Voluntary Sustainability Standards and the Sustainable Development Goals

Johannes Blankenbach

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-3473-7_2

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) may or may not contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and thus have transformative impacts. The first part is a content analysis of formal VSS requirements, based on the ITC Standards Map data, which points to a considerable number of formal correspondences between VSS criteria and all 17 SDGs, albeit some are less covered than others. This formal analysis is then contrasted with findings from impact studies and other reports on the real-life impacts of VSS. Most studies so far have found only modest or inconclusive sustainable development impacts in the context of VSS adoption. What is of greater concern, however, is growing evidence of the failure of social auditing, a procedure also used to certify and verify standards compliance, in uncovering or mitigating human and labour rights abuses in global value chains. Given the mutually reinforcing relationship between the SDGs and human rights, the pitfalls of certification and verification audits may compromise any transformative potential of VSS. Against this backdrop, there is also considerable doubt as to what role VSS can play in supporting corporate human rights and environmental due diligence in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, all the more so as the former is essentially about companies internalising respect for human rights rather than “outsourcing” it to an external scheme. Human rights and environmental due diligence across global value chains has been identified as a significant contribution of businesses to SDG implementation.

Highlights

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) have since long been used and referred to in the context of the evolving global sustainability and development agenda(s), such as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit’s Agenda 21 or the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) introduced in 2000
Considering that this approach mainly captures what VSS-Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) linkages exist on paper, a subsequent section looks at what kind of real-life contributions VSS may—or may not—make to SDG implementation
At a formal level, a semi-statistical analysis of Standards Map data from 2017 in this chapter pointed to various correspondences between VSS criteria and the 17 SDGs (Fig. 1), suggesting that the detailed requirements of many VSS cover different aspects of the 2030 Agenda

Summary

Introduction

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) have since long been used and referred to in the context of the evolving global sustainability and development agenda(s), such as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit’s Agenda 21 or the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) introduced in 2000. Discussions on the instrumental value of VSS in contributing to global development, have gained new ground since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 (UN GA, 2015). Can VSS, or in other words, voluntary sets of “criteria defining good social and environmental practices in an industry or product” (ISEAL, 2015), contribute to the implementation of a framework as universal and ambitious as the SDGs? Can VSS, or in other words, voluntary sets of “criteria defining good social and environmental practices in an industry or product” (ISEAL, 2015), contribute to the implementation of a framework as universal and ambitious as the SDGs? The 2030

Blankenbach

Alignment of VSS with the SDGs

By 2030, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency

From Paper to Practice

Findings

Conclusions and Recommendations