Poverty Alleviation, Biodiversity Conservation
and Company Performance
Making Quality Systems work for
Poverty Alleviation, Biodiversity Conservation
and Company Performance
Robin Pistorius
Summary
The interest of ngo's and particularly aid organisations in quality systems is relatively new, forcing them to develop their own position on these systems. Their interest stems from their potential to be used as policy instruments or tools for achieving sustainability, with attention for social and environmental criteria such as gender issues, malnutrition, biodiversity degradation etc.
The most important fields of interest have been defined and treated in this report in terms of three domains:
- the market on which the products are sold,
- the organizations that deal with the production and quality systems, and finally,
- the overall governance of the value chain through the quality system.
The report shows that adherence to quality systems can well trengthen the natural resource base, productivity and the proportion of value added obtained by small-scale producers. Still, although quality system are considered promising tools for poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation, there are a number of issues that prevent these systems from becoming more effective policy instruments:
- Impact assessment: Audit results of existing quality systems are available, but there are no clear-cut data on the precise impact of quality systems on poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation. To generate these data, more inventorial research, thinking and discussion is necessary on the desired social and ecological change.
- Impact on small scale holders: The Conference results indicate that quality systems may well reap benefits for small scale holders in terms of social improvement, market access, and social and organizational learning, governance, and biodiversity conservation.
- Credibility and legitimacy: The growing number of quality systems and the associated plethora of rules, procedures and standards call for harmonization and more transparency. This creates problems for all stakeholders, in particular those with few resources.
- Mainstreaming: The future effect of quality systems for poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation may well lie in their ability to function as credible standards in mainstream markets and showing added value in relation to conventional products.
It should be noted that the preparatory conference research on quality systems and poverty was limited to eight cases: FLO, two EU regulations, FSC, IFOAM, MSC, Rainforest Alliance, and Utz, which explains a certain degree of case-wise evidence.