Summary
In 2012, a committee of international experts from academia, business, and civil society published 'Toward Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification'. In addition to describing the history, key features and actors in voluntary standard systems (VSS), the report summarised the state of knowledge regarding VSS use and their potential to achieve conservation and other goals. It also enumerated existing evidence about VSS impacts, finding few studies and weak study designs. Since then, considerable effort has been made to fill research gaps. This webinar presents the paper 'Conservation Impacts of Voluntary Sustainability standards: How Has our Understanding of conservation impacts changed since the 2012 Publication of "Toward Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification"?' to reflect on new VSS studies in the agricultural, forestry, marine fisheries and aquaculture sectors and revisit the issue of the state of knowledge about VSS conversation impacts as well as to consider how best to advance VSS impacts research. This research is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through the Meridian Institute to support the work of the Supply Chain Sustainability Research Fund.