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When Is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? the Forest Stewardship Council in Argentina and Brazil • Ralph Espach*

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When Is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? the Forest Stewardship Council in Argentina and Brazil • Ralph Espach* RalphWhen isEspach Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? When is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? The Forest Stewardship Council in Argentina and Brazil • Ralph Espach* Dissatisªed with the efforts of governments to address the environmental costs of globalization, private actors such as industry groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have created their own initiatives to improve industrial standards and practices around the world. Over the last two decades these private regulatory programs have proliferated across markets and industries worldwide. Today labels claiming certiªcation under the environmental stan- dards of the ISO 14001, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Forest Steward- ship Council, and other programs adorn thousands of products on store shelves across the globe. These private regulatory programs are central to several debates about con- temporary global environmental politics. Do private regulatory programs in- fringe upon or complement traditional state regulation?1 Through mechanisms such as these do liberalized trade and investment raise international environ- mental standards, or promote races “to the top” rather than to the bottom?2 Pri- vate initiatives should be especially welcome in developing nations, where gov- ernments often lack the capacity to enforce their own environmental laws.3 On the other hand, some view these programs as a new set of tools with which ma- jor transnational corporations (TNCs) stiºe pressures for further regulation and protect their dominance by raising the costs of market entry.4 The importance of private regulation as a mode of global governance, however, depends on the effectiveness of these regimes at the local level. Ulti- * I am indebted to the scores of individuals in Argentina and Brazil who generously shared with me their time and knowledge, often with kindness as well. I wish to thank especially Pablo Yapura of the Fundación Vida Silvestre, Claudia Peirano of the Asociación Forestal Argentina, and Gerardo Alonso Schwarz of the Fundación Mediterránea in Argentina, and in Brazil Lineu Siqueira Jr. at the Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA). I also wish to thank Jane Lister at the University of British Columbia and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Comments are welcome at [email protected]. 1. Biersteker and Hall 2002; and Kahler and Lake 2003. 2. Vogel 1995; and Garcia-Johnson 2000. 3. Berman and Webb 2003; and Weidner et al. 2002. 4. Clapp 1998; Hauºer 2001; and Levy and Egan 1998. Global Environmental Politics 6:2, May 2006 © 2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 55 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/glep.2006.6.2.55 by guest on 23 September 2021 56 • When is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? mately, these programs must beneªt participating companies, consumers, and/or environmental advocates or they will atrophy and regulation will come via other sources. This is especially true in developing countries, where unfold- ing environmental catastrophes such as the destruction of tropical rainforests, the desertiªcation of arable lands, and dwindling clean water supplies are gain- ing political salience. Yet we know very little about the effectiveness of these pri- vate programs, whom they impact and in what ways, within developing coun- tries. This paper compares the effectiveness of one prominent global private en- vironmental program—the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)—in Argentina and Brazil. These countries share similar economic histories including a dedica- tion, since the late 1980s, to liberalization and export-led growth. Both coun- tries have signiªcant forestry industries, and the same environmental NGOs promoted the FSC in both countries at nearly the same time. Yet in Argentina the FSC has struggled to establish itself and to grow, while the Brazilian chapter has thrived. This study examines the national and industry-level factors that ex- plain this variance, and in so doing assesses several assumptions common to the political-economic literature on international private regulation. This paper presents the results of ªeld research conducted in both coun- tries in 2004 and 2005. The data is drawn principally from semi-structured in- terviews with regime administrators, corporate managers, auditors, certifying agents, and representatives of environmental NGOs and government agencies. In all, I conducted ªfty-three interviews for the project.5 I also consulted docu- mentary sources including industry journals, government and NGO reports, and surveys of national and regional forestry by the United Nations and other organizations. The comparative analysis presented in this paper is oriented by insights derived from theories of institutions, club goods, and stakeholder rela- tions, as well as from research conducted on private regulatory programs in other countries. Although only exploratory, the ªndings call into question several assump- tions common to the literature on international private regulation, which is de- rived mostly from studies conducted in rich, industrialized countries. Put brieºy, I argue that the conventional wisdom overstates the central importance of market beneªts as the driving factor behind private environmental regimes. The beneªts in terms of proªts or market access from FSC certiªcation are nearly the same in Argentina and Brazil, and for most producers they are extremely low. The ªndings also contrast with the prevailing emphasis on the signiªcant role played by transnational actors, NGOs and companies, as purveyors of pri- vate regulation. In these countries the capacities of the transnational NGOs that 5. 29 of the interviews were conducted in Argentina, and 24 in Brazil. 22 were with corporate managers or industry ofªcials, 8 were with government ofªcials, 5 were with certiªcation service providers or auditors, 11 were with NGO ofªcials, and 8 were with independent experts on for- estry or regulation. The anonymity of these individuals and the ªrms they represent is protected as a condition of their full participation in the study. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/glep.2006.6.2.55 by guest on 23 September 2021 Ralph Espach • 57 champion the FSC are limited by the extent to which they can establish local support and partnerships. Also, contrary to studies that stress the inºuence of state actors over the implementation of private initiatives, governments in these countries have had little effect on the effectiveness of their national FSC chap- ters, despite signiªcant efforts to do so. The principal factors that explain varia- tion in the effectiveness of the FSC in Argentina and Brazil are the structures of these national forestry industries, and the organization and strategies of pro- gram administrators in each country. Assessing and Accounting for Program Effectiveness Analysts of international regimes have yet to agree upon a method for the meas- urement of their effectiveness, a task that poses several challenges. Researchers must calculate changes in the environmental impact of the activity in question at different jurisdictional and environmental levels. They must isolate the share of these changes that can be attributed to the regime from those that may be due to other variables such as changes in regulation, new technologies, evolving cor- porate strategies, etc. Most perplexing is the need to construct convincing counterfactual scenarios in order to establish benchmark levels of environmen- tal impact in the absence of the regime or if a different regime were in place.6 Even when well conceptualized and formally operationalized,7 measurement suffers from the widespread lack of consistent, reliable data. This study evaluates program effectiveness at the level of national indus- tries. Even at this level, a scarcity of data frequently hinders efforts to estimate change in environmental impact. Moreover, were reliable quantitative data available, establishing a causal link between program creation and aggregate changes in emissions would be impossible using statistical analysis alone. In- puts, outputs, and management and production practices differ not only across sectors of the industry and individual ªrms, but over time and production cycles as well. If these problems confound research on environmental regimes in Eu- rope and North America, they are generally worse in developing nations where research on corporate environmental practice is scarce and data virtually nonex- istent. This study assesses program effectiveness across two dimensions: ªrst, the number and diversity of participating ªrms (in absolute number and in terms of their share of the industry’s total production); and second, the difªculty and cost of the reported changes in practice compelled by participation in the pro- gram. Whenever possible, I present quantitative data that reºects these dimen- sions. However, these numbers frequently require subjective interpretation in order to be meaningful. The number of FSC certiªcations, for example, may be impressively high because the beneªts of certiªcation equal or exceed the costs 6. Young 2001. 7. See, for example, Helm and Sprinz’s (2000) “Oslo-Potsdam Solution”; see also Hovi et al. 2003. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/glep.2006.6.2.55 by guest on 23 September 2021 58 • When is Sustainable Forestry Sustainable? and difªculties it entails, or because it entails no cost or difªculty at all. Also, we can only interpret the signiªcance
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