Abstract
Standards are an instrument to translate the vision of sustainable development into concrete and practicable steps, whose impacts can be measured and aid further development. Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are one part of the answer to the call for a socially and ecologically compatible form of globalisation. As they have been shown to improve worker living conditions and protect natural resources in developing countries, the German Government regards these standard systems as an important tool in combating poverty. The German Government therefore actively supports the application of VSS as one instrument in attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The consolidation of voluntary sustainability standards contributes to the achievement of several priority tasks of the MDGs by 2015, such as:
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Notes
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ISEAL was founded in 2002 and aims at setting basic rules and guidelines for standard initiatives in order to support standard implementation on the market and communities. Working together with standards in sectors like fishing, agriculture, forestry and many more, ISEAL also supports measuring their social and environmental impacts (ISEAL Alliance 2008).
References
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Schmitz-Hoffmann, C., Hansmann, B., Klose, S. (2014). Voluntary Sustainability Standards: Measuring Their Impact. In: Schmitz-Hoffmann, C., Schmidt, M., Hansmann, B., Palekhov, D. (eds) Voluntary Standard Systems. Natural Resource Management in Transition, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35716-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35716-9_9
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