Twilight on self-regulation : A socio-legal evaluation of conservation and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity by industry self-regulation

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to understand how reliable industry self-regulations of food suppliers on the Dutch market are. Reliability is defined as the competence of a food supplier to prove, and at all times guarantee that agrobiodiversity objectives are being achieved through industry self-regulation. A new methodology is applied to assess the extent to which self-regulations live up to claims about their contribution to conservation and the sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity. Three types of industry self-regulation are evaluated: eco-labels of international labeling families, product-specific eco-labels and contract farming. For each label, four aspects are examined: (1) mention of agrobiodiversity; (2) reference to rule of law to assure buyers' confidence (transparency, participation, separation of powers); (3) notification of farmers' compliance; and (4) information on ecological impact. The analysis reveals that self-regulations fail to communicate adequately; they do not diminish the information gap between producer and consumer. The main shortcomings of self-regulations were found in their ambiguity about environmental themes, their failure to assure the buyer about the product's ecological impact and the insufficient information about producers' compliance. Reliability proves to be almost unmanagable in practice due to lack of ability to continuosly guarantee effectiveness. If companies could find a way to induce their struggle for sustainability and good intentions, non-member of self-regulations would be informed more accurately.