Transnational multi-stakeholder sustainability standards and biofuels: understanding standards processes

Abstract

Over the last decade, dramatic growth in the global production of biofuels has in turn fuelled immense criticism. This has been directed towards the form of that growth, which has in many ways been the culmination of a broader transformation of global agricultural production processes. Criticism has focused on the dominance of agri-business multi-nationals in production processes, large-scale land alienation in developing countries, adverse environmental and socio-economic impacts and greater food insecurity. In responding to such concerns, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) is a high profile transnational multi-stakeholder initiative to ensure the ‘sustainability’ of the production of biofuels. Sustainability standards such as these have become a widespread form of global governance over agricultural production. This paper considers the RSB as a vehicle for considering how such interventions might be better understood in their contribution to wider change. It suggests an approach that focuses on broader standard processes so as to interrogate how such change is actually unfolding in the way it is and how political struggles in their production may be masked by a narrower interpretation of the standards themselves.

Keywords:

• sustainability standards
• multi-stakeholder processes
• biofuels
• global governance

This work was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. The author would also like to thank Saturnino ‘Jun’ Borras for his helpful guidance, and four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the first draft of this article.

Notes

¹The author has received a grant from the British Academy to consider the standards processes of the Roundtable of Sustainable Biofuels (1/1/11–30/12/2015).

²For example, the Netherlands Technical Agreement 8080 for sustainable biomass for energy production, the US Renewable Fuels Standard.

³For example, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, the Global Bioenergy Partnership and the International Standards Organisation.

⁴For example, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Roundtable for Responsible Soy Production and the Better Sugarcane Initiative.

⁵For example, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels.

⁶For these purposes, the literature drawn upon has broadly been theoretically framed by political economy, commodity chain analysis and critical geography.

⁷Peck and Tickell (2002) identified the first phase of neoliberalism as involving ‘roll-back’ neoliberalism that include policies promoting privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation.

⁸Geels (2002), however, may see this as contributing to a ‘technological transition’, that is, such change cannot necessarily be interpreted discretely in and of itself but is part of a wider transition in the way societal functions are fulfilled.

⁹In 2006, certification costs ranged from $5000–$47,425 per year for certified forests in central America and Zambia, and costs incurred in responding to required improvements in forest management ranged from $10–100,000 per year (Klooster 2006, referring to Molnar 2003).

¹⁰In 2005, nearly 80 percent of FSC-certified forests were located in the north, and about 20 percent in the south (Pattberg 2005).

¹¹But see Bernstein and Cashore (2007), Cashore (2002) and Upham et al. (2011).

Additional information

Elizabeth Fortin currently holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Bristol. Her current research examines multi-stakeholder efforts to formulate sustainability standards and certification schemes for the biofuels industry, focusing on the RSB. She has previously undertaken research into policy processes, land reform and South Africa's transition. Email: [email protected]