100% Certified: How private food standards impact stakeholders, democracy, and Costa Rican forests

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Food certification schemes have arisen as popular mechanisms of private governance, regulating food safety—and more recently social and environmental impacts—through establishment of private standards and verification by audit. This presentation considers the implications of such certifications for consumers, retailers, and producers, as well as their democratic legitimacy, and prospects for public-private partnerships.

Discussion of the ecological impacts of certifications will then follow, reviewing work in contribution to the CERTAIN project analysing the impacts of Rainforest Alliance certification in forest cover change in banana-producing regions of Costa Rica.