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Dear Colleague,
As an institutional member of the TSPN or as a representative of another organization active in the promotion of social, environmental and food safety standards, we invite you to participate in an upcoming conference on "Assessing Costs, Benefits and Impacts of Compliance with Agricultural, Forestry and Food Related Standards.“ The conference will take place from December 9 - 10 in Berlin, Germany.
The conference draws upon the shared understanding that an increasing amount of social, environmental and food safety concerns have given rise to a plethora of public and private standards, which are typically implemented with a view to providing several benefits to some or all supply chain stakeholders. The claimed benefits may be quite tangible, such as premium market prices or improved worker or consumer safety. Alternatively, they may take a somewhat less tangible form, such as increased transparency of transaction, improved reputation of market players or increased sustainability. Along with the associated benefits, an area of increasing concern is the impact that ‘compliance cost’ would have on the competitiveness of countries/ industries/ players, particularly in developing country contexts. Such adverse impact might be due to substantial fixed investments needed to achieve compliance. There maybe also other direct or indirect unintended impacts. As such, the actual impacts of standards on developing country stakeholders remains poorly understood.
Yet quantifying the impacts of standards is a difficult exercise, given the fact that standards tend to be complex and their design can vary significantly. Furthermore, there are inherent problems of determining causality and attribution. Methodologies, which can provide transparent and comparable information on the impacts of standards, are an essential foundation for strategic interventions aimed at maximizing positive opportunities arising from standards- based markets. The absence of this information continues to operate as a major obstacle to effective intervention and scaling up of standards.
The purpose of this conference is to address this lack of information by highlighting an array of different approaches/ methodologies currently being applied for the assessment of costs, benefits and impacts of standards, examining their applicable scope, advantages and disadvantages and identifying major challenges in their application and interpretation of results. The TSPN is likely to sponsor follow up work to synthesize the emerging findings.
A draft agenda of the conference can be found below. Keynote speakers include:
- Spencer Henson | University of Guelph
- Daniele Giovanucci | International Institute of Sustainable Development
- Christine Chemnitz | Heinrich Boell Foundation
- Jane Korinek | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
To register please send an email to TSPNsecretariat@gtz.de and include your name, organization, position, email, and telephone. For additional information or an expression of interest in presenting your experience at the meeting, please contact Nadja.Kabierski@gtz.de.
We hope to see you in Berlin!
The TSPN Secretariat
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About the TSPN
The Trade Standards Practitioners Network (TSPN) is an international network established in 2005. Our diverse membership base includes multi-lateral agencies, bilateral organizations, research institutes, and providers of technical assistance, standard-setting bodies, NGOs, and other practitioner organizations in developing countries.
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