De socio-economische doeltreffendheid van vrijwillige duurzaamheidsstandaarden in globale voedselsystemen

Against the backdrop of growing environmental and social issues in the agri-food sector, voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) have proliferated as a non-state, market-based tool for sustainability in global food value chains. VSS are especially prominent in tropical commodity sectors where the area and number of producers under certification have nearly tripled over the last decade. Certified area now accounts for over 20% of the global production area of cocoa and coffee. Public governments and private food processing and distribution companies are also increasingly engaging with VSS in public policies and corporate sustainability and marketing strategies. However, the evidence on the socio-economic impacts of VSS is inconclusive and highlights that the effectiveness of VSS in delivering improved sustainability outcomes is strongly context-dependent. In general, insights on when, where, and why VSS are in some cases more effective than in others remain scant. This dissertation examines the macro-level trade and micro-level welfare effects of VSS and explores the role of VSS design in shaping these effects. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to voluntary sustainability standards, conceptually elaborating on the potential socio-economic impacts of VSS, and presenting an overview of the extant evidence on trade and welfare impacts of VSS. The chapter further presents the research objectives and outline of this dissertation. Chapter 2 investigates the trade implications of VSS in tropical commodity sectors. VSS are increasingly important, not only in corporate sustainability strategies but also in trade policy, thereby shifting the responsibility for the governance of sustainability in the food system from the public to the private sector. There is no regulatory framework assuring that VSS do not distort trade while effectively delivering environmental and social sustainability benefits, and conclusive evidence on the trade effects of VSS is lacking. I compile an innovative database of country-level coverage for seven VSS in five tropical commodity sectors over seven years and use a multi-country, -sector, and -standard augmented gravity analysis to estimate the trade effects of VSS adoption. The results confirm a general trade-enhancing effect of VSS, with on average a one percentage point increase in VSS coverage resulting in a 1.8% to 3.3% increase in export value. Effects are largest for banana, followed by coffee and tea - and are insignificant for cocoa and palm oil. The trade-enhancing effect of VSS certification does not vary with the income level of the exporting country but increases with the income level of the importing country and with the income gap between trading partners. These results imply that VSS can be an effective tool to overcome the trade-inhibiting effect of governance distance between countries. Yet, for VSS to effectively reconcile international food trade with sustainability goals, policy attention is needed for VSS adoption and impact in the poorest countries. Chapter 3 builds on the previous chapter and further investigates the role of VSS design in shaping the trade outcomes of certification. The analysis is expanded to include ten VSS in seven tropical commodity sectors over nine years and examines the effect of VSS on trade volumes and export prices. Overall, results demonstrate that VSS adoption enhances trade through increased price competitiveness - a one percentage point increase in the share of certified production area expands bilateral trade volumes by 2.1% and reduces export prices by 0.16%. However, effects vary across VSS and VSS design substantially moderates trade impacts. The trade-enhancing and price-reducing effects of VSS weaken under a more stringent VSS design. Although differences across stringency in sustainability dimensions exist. Stringent environmental requirements lead to the largest trade benefits, while social stringency is associated with the strongest price-decreasing effect. Furthermore, VSS reduce the trade-inhibiting effect of governance distance between countries if they are not too stringent in their compliance procedures. Rather than contributing to sustainability trading up, VSS seem to exacerbate price competition in global food markets. In Chapter 4, the focus of this dissertation is shifted toward the micro-economic welfare effects of VSS. Evidence from a large body of literature on the effects of VSS points toward highly inconsistent and case-dependent outcomes. Yet, institutional and value chain factors driving VSS sustainability outcomes remain ill-understood. By using a case study of Cocoa Life and Rainforest Alliance smallholder cocoa certification in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, instituted by four multinational trader-processor companies, this chapter investigates the role of VSS operationalisation (i.e. organisation of VSS interventions in the field) as a determinant for VSS effectiveness. I employ a mixed methods approach. Relying on qualitative data from over 40 key informant interviews and four producer focus group discussions with certified producers, I describe how VSS operationalisation varies across certification schemes, and find especially differences in terms of the modality of premium payments and the organisation of knowledge-sharing systems. Using primary household survey data from 598 cocoa-producing smallholders and the inverse-probability-weighted regression-adjustment and Lewbel estimation approaches, econometric results reveal no impacts of Cocoa Life. Rainforest Alliance certification only improves cocoa yield, price, income, and return to land under a strong implementation of premium payments and training systems, yet at the cost of increased labour requirements. Nevertheless, the potential of VSS to improve household income and producer welfare in the Indonesian cocoa sector seems limited. In Chapter 5, I further acknowledge that VSS have become a popular instrument in food processing and distribution companies' corporate social responsibility strategies, but that concerns have been raised that companies capitalise on VSS as a reputation-building and product-differentiation tool without investing in strong sustainability commitments on the ground. This chapter explores the heterogeneity in VSS intervention implementation and socio-economic certification effects across three different corporate-driven Rainforest Alliance schemes studied in Chapter 4. I conceptualise the implementation of VSS interventions into measurable farm-level indicators and employ primary survey data of 458 smallholder producers and a propensity score matching approach to examine the role of intervention implementation in shaping socio-economic outcomes of VSS. The results reveal large differences in farm-level implementation of VSS interventions across certification schemes and point to the complementarity of control, market-based incentives, and capacity-building interventions in delivering improved smallholder welfare effects. These findings highlight the role of companies in effectively implementing VSS to deliver improved sustainability outcomes through farm-level interventions. Chapter 6 bundles the main insights from all previous research chapters and reflects on the contributions, limitations, and research and policy implications of the work presented in this dissertation. Overall, this PhD concludes that VSS can bring trade and welfare gains. Micro-economic productivity gains, area expansion, and improved value chain integration are in line with export expansion effects. Export price-reducing effects imply that decreases in transaction costs and price competitiveness outweigh observed micro-economic farm gate price improvements. Yet, trade and welfare gains under VSS only arise in some cases and under specific conditions. VSS design, operationalisation, and implementation play an important role in shaping sustainability outcomes. However, VSS design involves a cautious balancing act as design choices carry multiple trade-offs between aiming for substantial sustainability impacts on the ground, facilitating a wider adoption by producers, and ensuring legitimacy and increasing acceptance and uptake by public and private stakeholders.