Certification Ecolabels’ Dubious “Sustainability”: 30 Years of Deceit and Violence

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Ecolabels like RSPO and FSC are involved in networks of extensive greenwashing. They exist to conceal corporations’ environmental damage rather than fighting it. With three decades dubious promises from environmental certifications, World Rainforest Movement calls for a swift end to this disgraceful palm oil, soy and timber industry greenwashing. You can help resist palm oil colonialism and ecocide #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife every time you shop!

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This article was originally published by World Rainforest Movement as “Certification schemes on “sustainability”: 30 years of deceit and violence” on 25 March, 2023 and was republished with permission here alongside other reports from World Health Organisation, Global Witness and others. Read original.

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The shelves in supermarkets and stores are full of certified products. The packaging displays different labels indicating products were made with “sustainable” paper or wood, food or cosmetic products made with “sustainable” palm oil, “responsible” soybeans and so on and so forth.

Even when it comes to buying an airplane ticket, consumers can pay a little more
to ensure that their carbon emissions are (supposedly) “neutralised”, so as to guarantee that much touted “sustainability”.

Read more: WHO Bulletin Report: Palm Oil and Human Health Impacts

So why is there this need for so many labels and forms of certification? What is actually being certified? And who is benefiting from this?

After 30 years of certification schemes with environmental and social bias, what is clear is that the only “sustainability” that they guarantee is that of corporations’ lucrative business.

The first environmental certification mechanism for a specific product (wood) and its production chain emerged in the early 1990s, with the creation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Although its origin is connected with civil society pressure on corporations, FSC has been fully incorporated into the production logic of logging companies operating in forests, of giant paper and pulp corporations using tree monoculture plantations, as well as of producers and distributors of consumer goods.

Over time, having shown that it did not constitute any threat – on the contrary: an opportunity – to the accumulation strategy of the corporations involved, other sectors started creating similar mechanisms. Hence, starting in the 2000s, initiatives and so-called roundtables for “sustainable” or “responsible” production of palm oil, soybeans, cocoa, sugarcane, among others, proliferated.

Read more: Greenwashing Ecocide: Agropalma and Orangutan Land Trust

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100 NGOS signed a public statement denouncing the RSPO in late 2022

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These “sustainable” initiatives have various aspects in common

1. They are dominated, compromised and funded by corporate interests

They are schemes that present themselves as non-profit associations including many apparently diverse actors and interests (companies, NGOs, governments etc.) However, in practice, the business sector participants andtheir allies, like the big conservationist NGOs, dominate these initiatives and impose their interests in a highly unequal power relation between the members.

2. They promote toothless and unenforceable guidelines

They are mechanisms that establish operational guidelines and directives for companies to adhere to on a voluntary bases, leaving no possibility of legal consequences when rules are broken – rules formulated and judged by the companies themselves, it should be noted.

3. They promote an endless growth model of capitalism in spite of our limited and finite natural world

They are initiatives submitted to the logic of the market and its expansion, that is to say, certification labels have become important both to obtain funding for companies’ expansion projects and to win over consumers, mainly urban consumers and those from the global North. Read more about the limits of the Endless growth model.

4. The mechanism for conflict resolution is set and decided upon by the certification label itself – amplifying racial and gender inequities

They are mechanisms headquartered in countries of the North, and with management boards mainly composed of men and white people, leaving the rural communities of the South that have to face the certified plantations, to play the role of mere receivers of determinations imposed from outside about the use of the space where they live. And if they want to question the actions of any of the certified companies, they must submit to the protocol created by the certification system itself on how to proceed.

5. They use greenwashing language and false promises even though this does not reflect reality

Certification schemes are used by companies as defence mechanisms whenever they are faced with criticism over the impacts of their activities:

“Our products are certified…”, “The project has certification…”, as if this has guaranteed that there is no cause for concern.

One way or another, such certification mechanisms have not stopped the destructive expansion of industrial tree plantations, oil palms, soy, etc. Read more about using Design and Words as a greenwashing tool.

6. The predatory nature of corporate land-grabbing and expansionism cannot ever work in favour of indigenous peoples

Certification labels have not been able to resolve the conflicts generated with traditional communities and Indigenous Peoples. Nor do they have the potential to do so, since they are designed to allow the continuity and expansion of corporate accumulation patterns that are intrinsically dependent on a predatory dynamic.

In fact, the main common denominator of such certification schemes is that they guarantee a green label to the companies involved, thus contributing to their primary objective, i.e., the maximisation of profit.

7. Certification labels like FSC and RSPO are vital to for companies gain consumer buy-in and greenwash away harms

Certifiers have hence become a key element through which companies seek to legitimize their territorial and economic expansion in the global South, deceiving consumers with the “sustainability” discourse.

In other words, these destructive corporations need certification labels to obtain some legitimacy in the eyes of consumers and investors, bearing in mind the vast number of reports, news and studies showing their harmful effects, such as:

• Violent corporate land-grabbing aided by private enforcement or military/police intervention
• Problematic, deceptive or non-existent community consultation processes
• Contamination by agro-chemicals and its human health and environmental impacts
• Soil degradation
• Dangerous and humiliating jobs
• Sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women
• Child slavery and indentured slavery

among many other impacts related to extensive monoculture plantations.

This permits one to affirm without reservation that certification itself has become an underlying cause of deforestation.

New forms of greenwashing: Carbon Credits and Biodiversity Credits

Furthermore, it is important to mention that the idea of certification has been taking on new shapes. With the creation of offset mechanisms for carbon emissions and biodiversity loss, new commodities have emerged already linked to certification mechanisms. In this new market, carbon credits and biodiversity credits – issued by certification schemes – represent a supposed guarantee that greenhouse gas emissions or the destruction of biodiversity are being duly offset elsewhere.

Differently from wood, paper, palm oil or soybeans, where the certification is “added” to the product by means of a label, in the carbon or biodiversity markets it is the
certification itself that makes it feasible for the product to be consumed.

In other words, the commodity in itself is supposedly a guarantee – though a virtual guarantee, obtained through dubious methodologies and permeated by openly suspect interests.

This compilation of articles from the WRM Bulletin aims to underscore the damaging role played by companies and organisations involved in certification schemes. WRM considers it important to highlight that after three decades with ever more environmental certification labels on the market, it is urgent to put an end to this greenwashing.

Ultimately, instead of combating environmental devastation and the social ills linked
to corporations’ and other players’ operations, these labels cover up and
sustain their destructive logic.

Water is life – stop planting palms! reads a sign in Guatemala

This article was originally published by World Rainforest Movement as “Certification schemes on “sustainability”: 30 years of deceit and violence” on 25 March, 2023 and was republished with permission alongside other reports from World Health Organisation, Global Witness and others. Read original.

ENDS

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Read more about human rights abuses and greenwashing associated with “sustainable” palm oil

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