COST Workshop: Governing Sustainability - Global Standards and Certification Schemes in the Natural Resources Sector

Date: March 22-23, 2012

Place: Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

The focus of this workshop is to identify the conditions that make Global Standards and Certification Schemes successful in achieving their objective of contributing to social and environmental sustainability. It aims to gain a better understanding of questions such as why some of these standards- and certification schemes successful while others are not? And how do the scheme’s institutional characteristics impact on its success or failure?

The workshop is set out for 25 participants. It convenes researchers on transnational governance and policy-makers and stakeholder representatives engaged in Global Standards and Certification Schemes with the overarching pursuit of enabling an exchange of scholarly findings and on the ground experiences. The event is co-hosted by the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and COST Action ISO802 Transformations of Global Environmental Governance and is part of a research project commissioned by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.

The two day workshop begins in panel I by introducing the concept of globally operating standards and certification schemes. The focus lies on the private governance arrangement of third-party certification with the focus on institutional design. Distinct types in the institutional setup of Global Standards and Certification Schemes are presented and put in relation to their effectiveness. Panel II deals with the potential of standards to contribute to social and environmental sustainability, and different understandings of success in terms of effectiveness and/or legitimacy. On day two, panel III allows for looking into case studies across sectors, identifying the challenges and opportunities these cases face in their respective field, and discussing in particular the specific features that account for the relative success or failure of the schemes. Finally, the workshop closes with part IV dedicated to the prospects and limits of generalizing the results across sectors.

More information will be available soon.

Workshop organizers: Bernhard Zangl and Anna Stetter (LMU Munich)