From checking boxes to actual improvement: A new take on sustainability certification

Vilde Steiro Amundsen

doi:10.1016/j.aquaculture.2021.737672

Abstract

Sustainability certification has established itself as an important approach to ensure responsible production, allowing retailers and consumers to differentiate between products while also providing companies in controversial industries with a means to demonstrate accountability. Based on interviews, fieldwork, and document studies of private sustainability standards for the salmon aquaculture industry, this paper explores the implications of employing private, global regulatory instruments with standardized criteria to address such complex systems, and the potential for improved utilization of these instruments. The findings illustrate how a new conceptualization of certification, which moves away from a technocentric approach, is needed to ensure that the continuous development of these standards in fact constitutes improvement. What this calls for is abandoning the prevailing checkbox mentality, if certification is to remain such a dominating strategy to better aquaculture and other resource-intensive industries.

Highlights

Sustainability certification has become an increasingly common way in which to operationalize sustainability, a massively trending concept that is commonly used with little or no consideration as to what it involves (Portney, 2015)
This paper builds on the work from the SustainFish project and the PhD thesis associated with this project (Amundsen, 2020), which investigated different aspects of private sustainability certification in salmon aquaculture, focusing on the industry in Norway, Chile, and Scotland
The social indicators were identified across the different domains based on a synthesized definition of social sustainability, which we developed by reviewing various definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Triple Bottom-Line (TBL), and Social License to Operate (SLO)

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability certification has become an increasingly common way in which to operationalize sustainability, a massively trending concept that is commonly used with little or no consideration as to what it involves (Portney, 2015). It is imperative that sustainability efforts, such as private sustainability standards, be examined. This should not merely involve the specific content of these standards, and how they are implemented and the many impacts, both intended and unintended, of their growing prevalence This paper builds on the work from the SustainFish project and the PhD thesis associated with this project (Amundsen, 2020), which investigated different aspects of private sustainability certification in salmon aquaculture, focusing on the industry in Norway, Chile, and Scotland. The complexity of the many challenges facing the aquaculture industry renders this approach insufficient, as seen

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