Ben Cashore

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The Emergence of Forest Certification in the
European and North American Forest Sectors

• Ben Cashore
• Associate Professor,
• Director, Program on Forest Policy and Governance
• Project on Forest Certification
• School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
• Yale University
• Presentation to the International workshop  What
  makes them work? Theoretical and empirical
  advances on implementation of ecocertification
  schemes  INRA-ENGREF - Laboratory of Forest
  Economics Nancy, France, 29 June 2006

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Overview

• My discipline
• Political scientist
• Approach of paper
• Comparative case study historical
  institutionalist
• Why did forest certification emerge?
• Identify certification as non-state market
  driven governance
• Review legitimacy framework
• Review its application to European and North
  American forest sectors
• If time present latest conceptual effort with
  Bernstein on the emergence and institutionalizatio
  n of NSMD generally

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No time to review everything!

• Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld Auld, Beth Egan and
  Deanna Newsom
• The Emergence of Forest Certification in the
  European and North American Forest Sectors paper
  for this workshop
• Graeme Auld and Deanna Newsom
• Governing through Markets Forest Certification
  and the Emergence of Non-state Authority
• www.governingthroughmarkets.com
• Fred Gale, Errol Meidinger, Deanna Newsom
• Confronting Sustainability Forest Certification
  in Developing and Transitioning Societies
• www.yale.edu/forestcertification
• Graeme Auld, Aseem Prakash, Erika Sasser
• Book on 16 US forest companies choices over
  forest certification
• Bernstein and Cashore
• . 2006. Can Non-State Global Governance be
  Legitimate? A Theoretical Framework.
• Paper read at Joint IDDRI, CIRAD and Sciences-Po
  research unit conference, in conjunction with
  the Association Française de Sociologie on the
  role of norms (standards) in the governance of
  economic activities ("Dispositif de normalisation
  comme technologie de gouvernement économique"),
  June 7-9th, at Montpellier

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Why Did Forest Certification Emerge?

• Origins in tropical forest destruction in 1980s
• Boycotts failed
• Encouraged conversion of forests to other uses
• Didnt distinguish responsible from irresponsible
  forestry
• International Tropical Timber Agreement viewed as
  weak
• Longstanding Efforts to Develop Global Forest
  Convention failed
• Canada was a strong supporter
• Sovereignty key issue
• Left with Non-Binding Authoritative Statement of
  Forest Principles

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Why Did Forest Certification Emerge?

• In 1992 dissatisfied international environmental
  groups and their allies decided to reject
  governmental processes
• Bypassed governments by creating a system to
  recognize forest firms and owners for practicing
  responsible forestry
• Attempts to reverse downward effects of economic
  globalization trading up (Vogel)
• Use of eco-labels and market benefits

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Argument Paradigm Shift in Rule Making

• Forest certification could result in the most
  significant change in forest management since
  Gifford Pinchot brought the profession of
  forestry to North America

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Forest certification as NSMD Governance
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NSMD Certification Now Proliferating

• Fisheries
• Coffee production
• Food production
• Mining
• Sustainable Tourism
• Sweatshops
• Note NSMD certification different from global
  value chain

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Forest Certification Starting Points

• Competition between programs
• Two different conceptions

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The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

• Environmental group initiated
• Prescriptive, detailed rules
• Wide in scope
• Institutions exclude business from dominating
• Detailed standards created by national or
  regional working groups

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The Emergence of FSC alternatives

• Initiated by Forest industry and/or forest
  landowners
• Often in cooperation with government forestry and
  trade agencies
• Frustration with FSC governance and policy
  choices
• Emphasized national sovereignty
• Saw certification as communications devise
• Business creates rules
• Goal oriented, flexible
• Continual improvement

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Examples of FSC alternatives

• Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Sustainable
  Forestry Standards
• US Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)
• Brazils CERFLOR
• Australian forestry standard
• Program for the Endorsement of Forest
  Certification (PEFC)
• Now houses in one umbrella most of FSC
  competitors

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Outcome of this competition important

• Will affect how certification as a market
  instrument treats the use of
• Exotic species
• Set asides
• Chemical use
• GMOs
• Plantations
• Riparian streamside management
• Natural forest regeneration
• Governance

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How important is this competition?
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To understand this competition what did we do?

• Theoretical framework that began with idea of
  legitimacy

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Legitimacy Framework Clarifies What is going on
Certification Program (Governance System)
Profit maximizing behavior Short term material
self interest Often result of boycott campaigns
Durability dependent on market access, and
economic incentives
Types of Legitimacy
Pragmatic
Least Durable? Prerequiste?
Environmental Groups
Forest companies
Private Forest Land owners
Lumber Dealers/ Retailers
Consumers
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Principled beliefs Right thing to do More
engrained than pragmatic Values dont change
swiftly
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to do otherwise is unthinkable understandable
-most durable
Most Durable
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Legitimacy Achievement Strategies
Convert
Change external audience support e.g. create
buyers groups, boycotts, advertising
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Conform
Adapt to external pressures i.e. Change
certification rules and procedures to adapt to
concerns of external audiences
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Inform
When like minded audiences are told that the
program exists
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Legitimacy Achievement Key

• Converting strategies
• do not change original conception or approach to
  forest management
• Conforming strategies
• force programs to change from original conception
• Can lead to relax requirements for biodiversity
  conservation
• Means analysis must understand factors that lead
  to converting versus conforming
• Book explores this competition in five cases
• British Columbia, Canada
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Sweden
• Explores how some cases encouraged converting
  while others required conforming

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Differences within North America and Europe

• What is book explaining?
• Support given by forest companies and
  non-industrial landowners to competing
  certification programs
• Explain changes in FSC support
• Empirical puzzle not normative stance
• Forest sectors in five regions
• British Columbia, Canada
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Sweden

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Empirical puzzle

• Snapshot of Support for the FSC (Early 1990s vs.
  2002)

• Note support continues to change as process
  evolves

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Explanation

• Hypothesized factors that facilitate support for
  FSC

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Summary

• Factors facilitating FSC strategic efforts
• Not deterministic timing and sequencing of
  strategies still matters

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Overall conclusions

• Turns out
• that a prerequisite for forest certification to
  work as a NSMD governance system is that firms
  along the supply chain must grant pragmatic
  legitimacy.
• Each certification program has a core audience
  of support that strategists must maintain.
• FSC must maintain enough support from
  environmental groups, who tend to grant moral
  legitimacy
• FSC alternatives must maintain support from its
  forest owner members.
• This limits conforming strategies

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Overall conclusions

• BUT Competition among programs has led to
• FSC conforming to become more palatable to
  business issues
• FSC alternatives conforming to address supply
  chain and environmental group issues
• Non-industrial forest owners more strongly
  opposed to FSC than industrial interests
• Transaction costs
• Beliefs about outside control

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Questions raised by GTM study?

• 1) What is happening in the rest of the world?
• Led to edited book Cashore, Gale, Meidinger,
  Newsom
• 16 countries developing and Eastern European
  Emerging

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Area certified by Country Certification system
Source Ewald Rameststeiner
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Area Certified by Region and Certification system
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Questions raised by GTM study?

• 2) Why do firms within countries make different
  choices
• Comparison study of 16 US forest firms with Auld,
  Prakash, and Sasser
• Data collected, writing up results

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Questions raised by GTM study?

• 3) How do we think broadly about NSMD in general
• Dynamic
• Conundrum
• Profit maximizing firms must evaluate as being in
  their economic advantage
• Environmental and social actors must see NSMD
  systems as ameliorating the problem for which
  they were created
• Leads to paper I wrote for Bernstein on the three
  stages of NSMD governace
• If time!

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Bernstein Cashore paper

• Returned to legitimacy as dependent variable
• Idea of political legitimacy
• a more general support for a regime or
  governance institution, which makes subjects
  within a clearly defined community willing to
  substitute the regimes decisions for their own
  evaluation of a situation (Bodansky 1999, 602).
• Hence legitimacy must be for reasons of
  appropriateness rather than coercion
• Otherwise power but not legitimacy

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Bernstein Cashore paper

• Paper makes two broad arguments
• Analysis must assess effects of existing global
  social structure
• There is exist three phases through which NSMD
  systems pass
• Different logics regarding evaluations

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Global Social Structure

• Global social structure constituitive and
  regulative
• Norms
• Norm of sovereignty
• Market mechanisms/international liberalism
• Procedural norms
• Public participation transparency
• Rules
• WTO trade liberal rules target governments
• State support must be careful for risk of support
  of being declared not tariff barrier.
• NSMD systems much more leeway
• Technical Barriers to Trade
• Annex 3 the Code of Good Practice for the
  Preparation, Adoption and Application of
  Standards
• Amibiguous as to how it applies
• Association of NSMD systems ISEAL reccommened
  to members to act in accordance

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Three Phases

• Distinguish strategic and norm-driven behavior
• Merging earlier work on Suchman with March and
  Olsens work on logics of consequences and Logic
  of appropriateness
• pictures political action as driven less by
  anticipation of its uncertain consequences and
  preferences for them than by a logic of
  appropriateness reflected in a structure of rules
  and conceptions of identities.
• Such processes are built upon visions of civic
  identity and a framework of rule-based action.
  Embedded in this notion are ideas about the
  obligations of citizenship and office, the
  commitment to fulfill an identity without regard
  to its consequences for personal or group
  preferences or interests.1

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Diagram 1 The Three Phases of NSMD Governance
Phase I Initiation
Phase III Political Legitimacy
Phase II Widespread Support

• Norm generation begins to occur.
• Explains convergence, or oscillating
  convergence/divergence

• Strategic calculations lead to divergence of
  interests
• Proliferation of alternative approaches

• Participation in shared political community
• Strategic calculations occur within, not about,
  NSMD systems

• Convergence of strategic calculations
• Small community

Firms
Firms
Firms
NGOs
Firms
NGOs
NGOs
NGOs

• Characteristics
• Strategic calculations dominate
• Firms already closest to standards first to join
• Conundrum
• NGOs learn that requirements can be met and see
  them as baseline

• Strategic Characteristics (Logic of Consequences)
• Requires gaining support from firms whose
  practices are further away from NSMD behavioral
  requirements
• Conundrum
• Without strong market signals, gaining additional
  firm participation means maintaining or lowering
  requirements
• NGOs expect increases in requirements

• Characteristics
• NSMD considered legitimate arena of authority
• Strategic calculations no longer about NSMD
  authority, but about the processes and debates
  within a system that all participants accept as
  legitimate
• Conundrum
• None

• Norm Generating Characteristics
• (Logic of Appropriateness)
• Normative pressures from level one combine with
  the emergence of shared norms and learning can
  lead to a re-definition of disparate interest and
  the prerequisites for widespread community
  building

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How do systems move from phases I and III to III?

• Two propositions
• Policy learning - processes through which range
  of interests engage in common understandings
  about causal relations that might influence and
  explain policy development
• Learning about means different than ends
• Focusing on means first may hold promise
• Sabatier policy learning across coalitions
• Habermas, Rise communicative action
• The trick is to understand when shared
  understandings form about the nature of the
  governance system itself, rather than instances
  in which the specific policies and procedures are
  remain the criteria for whether support is
  granted or withdrawn