Bunching with the Stars: How Firms Respond to Environmental Certification

Voluntary environmental certification programs have been a popular tool used by governments, industry groups, and nonprofit organizations alike. A central question in the design of such programs is who should pay for them. In a context where firms respond strategically to a certification, the answer to this question is a priori ambiguous and, ultimately, empirical. This paper provides important insights on this question using ENERGY STAR, a voluntary certification program for energy-efficient products, as a case study. I show that firms are highly strategic with respect to this certification and extract consumer surplus associated with certified products via three mechanisms. They offer products that bunch at the certification requirement, differentiate certified products in the energy and nonenergy dimensions, and charge a price premium on certified products. I use these findings to motivate a structural econometric model with firms’ strategic behaviors with respect to product line and pricing decisions and to investigate the incidence of a certification licensing fee to fund the certification program. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Review of NZEB Criteria: Design of Life Containers in Operations Area

The Spanish Ministry of Defense is currently attempting to reduce the amount of energy that is consumed by its military bases and has therefore raised concerns about how to make their facilities more energy efficient. To fulfill this objective, the Spanish army has developed various studies and projects, as well as a technical prescription sheet that defines the thermal transmittance values of the materials that are to be used to construct the different elements of the containers that make up the temporary housing units at Spanish military camps. Both governments and private entities have developed initiatives that are aimed at improving the energy efficiency of buildings, which are classified into two groups: those aimed at the development of mandatory building codes and those that are based on voluntary certification programs. The use of passive strategies is one of the key actions that is being implemented to achieve the NZEB category, as its first requirement is to be a “very low energy consumption building”. This paper compares the energy efficiency requirements of the tents and containers that are used in military camps and the energy-efficient design requirements that are demanded by the energy efficiency standards for buildings in the civil sector. Through this comparison, we determine how energy efficient the current living spaces in military camps are in order to define strategies that can be implemented to improve the design requirements of these living spaces so to reduce the consumption and operation logistics and to improve both operability and safety in military camp facilities.

Is It Possible to Produce Certified Hazelnut Plant Material in Sicily? Identification and Recovery of Nebrodi Genetic Resources, in vitro Establishment, and Innovative Sanitation Technique From Apple Mosaic Virus

Eight Sicilian cultivars of hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.), namely-Curcia, Nociara Collica, Panottara Collica, Panottara Galati Grande, Parrinara, Panottara Baratta Piccola, Enzo, and Rossa Galvagno, registered into the Italian Cultivar Register of fruit tree species in 2017 were selected from Nebrodi area and established in vitro. The aim of the work was to carry out the sanitation of the cultivars and get virus-free plants from the most important viral pathogen threat, the apple mosaic virus. Virus-free plant material is essential for the production of certified plants from Sicilian hazelnut cultivars, complying the CE (cat. CAC) quality and the technical standards established in 2017 for voluntary certification by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF). In this study, we investigated the possibility of establishing in vitro true-to-type and virus-free hazelnut plantlets via the encapsulation technology of apexes. The in vitro shoot proliferation rates were assessed for the different cultivars, sampling periods, temperature treatments, and type of explant used for culture initiation. Viability, regrowth, and conversion rates of both conventional meristem tip culture (MTC) and not conventional (MTC combined with the encapsulation technology) sanitation techniques were evaluated.

Review of Policy Instruments for Climate-Smart Mountain Forestry

Implementing the Climate-Smart Forestry (CSF) concept into practice requires interaction among key stakeholders, especially forest owners and managers, policymakers (or regulators in general), forest consultants, and forest users. But what could be the most effective policy instruments to achieve climate smartness in mountain forests? Which ones would be the most acceptable for forest owners? And for the local forest communities? Should they be designed and implemented with the use of participatory approaches or rather on a top-down basis? This chapter summarizes key policy instruments structured in three subsequent categories: command-and-control, voluntary market-based instruments, and community cooperation. It provides examples of their functioning in the forestry sector and discusses their suitability for the implementation of climate smart forestry. It appears that there are many policy instruments used with varying degrees of success such as forest concessions or voluntary certification schemes. A wide range of instruments are responding to direct regulation; this has been seen as insufficient to deal with natural hazards and calamities.

Athletes Friendly Education Handbook: Award for Educational Institutions supporting the Dual Career of Athletes

(AFE) is a type of schooling, continually planning, organizing, and improving a system of adaptations included in a school's educational process and infrastructure. These adaptations are implemented voluntarily and in a benevolent, systematic, comprehensive, and transparent manner, with the explicit aim to help athletes engage in sport and simultaneously achieve goals and competencies set out in the educational program and thus Athlete friendly education has the following attributes: adaptations; rather than being discrete, these adaptations constitute a system; daptations are organized and managed by school management; institutions introduce the adaptations voluntarily; adaptations are based on pre-existing legal frameworks and internal institutional regulations; institutions need to possess adequate competencies or experience; they need to be "trustworthy," in other words. AFE accreditation is voluntary. The principle of voluntary certification is very similar to the "brand" philosophy. The brand also contains a "promise."

A New Calculable Global World in the Making: Governing Through Transnational Certification Standards

Governing with quantification rests on preliminary processes of transforming the world to make it quantifiable through conventions of formatting and equivalence-making. This chapter investigates a new globalized mode of governing, operating, away from states, through voluntary certification standards. Considering the case of sustainable palm oil certification, it follows the most vulnerable “stakeholders”, from their daily life in remote rural areas to the governing public roundtables and private confidential negotiations. Fostering the dialogue between the extended convention theory framework and governmentality studies, the chapter shows that in a new kind of “standardizing liberalism” [libéralisme normalisateur], “governing by standards” shifts the political debate about power, legitimacy and the common good onto measurable certifiable characteristics of goods and services to be chosen by autonomous opting individuals.

Imagining Impact in Global Supply Chains: Data-Driven Sustainability and the Production of Surveillable Space

In the context of global agrocommodity supply chains, the sociotechnical imaginary of neoliberal sustainability is characterized by a belief that the impactfulness of market-based solutions like fair trade standards and voluntary certification schemes relies on the transparency and traceability of those supply chains. Achieving transparency and traceability, however, relies on the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data about numerous social, environmental, and economic factors, data that are generated through increasingly intensive regimes of high-tech monitoring and surveillance. For my interlocutors, who work to design and promote these standards, surveillance comes to be seen as not only justified but also expected and necessary, leading to the tacit categorization of certain spaces (and the human and non-human actors who populate them) as surveillable. In the case of sustainability standards specifically, which are imposed almost exclusively on producers in the Global South, the notion of surveillable space raises important questions about race and gender.

THE ROLE OF STANDARDIZATION AND VOLUNTARY CERTIFICATION IN IMPROVING THE QUALITY AND COMPETITIVENESS OF PRODUCTS FOR VETERINARY MEDICINE AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

The article analyzes the impact of the introduction of standardization and voluntary certification to improve the quality of veterinary medicines, feeds, feed additives and premixes. In terms of increased competition, both domestic and global markets, you need to look for new ways to improve the quality of products for veterinary medicine and animal husbandry. The competitiveness of the enterprise depends, first of all, on the ability of the business entity to meet the needs of consumers at relatively minimal cost. In improving the quality of veterinary products, a particularly important role is played by its standardization and certification, the basic legal and organizational principles of which are regulated by the Law of Ukraine «On Standardization». However, companies that carry out standardization of products, in addition to the aforementioned law, should be guided more by such regulations: the Law of Ukraine «On veterinary medicine», SOU KZPS 74.9-02568182-003:2016 «Guidelines for typical construction, layout, design, marking, acceptance and giving effect», State Classifier of products and services DK 016:2010. On January 1, 2018, the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine «On Standardization» № 46-93 expired and the State Certification System of Ukraine (UkrSEPRO system) suspended its activities. However, the UkrSEPRO system certificate was replaced by a voluntary certificate of conformity issued by the accredited National Accreditation Agency of Ukraine (NAAU) in accordance with the requirements of the international standard DSTU EN ISO/IEC 17065:2017 «Conformity assessment. Requirements for certification agencies for products, processes and services». The basis of voluntary standardization and certification of veterinary products and products for the needs of animal husbandry is the confirmation of the manufacture of quality and safe products that will ensure its competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets.

Disclosure of Nanomaterials under Nanotechnology Product Inventory, Voluntary Certification, and Voluntary Labelling

Nanotechnology has revolutionised the food industry and flooded the consumers’ market worldwide with engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), creating concerns on potential risks towards safety and health. This article analyses the institutional approach for disclosure of information on the presence of ENMs in food products and their limitations. It adopts a doctrinal approach and content analysis by examining relevant literature on disclosure of nanomaterials from journal articles and books from online databases and institutional websites. To overcome the limitations of the institutional approach of nanotechnology product inventories, voluntary certification programme, and voluntary labelling, this article proposes that the information disclosed must be in full and accurate. More importantly, the information on potential risks of exposure, use of nanotechnology, or presence of nanomaterials must be verified and constantly updated. This study hopes to significantly contribute to improving the transparency of nanofood information systems.