Improving Sustainability: Inevitable Trade-Offs in Civil Regulation. A Case Study of the IDH Fruits and Vegetables Program.

Abstract

The Dutch government relies on private sector instruments like civil regulation to tackle major global issues in the field of international development cooperation. However, it is not known whether businesses are sufficiently willing and capable of addressing those issues on a voluntary basis. In addition, some studies point to certain disadvantages of civil regulatory initiatives. Therefore in this study the possibilities and limitations of using civil regulation to improve the sustainability of international supply chains have been investigated. The network governance evaluation method of Sørensen and Torfing (2009) was used to evaluate the performance of civil regulatory networks in the policy formulation phase; and the IDH fruits and vegetables program was used as a case study. The results of this study suggest that civil regulation can be used to improve the sustainability of supply chains, but that (the impact of) this improvement is limited by the trade-offs between: (1) reaching decisions and multiple stakeholder inclusiveness; and (2) mainstreaming sustainability and a high ambition level of the plans. The trade-offs show a limitation in what civil regulatory initiatives can possibly contribute to the improvement of sustainability in international supply chains and, indirectly, broader international development goals.