Deconstructing Ethical Certifications

Organic, sustainable, ethical - what role do labels play?

Fair trade month is underway! With the United Nations General Assembly recently concluding, it is clear that worsening climate conditions and a global pandemic have us far from reaching the vision set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). That said, these global initiatives have led to a heightened emphasis on responsible and sustainable production and consumption.

Certifications have become a tool of trust for consumers, signaling a product's alignment with society’s broader aspirations for an ethical, impactful, and sustainable world. I remember when I first started being more thoughtful about what I was buying, I would go out of my way to look for terms such as “fair trade” and “organic,” but as I began diving deeper, I got lost. So many different labels — they seemed to say the same thing, but each label meant something slightly different.

Today’s newsletter explores the (complex and at times confusing) world of certifications. I am joined by Anna Canning, the Director of Communication for Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network (WSR), a network of organizations whose members are building worker-driven solutions to protect the human rights of low-wage workers in global supply chains. Prior to joining the WSR Network staff, she was Campaign Manager for Fair World Project, a watchdog of ethical certifications. There she led creative campaigns against corporate fairwashing of human rights abuses based on in-depth analysis of fair trade and other certification standards. Anna has over 15 years of experience working in supply chains. She brings this hands-on experience to her analysis and is passionate about challenging power by changing the stories we tell.

Ethical and Sustainability Certifications: What Does “Impact-Driven” Mean?

International human rights law addresses human rights violations at the hands of state actors, but not necessarily at the hands of multinational corporations (MNCs). This is where independent standard-setting instruments (such as…you got it, certifications like B Lab or GOTS) kick in. The success of these standards relies on the assumption that it is in the best interest of businesses to adhere to them. However, there is no denying that, at the end of the day, even “impact-driven” businesses are exactly that…businesses. Within a capitalist economic system, profit (maximizing revenue while minimizing operating expenses) is a necessity. Economic development, the goal of many social enterprises, cannot be based on moral duty and obligation alone. We need to address the word at the center of it all: economics. Since these monitoring systems are essentially voluntary, there is limited evidence that they are actually as effective as they intend (or are perceived) to be.

I find this conversation particularly pertinent given the news unfolding this week about the ethical fashion brand People Tree’s liquidation that has so many of us working in the fair trade and economic development world on edge — with suppliers in India still due anywhere between £100,000 to £400,000 in unpaid orders. People Tree is considered a pioneer in ethical fashion, centered as a revolutionary model in the documentary that brought so many into the fair trade movement: The True Cost.

Today’s newsletter aims to unravel the complexities of certifications, bringing to light the nuances, challenges, and critical questions of what lies behind those seals. So, let’s dive in!

Image taken in 2018 by Manpreet at a fair trade coffee farm in Guatemala

Manpreet Kalra: Tell us about you and your experience with certifications! 

Anna Canning: It’s pretty amazing to reflect, but ethical certifications have been part of my work for just about two decades now.

I spent over a decade working in the world of coffee, for small coffee roasters who were working directly with small-scale coffee farmers and selling their coffee with fair trade and organic certifications.  So I first learned about certifications from working to source coffee and handle our fair trade and organic certifications - from the bottom up. The coffee business really shaped my understanding of our global food and trade system. Coffee is a crop that’s native to Ethiopia & then was taken by colonial traders and spread around the globe. And in every community I’ve been to, there’s a unique way that coffee production is part of their own relationship to land and their own relationship to colonization. And that global history is super relevant today and to this conversation about certifications.

There’s a direct connection from colonization to the exploitation and abuses that we see in so many supply chains today. 

Over the years, I’ve “experienced” certifications through the paperwork side of implementing them, as well as on the market side, selling products with certifications. Long story short, I came to see the real limitations of that market-driven approach of trying to make change by selling products with a label on them in a world of increasing corporate consolidation and control. 

More recently, I’ve worked for a watchdog of ethical certifications called Fair World Project, matching that hands-on experience with broader analysis in concert with broader movements for human and workers’ rights and food justice. 

Through that analysis, I would say at this point that I’m quite critical of certifications. And while at one point, I may have thought that there was a place for certifications to accompany the work of trade justice and food justice, at this point, certifications are working to serve corporations and the exploitative status quo. 

A key reason why certifications have failed is that they have really failed to grapple with power dynamics in supply chains.

Manpreet Kalra: Certifications have become synonymous with transparency. What role do certifications intend to play? How does that actually pan out?

Anna Canning: Before we even get into the details, the very fact that certifications exist tells us something really important.

The vast majority of our food, farming, manufacturing, and trade systems are designed to work in a way that most of us don’t support. Unfair, unethical, poisonous practices are the norm - and these labels exist to try to tell us that this specific product isn’t as bad as all the rest.

And one thing that’s important to note here: Those claims are only about the specific product that bears it, it’s not for everything that brand sells, in most cases. In fact, it doesn’t even mean that everything in that package was produced on the terms the certifier claims–it’s usually allowed to have that on-pack labeling with just 20% of ingredients, or just a portion of the supply chain covered. 

Most of those standards refer to the conduct of the farmers who grow the product in question. Very few standards actually exist for the multinationals who do the buying and selling and set the terms of trade–and therefore the conditions for people working in those supply chains.

As far as how this actually pans out, there is a growing body of research showing that certifications and the auditing industry that backs them are failing. 

• Studies have shown that conditions on certified farms are roughly the same as on non-certified farms, and that abuses remain rampant.

• Standards are not up to actually protecting workers’ and human rights - and fail to actually engage the people they claim to benefit as real rights-holders, instead of passive beneficiaries.

• Social audits fail to detect abuses because of conflicts of interest, lack of trust, and an inability to engage with worker organizations, or navigate power dynamics.

In total, that’s a pretty damning indictment of the whole industry.

📌 For those who are pretty deeply invested in the model of certification as part of the fair trade movement, I wrote a paper summing up those issues, and framing it within the larger social and economic context.

Image Courtesy of The New York Times - taken by Saumya Khandelwal

Manpreet Kalra: Last year The New York Times published an article titled “That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think” that had many working in the textile industry buzzing. The article exposed a reality that I believe many of us already knew (but didn’t want to admit out loud) - that the demand for certified organic cotton far surpasses the actual ability to produce cotton. Building on what you mentioned above, what are the primary issues you see with certifications?

Anna Canning: I think the story of organic cotton fraud is actually really illustrative of the broader issues of the industry. One of the key points there was that there were tons of companies who wanted to buy organic cotton, but they didn’t want to actually make the investment in organic seeds, in the more labor-intensive cultivation, etc.

And what we see with certification is that it’s really become a marketing and PR tool. Companies use it to sell stuff, they want the label on the package, but they don’t want to fundamentally change business practices. 

[The Chocolate Case Study] It’s corporate purchasing practices that are driving exploitation. In cocoa, farmers in West Africa on average earn less than a dollar a day. That long-term extreme poverty caused by chocolate company buying practices drives child labor, it drives deforestation, etc. And instead of paying prices for cocoa that would lead to actual living incomes for farmers, companies spend money to promote their sustainability programs and certifications that are not actually doing what they claim. Just as an example, Rainforest Alliance continues to certify “sustainable” cocoa with no minimum price. That is untenable to me. The Cocoa Barometer report calls it “the sustainability lie” and I think that’s exactly right.

The Cocoa Problem Tree - a figure taken from the Cocoa Barometer Report

Companies have built these long supply chains where production is outsourced to suppliers, to garment factories, or to labor contractors, in the case of farmworkers, to distance themselves from the impacts of their purchasing practices. And then when those consequences of their purchasing practices come through, they can dub those suppliers “non-compliant.” 

Finally, the other big issue, especially with those certifications that claim to benefit people is how the standards are developed and implemented.

Most certification standards are developed through a multi-stakeholder process–that sounds good, right? But it means that everyone (brands, producers, academics, NGOs) all have “a say” in the process instead of a focus on the people most impacted. That means that instead of being treated as experts in their own lives, and as central “rights-holders,” to use human rights language, people are treated as passive beneficiaries.

Just 13% of multi-stakeholder initiatives have representatives from the groups they claim to benefit involved in governance. And the consequence of that is that you get programs that are unsuited to address the actual issues that people face, or are even actively opposed by the workers they claim to benefit. 

Manpreet Kalra: Certifications are incredibly taxing both financially and capacity wise. Who carries the most weight of the certification process? And who most benefits from the certification itself?

Anna Canning: Producers, so farmers and suppliers, factory owners in the case of apparel manufacturing, bear the brunt of compliance - both of meeting the certification standards and paying for the audits that are supposed to show that they’re meeting the standards. 

And who benefits most? That’s a toss-up to me between the multi-billion dollar auditing industry and brands. Both of them are making good money off of certifications. 

Brands are able to build up their credibility and use certifications to help spin a story about how ethical and sustainable they are. And auditing firms are able to charge thousands of dollars for audits–and are rarely held accountable when those audits fail to detect abuses as they claim to. 

Lots of money, little risk: it’s a theme that runs through supply chains as the companies at the top use their disproportionate power to push down the terms they want–and then turn the consequences of those terms into someone elses “compliance” problems.

We’re talked about who gets the benefits, but we should talk about the harms as well. Because certifications have not only mis-diagnosed the problem, they’ve also created a false solution that distracts all of us from real solidarity and solutions. 

Certification has helped spawn the whole notion of ethical consumerism – and in doing that, channelled people’s righteous upset at the harm that our current food & fashion industries cause into just one point of action: buy this thing.

Instead of joining your struggle with the people who are advocating for land, better farmgate prices, better wages, jobs with dignity – whatever their issues may be, ethical consumerism has really encouraged people to identify as consumers first and foremost and thus keep our scope of action small.

And ultimately, that benefits the exploitative status quo.

Manpreet Kalra: What you are describing sounds a lot like the power dynamics that have shaped our global economic system, which are rooted in a legacy of colonialism. How do certifications fail to address a history of exploitation?

Anna Canning: Zooming all the way out, one of the defining features of global capitalism is that it’s built on 500+ years of colonization and extractive industry.

Corporations in the US, the UK, EU, and Canada earn disproportionate profits off the ingredients, labor and expertise extracted from communities around the world. That’s the dynamics of colonization. 

And certifications have failed to account for those dynamics in a few critical ways.

1. They’ve mis-diagnosed the problem. Exploitation in supply chains isn’t just a matter of having more rules, it’s a question of power. Corporate buying practices create exploitative conditions.

2. Certifications replicate the dynamics of exploitation. Instead of listening to the people who are the frontline experts to define what’s “fair,” they cast them as more passive beneficiaries. Instead of trusting workers and their organizing, certifiers and companies rely on the word of auditors who show up for just a day or two - fundamentally, they let the power stay at the top of supply chains. 

3. Certifications create a parallel realm of corporate-friendly “soft law.” Instead of supporting peoples’ own democratic institutions, you’ve got multi-stakeholder processes dominated by certain interests, and enforced by private, often for-profit, auditing firms. So much exploitation gets excused in the name of getting “consumers” cheap goods. And certifications are really consumer-focused–if I buy a bar of chocolate or a tub of yogurt, I have more standing to sue for being mislead by the ethical marketing than a farmer or worker does for not getting the benefits promised.

4. Finally, certifications paper over the root causes. Cocoa farmers aren’t poor because that’s the nature of things. They’re poor because the whole chocolate trade is based on colonial dynamics of unpaid labor and land. Certifications help keep the conversation in a very narrow scope, discussing productivity and price per pound as if farmers could bootstrap themselves out of centuries of rigged trade.

Manpreet Kalra: So, where do we go from here? The proliferation of certifications presents a dual-edged sword. I always appreciate my conversations with Anna because of her ability to offer critical insight rooted in thoughtful research on topics that can feel too complex to even begin unpacking. Certifications are complicated. While initially, certifications offer an opportunity for businesses to reflect on and assess their business practices, over the years, I have seen more and more companies using certifications for marketability, instead of the accountability it intends to offer.

The path forward requires a restructuring of our approach (and redistribution of power) — centering, listening to, and letting the voices of those most harmed by the way supply chains have been operating, lead.

Anna Canning: My current work with the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network offers some pointers for what actually works to protect human rights of workers, even in industries that are historically riddled with abuses.

Any program that seeks to protect workers, needs to have those workers in the driver’s seat at every step from development to implementation to enforcement. And brand commitments to those workers need to be legally binding. Basically, at every step, it’s critical to grapple with the question of who has money, power, and thus leverage to make real meaningful change.

🎙️ Want to learn more? Keep an eye on your inbox. Anna and I did a deep dive into the world of certifications and will be releasing a podcast episode in the coming weeks that explores all the topics above and more! Stay tuned ~

I want to hear your reflections — share your thoughts in the comments section. If you found this newsletter insightful, please share it forward! Thanks for reading.