Sustainability Standards and Certification
AT KIT Royal Tropical Institute, we focus on improving the contribution of standards and certification to promoting sustainable livelihoods, human rights and gender equality in a broad variety of sectors, including agriculture, fishing and mining.
Related Projects
Our Services & Expertise
Sustainability standards and certification play an important role in protecting the environment, safeguarding workers’ rights and promoting decent livelihoods for producers. But compliance can be costly, and many standards do not achieve the positive impacts they expect. Through tailored research, evaluation and advisory services, we help to make sense of how standards and certification can contribute to their intended outcomes.
We support private sector organisations, development partners and public or private decision makers by:
- Providing impartial analysis and advice on how companies and standard-setting organisations can improve the effectiveness of standards and certification schemes in specific supply chains.
- Helping policy-makers and companies to turn standards into tools that enable process rights for vulnerable groups, such as women workers.
- Researching the dynamics of standards and certification by assessing new trends, underlying patterns and identifying best practices.
- Measuring the socio-economic impact of standards and making targeted suggestions on how impact can be improved for specific segments of producers, farmers or workers.
Our Expertise
Our expertise focuses on the following issues:
- Improving the effects of standards and certification on workers’ rights and gender equality
- Working with standard-setting organisations and partners to close the living income gap for small-scale producers
- Taking a food systems’ approach to understand the linkages between standards and food and nutrition security
- Beyond certification? Researching ‘Southern’ counter-initiatives to global certification schemes
Publications
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Harnessing blockchain technology for commodity chains
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Working Paper
With a wide range of potential benefits – such as improved traceability, food safety, and environmental sustainability, as well as increased farmer income– blockchain has become an increasingly popular technology option for commodity value chains. Yet, there is little knowledge among agri-food professionals of how the technology works, and there is (still) limited evidence of […]
Downloads
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A Social Relations of Gender Analysis of Artisanal and Small-scale Mining in Africa’s Great Lakes Region
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Research article
Much research on gender and artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has tended to focus on describing the different roles women undertake in mining, while there has been less attention to how gender relations are constructed, reinforced and challenged in and through ASM. Drawing from desk and field research in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, […]
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A review of inclusive business models and their application in aquaculture development
For aquaculture to continue along its current growth trajectory and contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, value chains must become more inclusive. Smallholders and other local value chain actors are often constrained by circumstances and market failures in the global aquaculture industry. Integrating these actors into aquaculture value chains through inclusive business models (IBMs) […]
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A Guide for Governments, Companies & Practitioners to Support Women’s Rights and Mitigate Gender Risks During OECD Due Diligence Implementation
The development potential of conflict-free mineral supply chains is now firmly recognised, however, for this potential to be fully realised, men and women need to benefit equally from mineral production and trade. Women’s critical role – and the unique risks and challenges they face – need to be made visible to support more equitable development […]
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The impact of voluntary sustainability standards on small-scale farmers in global commodity chains
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Working Paper
Since their emergence in the mid-1990s, voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) have been propelled from specialty niches into mainstream markets due to rising demand among consumers, buyers and producers to address socio-economic, environmental and food safety concerns. VSS range from efforts by single firms or NGOs, to industry associations and social movement organisations, business-NGO collaborations, multi- […]
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