Beyond Certification: A Typology of Instruments of Private and Community-Based Sustainability Governance in Agri-Food Value Chains

Certification of voluntary sustainability standards have become a main strategy to enhance human well-being of producers, workers and communities involved in agri-food value chains. Accumulating evidence however points to the limited and sometimes even adverse effects of certification schemes. Partly in response to these mixed results, agri-food companies and producers have developed various alternative and complementary governance approaches to promoting sustainability in value chains. These include inclusive business/direct trade, and solidarity economy. This growing institutional diversity in approaches to sustainability governance creates an empirical and theoretical challenge of mapping the range of instruments applied in different strategies. Existing typologies in this field classify instruments at a broad level, without disentangling the precise institutional details regarding, e.g., ownership, voice, and the distribution of benefits, risks and costs. The proposed paper addresses this challenge by developing a typology of instruments of private and community-based sustainability governance. It will therefore examine and compare certification, inclusive business, solidarity economy and other strategies with regard to the specific instruments intended to enhance human well-being of producers, workers and rural communities. Empirically, this study presents the results of an extensive survey of organizations based in Peru and Switzerland that are involved in the production, processing, trading, selling, and certification of coffee and cacao and derived products. Analytically, the study is rooted in the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework which structures the typology and embeds the discussion of sustainability governance instruments in larger policy analysis. The expected results demonstrate, first, that value chain actors combine instruments of different strategies into their portfolio which reflects their specific value chain position, organizational mission and motivations regarding sustainability governance. Certification, inclusive business/direct trade, and solidarity economy strategies are therefore neither pure alternatives nor purely complementary. Second, the typology disentangles the precise similarities and differences of these strategies in terms of governance instruments used and underlying theories of change. In the context of renewed demands to solve persistent sustainability issues in the agri-food sector, the presented typology of instruments associated with strategies including and beyond certification sheds light on important dynamics of partial transformation of private and community-based governance. It may also become a useful tool for further analysis of strategies and instruments of sustainability governance. Finally, it can serve as a foundation for empirical studies tracing the effects of specific instruments and instrument portfolios on various sustainability outcomes.