Certification and Sustainability - podcast cover

Certification and Sustainability

Oxford University•www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk
Education
The certification of products is not new. However, the past few years have seen an upsurge in consumer demand for much more information about the provenance, authenticity, and performance of products and services, going well beyond authenticity, safety and reliability. Alongside this rise there has been a proliferation of voluntary certification schemes instituted by various combinations of industry associations, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and government or quasi-governmental agencies. The seminar series is designed as the first step of a project to compare newly emerging third party certification programmes. Drawing together scholarly and practitioner expertise on a variety of third party certification programmes, presentations will address issues such as the origins or inspiration for the certification programme, identification of participants, its structure, effectiveness and impacts (anticipated and unanticipated), and principal challenges of the certification scheme.
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Episodes

Fair Trade Certification

Dr Alex Nicholls (Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) examines how over the past ten years the market for Fair Trade products has grown at double digit rates across many countries in the North. As a consequence, Fair Trade is today the most significant example of a social enterprise entering mainstream markets. Furthermore, the Fair Trade model has had an influence beyond its own particular markets by playing an important role both specifically in establishing the 'ethical consumer' as a v...

Dec 08, 2010•43 min

Problems With Credit Rating Agencies

Professor Timothy Sinclair (University of Warwick) looks at why getting credit ratings 'right' seems vitally important to many professional observers and politicians. The increasingly volatile nature of markets in a post-Bretton Woods world of international capital mobility has created a crisis in relations between the rating agencies and governments, which seek to monitor the performance of the agencies and stimulate 'reform' in their procedures and business models, even if the exact purpose of...

Dec 01, 2010•43 min

Standards for sweatshops: voluntary labour standards programs in global supply chains

Increased attention to sweatshops, child labour, and the suppression of labour rights has led to a range of voluntary initiatives that set, monitor, and certify labour standards in global supply chains. These include factory certification efforts like Social Accountability International, monitoring programs like the Ethical Trading Initiative and Fair Labour Association, and numerous corporate codes of conduct and supplier standards. Whereas supporters initially claimed that such initiatives wou...

Nov 19, 2010•43 min

Conflict diamonds and the governance of resources

Professor Ian Taylor (University of St. Andrews) discusses conflict diamonds and the governance of resources. Part of the Michaelmas Term Seminar series 2010. The rise of the 'conflict diamonds' issue in international politics, spurred on in the main by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), compelled the diamond industry to go on the offensive to convince the diamond-buying public that diamonds are 'clean' and legitimate. Stemming from this, the Kimberley Process has sought to manage and certif...

Nov 10, 2010•40 min

Driven to Drive Markets: The contradictions of forest certification in the promotion of sustainability

Professor Dan Klooster (University of Redlands) summarizes the formation and growth of forest certification and illustrates how it qualifies sustainability and leverages meaningful changes in forest management. Consumer demand seems to have played little direct role in the growth of forest certification. Instead, environmental campaigns and corporate interests in protecting brands drove the adoption of certification among buyers of forest products. Forest certification puts the responsibility fo...

Nov 04, 2010•48 min

Enacting the Ethical Consumer

Dr Clive Barnett (Open University) asks how do consumers know when they are acting responsibly? Are they making a difference when they buy "Fairtrade" or "certified organic"? Can consumers trust these kinds of accreditations? This presentation will focus on developing a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between the range of activities used by campaign organisations to enrol support and the ways in which ordinary people attribute meaning to the multiple demands placed on th...

Oct 22, 2010•59 min
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