REIMAGINING CERTIFICATION: AT THE HEART OF OUR STRATEGY
cation strategy to address today’s most urgent environmental and social challenges. This year, we began drafting a new standard for the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program.
oon after its founding in 1987, the Rainforest Alliance developed third-party certification as a strategy to fight deforestation and improve rural livelihoods. Today, our certification programs connect companies, consumers, farmers, and forestry businesses committed to protecting the health of ecosystems, workers, and communities. In this way, we’ve harnessed market forces to improve land management and business practices.
The new standard, to be published in June 2020, will incorporate input from more than 1,000 people in nearly 50 countries, representing over 200 organizations, from farmers, companies and NGOs to governments and research institutes. Our new system will begin to move beyond a strictly binary “pass/fail” model to an approach that promotes and incentivizes continuous improvement (critical criteria will remain pass/fail). Smart meters—mechanisms to monitor performance over time—will support farmers in setting long-term sustainability goals and measuring progress against those goals. Audits will begin in June 2021.
In 2018, we began the process of reimagining our agricultural certifi-
In addition, data is at the heart of our new certification system, allowing us
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to harvest key insights into production and the supply chain. Auditors will also use new technology, like satellite imagery, to capture data that cannot be easily detected in a single auditing visit, making audits more rigorous and efficient. Similarly, risk maps will encourage producers to focus on the issues that matter most in their landscapes and socioeconomic contexts. Finally, our new certification system requires companies to invest in and reward more sustainable production. Until now, a disproportionate burden of certification has fallen on producers’ shoulders—without adequate financial compensation for the time, labor, and financial investments required to improve their farms. The responsibility of sustainability transformation must be shared along the entire supply chain, and the foundation of that is a better price for a more sustainable product.
