Impact Assessment of Commodity Standards: Pathways for Sustainability and Inclusiveness

This chapter aims to identify and discuss key factors that influence the effectiveness of different types of commodity standards for reaching development goals. We focus on the international value chains of tropical agricultural commodities that are characterised by a large number of smallholder suppliers and major upgrading activities located close to market outlets. Consequently, competitive relationships tend to be rather unbalanced, and value added distribution is biased towards the downstream side of the supply chain (Kaplinsky and Morris 2001). This implies that value chain dynamics is strongly influenced by (a) the contracts and rules that enable exchange relationships along the supply chain; and (b) the governance mechanisms that support stakeholder interactions within the supply chain.