E-grāmata: Voluntary Sustainability Standards: Illusions of Progress and a Way Forward

The African food sovereignty movement has been tackling with the restricting impact of markets on the biodiversity of African agriculture for a long time. Reading the book, I was alerted to the importance and ambivalent role of global sustainability standards in global food markets. I learnt how, as a constituent part of the current unjust global agro-food system, Voluntary Sustainability Standards can jeopardize the food sovereignty of our African peasant-based systems and exclude our smallholders from linking to markets.Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Centre for Biodiversity, Johannesburg The rising dominance of big corporations in Asian food retail and the digitalization of their sales practices increasingly proves that it is detrimental to arresting poverty and hunger. Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are part and parcel of these structural changes. They exclude our peasantry from evolving markets, destroy informal activities, such as in food processing and marketing, and impose on us a concept of sustainability that narrowly serves corporate interests. This book unmasks the hypocrisy of the whole exercise, providing much needed insight and analysis.Lim Li Ching, Senior Researcher, Third World Network Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) have successfully raised awareness about the huge environmental and social problems embedded in the worlds food systems. This report analyses the inherent limitations of the concept and showcases the ability of big food to use VSS for their PR-campaigns and to exclude small holders from accessing markets. The authors make a convincing case that real sustainability requires inclusive and transparent governance involving all stakeholders. Let us learn the lessons!Alexander Müller, Managing Director of TMGThinktank; Former State Secretary (German Ministry for Agriculture) and Assistant Director-General of FAO It is high time that this book reviews the experience with the use and the real impact of sustainability standards. The merit of this analysis is its focus on the political economy of such standards in international supply chains and their role in transforming the international agro-food production and markets.Prof. Ernst von Weizsaecker, Honorary President, The Club of Rome The dominant narrative about voluntary sustainability standards is that they have benefited the first movers in the industry by improving their image, but that they have also raised the bar for whole sectors, and successfully compensated for the downward pressure on production methods resulting from global competition. This volume challenges this premature conclusion. It provides robust empirical analysis to illustrate the failures of many such standards. Its great merit is to bring to the fore the issue that most economic analyses neglect entirely: that of power in agrifood chains.Olivier De Schutter, Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (20082014); UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights