Voluntary Sustainability Standards and Export Promotion
Insights from their integration in Vietnam, Namibia, Suriname, and Mozambique
This report examines how integrating voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) into national regulatory and sectoral systems can boost exports of sustainable products while helping producers adopt and maintain sustainable practices. It also provides recommendations for policy-makers to address challenges and risks.
Key Messages
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Strong legal and regulatory foundations, along with clear mechanisms and intervention strategies, are vital for ensuring successful VSS integration in export promotion measures.
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Investment in training, extension services, and market information reduces VSS implementation barriers and helps producers and exporters access sustainable markets. Without continuous support, smallholders risk losing certification and access to premium markets.
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Effective VSS integration requires inclusive and holistic stakeholder engagement. It should be accompanied by mechanisms that ensure ownership and the active participation of all relevant actors from the outset.
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Leveraging VSSs can support market diversification, domestic consumption, and intra-regional trade. Market overdependence on a few large buyers must be reduced. This requires prioritizing access to new regional and international markets, supporting value addition, and addressing bottlenecks.
Governments in developing countries and regions are adopting VSSs in export promotion measures to ensure exported products meet sustainability-related market requirements, while also expanding trading opportunities for producers, women, and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.
This report examines how integrating VSSs into national regulatory and sectoral systems can drive export-promotion outcomes. It provides insights into how governments are developing measures to support the use of VSSs in key sectors to increase access to markets and to help producers adopt and maintain more sustainable production practices. The report presents examples from four countries that have integrated or supported the use of VSSs for export promotion, highlighting lessons learned, benefits for producers, key successes and challenges, and emerging best practices.
These four cases demonstrate that despite challenges, a structured, well-supported collaboration among governments, industry, and VSS organizations can drive both market access and more sustainable production practices. This report concludes with actionable recommendations for policy-makers to effectively address emerging challenges and risks linked to the use of VSSs in export-promotion measures and the broader implications of evolving sustainability-related policies in importing countries.
Participating experts
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