The document discusses power dynamics between private actors and independent shade-grown coffee certification. It explores how private actors can influence certification to mainly benefit themselves through obtaining differential benefits, influencing conservation standards, and protecting nominal environmental and social standards. This can result in the lowest common denominator standards and a race to the bottom effect. More stringent certification requirements could significantly change coffee farms and markets but may capture certification to maintain the status quo rather than transform conventional practices.

1. Co-operation or Capture?
The Politics of
Partnerships with
Private Actors in
Shade-grown
Certification of
Coffee
Arshiya Bose

2. • Power dynamics between private
actors and independent shade-
grown certification
• Implications for sustainable
agroforestry
Will certification transform
conventional coffee markets or
be captured by them?

3. Western Ghats

4. Private actors exercise power…

5. a) obtaining differential benefits
from certified coffee
b) influencing the conservation
purpose of shade-grown
certification
c) Protecting nominal
environmental and social
standards

6. “To participate in shade-grown
certification, I need few trees per acre. I
can reduce some shade trees and I will
still qualify.”
“I had to make no changes to my farm to
become shade-grown certified.”

7. lowest common denominator
standards
race to the bottom phenomenon

8. Stringent shade cover requirements:
(a) fewer certified farms, lower volumes
of certified coffee
(a) the provision of price incentives that
are commensurate with the loss of
yield
Significant structural changes to
value chains and coffee markets!

9. ‘Co-optation’ or ‘Capture’ is an
effort to maintain status quo
fit within the parameters of
conventional business operations
dilution of the transformative
power of certification standards for
sustainable agroforestry