Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector.

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes.

Signaling Southern sustainability: When do actors use private or public regulatory authority to market tropical commodities?

The private regulation of agri-food value chains through sustainability standards has proliferated in recent decades, promising producers to differentiate themselves and gain preferential market access. However, in a number of producing countries, laws exist that mirror and go beyond what private labels demand. These countries have two options for placing their sustainable products in the market: signal their national system's equivalence to private schemes, or utilize the existing regulatory framework as favorable preconditions for widespread certification.

Indicators to compare and assess the institutional strength of voluntary sustainability standards in the global coffee industry.

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a composite Index to Assess and Compare the Institutional Strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry" (Dietz et al., 2018) in press) [1].