Contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes: Valuation languages and power asymmetries in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in Colombia Victoria Marin-Burgos ⁎, Joy S. Clancy, Jon C. Lovett 1 Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development-CSTM, Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies, Faculty of Management and Governance, University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands abstract article info Article history: Received 19 February 2013 Received in revised form 15 April 2014 Accepted 15 April 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Sustainability certification schemes Legitimacy Palm oil Socio-environmental conflicts Valuation languages Procedural power Voluntary certification schemes aimed at assuring producer compliance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market-based instruments (MBIs) of sustainability governance. However, the impacts they tackle can be part of a complex arena of socio-environmental conflict, where values and powers of business and local actors compete. Legitimacy of these schemes not only results from compliance by business actors; but also depends on acceptance by local actors affected by, or resisting the industries that these mechanisms aim to govern. This paper explores the influence of different local actors' values and powers on legitimacy granting or contestation by local actors during national processes of sustainability criteria development. We analyse the case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Colombia using an approach that combines concepts of ecological economics and political ecology with the legitimacy literature based on critical sociology. In Colombia, the palm oil industry led the initiative to implement certification under national interpretation of RSPO principles and criteria. However, the national interpretation process revealed power asymmetries among stakeholders and clashes between their different values. This resulted in strong contestation of RSPO legitimacy by local actors who resist expansion of oil palm cultivation. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Voluntary certification schemes aimed at ensuring producer compli- ance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market-based governance responses to concerns about socio-environmental impacts of industries based on agricultural, forest, mineral or marine resources. These schemes constitute innovative forms of global sustainability gover- nance beyond the state (Arts, 2006; Bernstein, 2005; Cashore, 2002; Pattberg, 2005, Take, 2012). They are market-based instruments (MBIs) of governance, operating within broader governance systems that fall into the specific category identified by Cashore (2002) as non-state market-driven governance systems, i.e. “deliberative and adaptive gover- nance institutions designed to embed social and environmental norms in the global marketplace that derive authority directly from interested audiences, including those who seek to regulate, not from sovereign states” (Bernstein and Cashore, 2007: 348). Legitimacy is a major concern when dealing with this type of governance system and has become a focus for research (Bäckstrand, 2006; Bernstein, 2005; Bernstein and Cashore, 2007; Biermann and Gupta, 2011). This concern is grounded in two characteristics: i) there are neither electoral nor representative legis- lative processes, which are the sources of legitimacy for rule-making in national democracies (Bäckstrand, 2006; Tamm Hallström and Boström, 2010), and ii) these governance systems involve many issue areas affecting different groups of actors at different scales (Bernstein, 2011). However, due to their market-driven nature, the governance systems may not be responsive beyond the need for consumer confi- dence and commercial viability (Klooster, 2010). Most socio-environmental effects that MBIs of governance seek to address are experienced locally, such as alteration of environments that sustain local peoples' livelihoods, and have negative impacts on access to natural resources. Such effects are often at the centre of socio-environmental conflicts, i.e. conflicts over access to natural re- sources and over the burdens of environmental impacts, that are rooted in differences in values and inequalities in power and wealth among human groups (Escobar, 2006; Martínez-Alier, 2002). Typically, local actors involved in such conflicts have opted for self-exclusion from the industrial commodity chain because participation does not fit with their values (Hospes and Clancy, 2011). Thus, they are stakeholders that may grant or contest legitimacy, depending on how their values Ecological Economics xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Abbreviations: Fedepalma, National Federation of Oil Palm Growers; MBI(s), Market- based instrument(s); NI, Colombian National Interpretation of the RSPO Principles and Criteria; RSPO, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil; WWF, World Wildlife Fund. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 53 4894377; fax: +31 6 4894850. E-mail addresses: marinvicky@gmail.com (V. Marin-Burgos), j.s.clancy@utwente.nl (J.S. Clancy), j.lovett@leeds.ac.uk (J.C. Lovett). 1 Present Address: School of Geography, Faculty of Environment. University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. ECOLEC-04720; No of Pages 11 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.04.011 0921-8009/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon Please cite this article as: Marin-Burgos, V., et al., Contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes: Valuation languages and power asymmetries in the Roundtab..., Ecol. Econ. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.04.011