Southern Responses to Fair Trade Gold: Cooperation, Complaint, Competition, Supplementation

Abstract

Social and environmental harm continues to emanate from global commodity production despite the array of governance programs trying to mitigate it. This paper examines the evolution of transnational certification standards in an understudied sector: artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). ASGM is a subsistence livelihood for millions of people in the Global South, yet is also a leading cause of global mercury pollution and associated with poverty, deforestation, and civil conflict. Since program effects are shaped by normative and material contexts, this paper asks: What roles did ideas, interests, and capacities play in shaping Southern responses to ASGM certification programs? New data from Northern-based Fairtrade International and Southern-based Alliance for Responsible Mining reveal that normative and material misalignments between program designers and targets drove three key outcomes. First, the Southern NGO initially cooperated but then competed with Fairtrade when ideas about how to address sector problems diverged and capacities became redundant. Second, very few Southern producers participate in the competing programs, which only moderately mitigate sector problems (e.g. programs largely fail to resolve poverty and allow mercury use to continue). Third, the Southern NGO created the new CRAFT Code, a much weaker self-reporting program well-positioned to enjoy higher uptake because it better aligns and respects actors’ interests and capacities. Empirical findings from this unique and important case contribute to theoretical debates on the utility of institutional diffusion across diverse sectors and problems, and suggest that certification programs – whether Northern- or Southern-designed – may not be the best institutional ‘fit’ with ASGM.