Spatial Data Are Key to Sustainability Standards Increasing and Demonstrating Their Impact

Abstract

Spatial data are increasingly ubiquitous and accessible. Understanding precisely where certified farms are located in relation to other variables can help uncover their potential to influence biodiversity, forest cover, and local livelihoods. Spatial mapping opens up many opportunities for sustainability standards organizations to test, understand, and demonstrate their impact. However, the potential of spatial data remains largely unrecognized and underdeveloped. For our recent analysis, we mapped certified farms for tropical commodity crops in unprecedented detail. We review ways in which spatial data are being used to enhance the positive impacts of certification on rural development and biodiversity conservation and suggest four steps by which standards organizations could build on this work to make the most of spatial data.

Understanding international non-state and subnational actors for biodiversity and their possible contributions to the post-2020 CBD global biodiversity framework: insights from six international cooperative initiatives

“…Transparency is increasingly becoming the new norm (Mol, 2008), forcing businesses in particular (Vaccaro & Madsen, 2009), but also NGOs and public agencies, to disclose production-and investment-related information ( Van Oorschot et al, 2018). Reputation mechanisms can bring about a change in behaviour through naming, faming, and shaming (Arts, 2003;Gardner et al, 2019;Héritier, 2002;Keskitalo et al, 2009;Pattberg, 2005), while new digital data collection and analysis tools are creating more opportunities (Soma et al, 2016) to hold members accountable and increase the impacts of ICIs as well as other actors (Karpouzoglou et al, 2016;Tayleur & Phalan, 2018).…”