An agenda for assessing and improving conservation impacts of sustainability standards in tropical agriculture |
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| Authors: | Jeffrey C Milder Margaret Arbuthnot Allen Blackman Sharon E Brooks Daniele Giovannucci Lee Gross Elizabeth T Kennedy Kristin Komives Eric F Lambin Audrey Lee Daniel Meyer Peter Newton Ben Phalan Götz Schroth Bambi Semroc Henk Van Rikxoort Michal Zrust |
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| Institution: | 1. Rainforest Alliance, Evaluation & Research Program, New York, NY, U.S.A.;2. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.;3. Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.;4. UNEP‐WCMC, United Kingdom;5. Committee on Sustainability Assessment, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.;6. EcoAgriculture Partners, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.;7. ISEAL Alliance, London, United Kingdom;8. School of Earth Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, U.S.A.;9. Georges Lema?tre Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain‐la‐Neuve, Belgium;10. Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;11. Round Table on Responsible Soy Association, Florianópolis, Brazil;12. International Forestry Resources and Institutions research network, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.;13. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom;14. Rainforest Alliance, Wageningen, The Netherlands;15. Conservation International, Arlington, VA, U.S.A.;16. UTZ Certified, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;17. Zoological Society of London, London, United Kingdom |
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| Abstract: | Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi‐experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time‐series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land‐use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation. |
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| Keywords: | biodiversity certification evaluation evidence‐based conservation monitoring voluntary sustainability standards biodiversidad certificació n conservació n con base en evidencias evaluació n monitoreo normas voluntarias de sostenibilidad |
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