areas, such as environmental damage or Indigenous rights, but not address others, such as the use of child labour, pesticides or GMOs.
LACK OF GROUP-LEVEL ACCOUNTABILITY
WEAK STANDARDS In some instances certification schemes create standards that are too weak to ensure that deforestation, other ecosystem conversation and associated human rights abuses are actually being addressed. This happens when schemes set standards that are weaker than international norms or are otherwise regressive, use ambiguous language and/or make key standards ‘optional’.1
DIFFERING SCOPE OF STANDARDS To protect natural ecosystems and respect human rights a certification scheme should include standards on at least the following: deforestation (conversion of forest to plantation or farmland) and forest degradation; degradation and conversion of other ecosystems, including peatlands; restoration of converted ecosystems and restitution of social harms; cut-off dates after which ecosystem conversion is prohibited; protection of high conservation values (HCVs), High Carbon Stock (HCS) forests, conservation areas and Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs); Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC); Indigenous and community land rights; and labour rights. These are thus the key elements against which the standards of the selected schemes are assessed in this report. More broadly, for certification to be consistent with holistic efforts to address the multiple pressures on biodiversity and ecosystem health it would need to require ecological production,2 including prohibiting the use of synthetic pesticides and GMOs.
Certification schemes widely fail to take into account the relevant activities of all companies within a corporate group3 and to require groupwide compliance with the certification standards (see ‘Traceability and transparency’ below). This frequently results in consumers being offered certified ‘sustainable’ products containing commodities produced by companies that are still actively linked to deforestation, human rights abuses or other problematic issues through other parts of their group, as only a part of their production is required to comply with the given certification criteria.4 The FSC is a notable exception with its Policy for Association,5 but it nevertheless uses a rather weak definition of what an ‘associated organization or individual’ is. In addition, its enforcement of the policy is limited, inconsistent and very slow.6 The RSPO also requires membership (and thus compliance) to extend to all companies within a corporate group that have an interest in palm oil;7 however, it frequently fails to enforce this requirement, in part as a result of the complex, informal and (likely often deliberately) opaque structures of many corporate groups within the industry.8
3 The AFi defines a corporate group as ‘The totality of legal entities to which the company is affiliated in a relationship in which either party controls the actions or performance of the other.’ See Accountability Framework Initiative, Definitions – Different types of supply chain actors [Website]. 4 Changing Markets Foundation (2018). NGOs have repeatedly called out the RSPO for its failures in this area; see eg EIA (2015), Greenpeace (2018b) and Rainforest Action Network (2017, 12 June). 5 FSC (2011b)
1
MSI Integrity (2020) pp.87-88
2 See Greenpeace (2015).
6 The FSC’s case tracker includes details on complaints where the resolution process has extended over several years. See FSC, Current cases [Website]. 7 RSPO (2017c) pp.6-9 8 See eg Greenpeace (2018a), Greenpeace (2019a) and MacInnes, A. (2021).
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Chapter 2: Key aspects that determine certification schemes’ effectiveness and credibility
