Global sustainability standards and food security: Exploring unintended effects of voluntary certification in palm oil Peter Oosterveer a,n , Betty E. Adjei b , Sietze Vellema b , Maja Slingerland c a Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands b Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands c Plant Production Systems Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands article info Article history: Received 27 March 2014 Received in revised form 25 September 2014 Accepted 26 September 2014 Keywords: Voluntary standards Unintended impacts Palm oil RSPO abstract Voluntary labelling and certification schemes have become increasingly used in global agro-food chains. They primarily aim at enhancing the sustainability of agricultural production processes. The global palm oil supply, the different environmental and social problems related to it, and the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification clearly illustrate this. However, global sustainability standards may also have unintended impacts on food security and local development, which are not explicitly taken into account. This article explores the unnoticed effects of voluntary palm oil certification in Indonesia and Ghana and identifies their implications on local and national food provision. As voluntary labels and certification schemes are an emerging category of global governance instruments, their role in food security, as a global public good, should be taken seriously and connected to political and scientific debates on their future involvement in realizing food security. & 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The 2009 World Summit on Food Security defined global food security as the situation when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary requirements and food preferences for an active and healthy life (World Summit on Food Security (WSFS) (2009)). Many consider achieving global food security to be primarily a task for national authorities who are expected to focus on increasing agricultural production to supply food for a growing and wealthier population (FAO, 2009). However, the role of governments in global food provision is changing, as more food is traded internationally (Liapis, 2012; RaboBank, 2010) and large multinational companies become more influential. Likewise, national governments refrain from interference with (agricultural) markets because of their commitments to international trade agreements, such as those under the WTO, and because of a dominant (neoliberal) political discourse. Moreover, most governments are unable to control food trade effectively because contemporary agricultural and food supply chains have become increasingly complex, global and often con- centrated (Gibbon and Ponte, 2005), while the human and technical resources of public agencies are limited. Finally, international relations are based on the principle of national sovereignty, which restricts governmental interference with the domestic affairs of other countries. As a consequence, global food security and sustain- ability of global agro-food supply systems are interdependent, but global food security remains largely unresolved: there are, for instance, still 842 million undernourished people in the world (FAOSTAT, 2013). Therefore, taking the limitations national govern- ments face and the absence of effective multilateral institutions into consideration, it is timely to assess whether alternative steering instruments exist and how these impact on food security. One category of alternative steering instruments in global food provision comprises voluntary certification schemes, such as Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), MSC and GlobalGAP. This article reviews these schemes, because although they are mostly oriented towards sustainability of primary production of the global commodities, they may have unintended and indirect impacts on global food security. Private certification schemes may entail supplementary costs for producers, exclude smallholders (Bush et al., 2013; Hatanaka, 2010), worsen the position of women, increase food prices, displace local production, or divert agricultural goods from food production to more attractive export markets for processing (German and Schoneveld, 2012). Certification require- ments may also positively impact smallholder food production through crossover effects from improvements in knowledge, tech- nology and input markets (Swinnen and Vandemoortele, 2008) and smallholders’ access to food through the guarantee of reliable high income for producers who succesfully comply to the standards. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gfs Global Food Security http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2014.09.006 2211-9124/& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Global Food Security 3 (2014) 220–226