Deanna Newsom

Forest certification (eco-labeling) programs and their policy-making authority: explaining divergence among North American and European case studies

In recent years, transnational and domestic non-governmental organizations have created private standard setting bodies whose purpose is to recognize officially companies and landowners practicing ‘sustainable forest management’. Eschewing traditional state processes and state authority, these certification programs have turned to the market to create incentives and force compliance to their rules. This paper compares the emergence of this non-state market driven (NSMD) phenomenon in the forest sector in eight regions in North Am40erica and Europe. We specifically seek to understand the role of forest companies and landowners in granting competing forest certification programs ‘legitimacy’ to create the rules. We identify distinct legitimation dynamics in each of our cases, and then develop seven hypotheses to explain differences in support for forest certification. 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Revising Theories of Nonstate Market-Driven (NSMD) Governance: Lessons from the Finnish Forest Certification Experience

We assess the ability of Cashore, Auld, and Newsoms theoretical framework on Nonstate Market-Driven (NSMD) governance to explain the emergence of and support for forest certification in Finland. In contrast to Swedens experience, the environmental group-initiated international forest certification program, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), failed to gain significant support. Instead, the commercial forest sector created and adopted the Finnish Forest Certification Program, which domestic and international environmental groups ultimately rejected as inadequate. The NSMD framework must better incorporate two key findings. First, the dependence of international markets on the targeted countrys forest products can shape domestic certification choices. We found that the largely non-substitutable qualities of Finnish paper products gave the domestic sector greater leeway in responding to international pressures. Second, whether the FSC is being championed primarily to influence a countrys domestic forestry debates or indirectly as a lever with which to improve forest practices elsewhere appears to permeate the forest sectors overall receptiveness to the FSC.

Forest Certification in Developing and Transitioning Countries: Part of a Sustainable Future?

This paper examines and analyzes trends in forest in forest management in developing and transitional economies in order to broaden the reach of critical issues. Data collected on biodiversity, species decline, and deforestation reveal widespread deterioration of forest ecosystem structure and function, including the acceleration of forest exploitation as well as uncertainty about where global trends in domestic forest sectors are headed. However, two significant trends were observed: (1) the intense competition between the Forest Stewardship Council and industry-initiated certification programs; and (2) North America and Europe have the most support for and battles about forest certification. Forest certification is best understood as part of a larger ensemble of forest management institutions, which, if aligned correctly, could significantly help to improve sustainable forest management and conserve biodiversity

Forest certification in the Heart of Dixie: a survey of Alabama landowners.

Deanna Newsom,1 Benjamin Cashore,2 Graeme Auld3 and James E. Granskog4 1TREES Program, Rainforest Alliance, Richmond, VT 05477, USA; 2Global Institute for Sustainable Forest Management, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT 06511-2189, USA; 3University of British Columbia, Department of Forest Resources Management, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z4; 4USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, New Orleans, LA 70113, USA

Perspectives on forest certification: a survey examining differences among the US forest sectors' views of their forest certification alternatives.

In the last 5 years the world’s forest policy climate has been jolted by a startling new development: the emergence of an array of private nongovernmental forest certification programmes designed to recognize companies that practice sustainable forest management (SFM). Social and biological scientists have been quick to address this new development, from describing the different types of programmes in the US and globally (Hansen and Juslin, 1999; Rickenbach et al., 2000), to exploring the politics behind them (Elliott, 1999; Cashore, 2002), their intersection between public and private policy (Meidinger, 1997, 1998), and consumer support for such programmes and the products they promote (Forsyth, 1997; Ozanne and Smith, 1998; Forsyth et al., 1999). Despite this increased attention, we are only just beginning to understand how certification programmes gain, or do not gain, support from an array of interests, including environmental, business, governmental and professional organizations, and the effects of this support on the long-term viability of certification programmes. Why are companies considering or pursuing certification? What are the perceived advantages and disadvantages of certification? Do companies prefer more flexible industry initiated programmes such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), or more prescriptive environmental-group-supported programmes represented by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)? What are the conditions under which a company predisposed to one programme would consider another? This chapter is an effort to begin filling this gap by addressing two aspects of forest certification that have received surprisingly scant scholarly attention. First, it examines the attitudes of the key forest companies that will be required to implement forest certification’s management rules. Second, it addresses the views of the broader (manufacturing) forest sector whose demands (or lack of demand) for certified wood products and their willingness to act as a link in product-tracking processes (chain of custody) will most certainly play a key role in the future direction of forest certification. Exploring these questions permits us to perform two key tasks: (i) elucidate better exactly what the forest sector is thinking; and (ii) provide

The Future of Non-State Authority on Canadian Staples Industries: Assessing the Emergence of Forest Certification

Abstract Virtually all of the literature on Canada as a “staples state” has focused on two related topics: the impact of a historically staples-based economy on the development of the Canadian states structure, function and policy outcomes; and, given these historical influences, the ability and capacity state officials might have to veer Canada off this “hinterland” pathway by facilitating a more diversified Canadian economy less dependent on the US “metropole”. While these foci are important, the dramatic arrival in the 1990s of Non-State Market Driven (NSMD) governance systems that focus largely on regulating staples extracting sectors such as forestry, fisheries, and mining, has raised important new questions for students of the staples state.

Reducing tourism's threats to biodiversity: effects of a voluntary sustainability standard and training program on 106 Latin American hotels, lodges and guesthouses

ABSTRACT The tourism industry can negatively affect wildlife, plants and natural ecosystems through habitat destruction, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources and visitor impacts to sensitive ecosystems. One approach to mitigate such threats is the application of voluntary sustainability standards, supported by training of tourism enterprises and verified by external audits. The Rainforest Alliance standard defines 78 criteria (requirements) for sustainable environmental, social and business practices, and has been adopted by over 600 tourism enterprises – including hotels, lodges and tour boats – in 12 countries. We examined the performance of 106 hotels in six Latin American countries against 29 of the sustainable tourism criteria most directly related to biodiversity conservation. Independent audits were used to assess hotel performance at baseline followed by a repeat assessment after training, about two years later. Mean conformance with the 29 biodiversity criteria increased significantly during this interval, from 44% to 58%. Improvements were greatest for businesses in the lowest third of performance at baseline (laggards) and smallest for hotels in the highest third (leaders). The results indicate that a voluntary sustainability standard and training program can serve both to recognize existing good actors and to drive incremental improvement in enterprises that were previously less sustainable.