Towards more stringent sustainability standards? Trends in the cut flower industry

Abstract

Sustainability initiatives have proliferated in many industries in recent years. This has led to an increasing number of standards that exist in parallel seeking to address more or less the same social and environmental issues. In this paper I explore whether parallelism has spurred a race to the bottom in flower standards seeking to regulate social conditions in the production of cut flowers aimed at the European Union market. The analysis suggests that while less stringent standards still dominate, so-called higher bar standards are gaining importance, as is the active inclusion of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade unions in monitoring standard compliance – a practice which potentially could allow standards to address more locally embedded and hidden problems like for example discrimination or lack of freedom of association. Nevertheless, less stringent standards still predominate and although an ongoing multi-stakeholder harmonisation initiative has real potential to ‘scale up’ more stringent standards, so far it has mainly benefited developed – not developing – country growers and workers.

Fairtrade Impacts

“…Fairtrade is the dominant model for some crops, such as flowers, and is important in tea. In 2012, 100 per cent of flowers and plants were under the hired labour model and workers accounted for 60 per cent of the combined workers and small producers involved in Fairtrade tea (Riisgaard, 2009(Riisgaard, , 2011Tallontire et al, 2005).…”

Enhancing Fairtrade for women workers on plantations: insights from Kenyan agriculture

“…Whilst some Kenyan flower farms were certified to Fairtrade standards before 2005, more farms were certified when the UK's Fairtrade (Riisgaard, 2009, 2011, Tallontire, et al, 2005.…”

Environmental governance of pesticides in Ethiopian vegetable and cut flower production

“…Scholars such as Buthe, (2010), Gereffi & Mayer (2010), Ponte (2008) and Riisgaard (2011) argue that successful private governance through certification has two options. One option is to focus on 'stronger public regulation in developing countries (to) reinforce rather than replace private governance, and promote multi-stakeholder initiatives involving both public and private actors'.…”

“…Social and environmental standards are a prominent governance strategy for global buyers who seek to reduce risk (Riisgaard, 2008(Riisgaard, , 2011.…”

“…Producing for international markets requires meeting certain quality standards. Moreover, quality produce needs to be supplied in a sustainable way to win markets (Ponte, 2008;Riisgaard, 2011;Trienekens, 2011). Global market preferences are changing towards low-pesticide agricultural products, stricter rules on residues and safer pest management.…”