Sustainability Standards and the Water Question

Sustainability Standards and the Water Question

Jeroen Vos and Rutgerd Boelens

ABSTRACT

Increased global trade in agricultural commodities has boosted fresh wa-ter consumption. This export of ‘virtual water’, embedded in products soldabroad, has increasingly affected local communities and ecosystems, espe-cially in arid regions. Recent initiatives to certify agricultural productionare showing a rapidly growing interest in considering water issues withinschemes of quality assurance, sustainable production and fair trade. This ar-ticle scrutinizes current water sustainability certification schemes, and howthey affect local water user communities. The authors use three notions ofgovernmentality to examine water sustainability standards and how they aim‘to conduct the conduct’ of water users: (1) standards as ‘production of truth’and ‘mentalities’ that constitute systems of collective rationalities, values,norms and knowledge; (2) standards as networks that prescribe roles andestablish power relations between companies and producers; and (3) stan-dards as ‘techniques of visibilization’ that control practices and disciplineproducers. Private standards in general reinforce the political and marketpower of private sector agro-food chains in local water management, to thedetriment of local water user communities and national governments. How-ever, sustainability certification could also potentially enable local, regional,national and international organizations of user communities to stake claimsand negotiate to protect their water sources and livelihoods.

INTRODUCTION

The consumption of fresh water has soared over recent years as a resultof increased global trade in agricultural commodities. In many regions, in-creasing agro-export water consumption competes fiercely with local wateruser communities and negatively affects ecosystems, especially in arid re-gions (Roth and Warner, 2008; Sojamo and Archer, 2012; Van der Ploeg,2008). More and more private initiatives for agricultural production certifica-tion consider water issues in their schemes of quality assurance, sustainable

The authors would like to thank Samuel DuBois, Lisa Bossenbroek, Margreet Zwarteveen andthe three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.The research was carried out under the umbrella of the international Justicia Hıdrica/WaterJustice Alliance (www.justiciahidrica.org) and the ‘Transnationalization of Local Water Battles’research programme, supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

Development and Change 45(2): 205–230. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12083C© 2014 International Institute of Social Studies.Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA

206 Jeroen Vos and Rutgerd Boelens

production and fair trade. This article scrutinizes the way in which thesewater certification standards are established and their potential effects onsmallholder water users. It also examines whether certification could poten-tially help local communities defend their water rights against dispossessionby large export-oriented companies.

Little research has been done on the direct and indirect consequences ofsustainability certification on water resource use and conservation.1 In thisarticle we scrutinize the water sustainability criteria of several importantcertification schemes, such as the widely used GlobalGAP, and standardsthat are still under construction, such as the schemes established throughroundtables on cotton, soybeans, sugarcane and biofuels. These standardswere selected because they have incorporated control points regarding wateruse and quality and have potential for wide application because the com-panies involved are major players in the market (cf. Campbell, 2005). Thearticle aims to identify the effects of sustainable water certification andanalyse possibilities for local user communities to use certification schemesto protect their water rights. Sustainability and social certification schemesface difficulties in dealing with water issues in a balanced manner, espe-cially at scales beyond the farm level and in the contexts of catchmentsand smallholder communities. Water management is typically complex andlocally specific, thus requiring specific local criteria for equitable water al-location, sustainable exploitation, resource conservation and preservation ofecosystem functions.

This study is based on extensive literature review and analysis of onlinedocuments, in combination with interviews conducted with stakeholders inEurope and South America throughout 2011 and from February to May2012. Interviews were conducted with large producers, certifiers, policymakers, government water officials and representatives of small producers’associations.

The next section lays the groundwork regarding three main themes ofour article: virtual water embedded in international agricultural producetrade; water stewardship certification as a new form of Corporate SocialResponsibility (CSR); and flaws in current certification schemes. We thenpresent an analytical framework using three notions of governmentality toexamine how water standards aim to ‘conduct the conduct’ (Foucault, 1991)of local water users; this is followed by an analysis of water stewardshipschemes according to the three governmentality concepts. The article endswith a discussion and conclusions.

1. Water is different from other natural resources in sustainability standards because wateris essential for life and has no substitute; the livelihoods of many smallholder producersdepend directly on irrigated agriculture. Also, water has many locally defined values that gobeyond the supposedly universal economic value of water. In relation to the sustainabilitycertification debate, water is different from carbon dioxide emission, because unlike thelatter, water consumption and contamination have localized effects that cannot be mitigatedelsewhere (Allan, 2003; Bakker, 2010; Wada et al., 2010).

Sustainability Standards and the Water Question 207

VIRTUAL WATER TRADE, CSR AND WATER SUSTAINABILITYCERTIFICATION

International Trade, Virtual Water and Local Water Users’ Communities

The currently intensifying patterns of global trade in agricultural commodi-ties and off-season fresh produce, such as fresh vegetables, fruits and flow-ers, significantly boost water consumption in export agriculture. Water usedfor the production of agricultural products can be regarded as ‘virtual water’(Allan, 2003). It is estimated that the total virtual water trade between nationshas doubled during the last twenty years: Dalin et al. (2012), for example,calculate that virtual water trade between nations, embedded in five majorfood crops and three livestock products, increased from 259 km3 in 1986 to567 km3 in 2007.

Although virtual water trade has been presented as a solution for aridcountries (Allan, 1998), virtual water flows are directed by global eco-nomic structures and trade relations rather than by the relative scarcity ofwater within nations (Seekell et al., 2011; Suweis et al., 2011). Moreover, in-creased virtual water trade between nations often implies increasing negativeeffects for the environment and communities in the exporting regions. Irri-gated export agriculture increasingly leads to drying up of rivers, draining ofwetlands, salinization, and over-extraction from aquifers, beyond repletion(Shah et al., 2007; Wada et al., 2010). Other effects associated with exportagriculture are water contamination caused by the use of agro-chemicals;loss of biodiversity; and carbon dioxide emission related to long-distancetransport of biomass. Global extraction of groundwater grew from approxi-mately 100 km3 in 1950 to nearly 1,000 km3 in 2000. Most of this growthis concentrated in agriculture, particularly in India, China and Bangladesh(Shah et al., 2007).2

The effects of virtual water trade are complex. Virtual water volumesdo not directly imply negative effects (Wichelns, 2010). On the one hand,agribusiness developments offer opportunities, generating jobs and income.On the other hand, negative effects of water accumulation and aquifer deple-tion by agribusiness on local livelihoods are mounting. For millions of smallfarmers and agricultural labourers, in particular for many women, water use,resource depletion, and appalling labour, income and health conditions aredirectly related3 (Bee, 2000; Langan, 2011; Pearson, 2007). The immensegrowth in virtual water export, combined with the alarming depletion ofaquifers and increased river water extraction, make virtual water export anindicator for elevated risks of environmental and social harm.

2. Wada et al. (2010) estimate total global depletion of aquifers at approximately 283 km3 peryear.

3. To assess the effects of virtual water export, a distinction should be drawn between con-sumption of green (rainwater) and blue (irrigation) virtual water. The potential alternativeuses of water that is being extracted for export agriculture should also be taken into account.


Growth in agricultural trade is accompanied by a sharp horizontal andvertical integration of production and supply chains (Fuchs et al., 2009;McMichael, 2009). This enhances the economic and political power of ma-jor agribusiness and retail companies and powerfully links ‘the local’ to‘the global’, and vice versa. Swyngedouw (2000) and Van der Ploeg (2008,2010) show that the growing power of the agribusiness network reconfiguresthe scales of governance and tends to strengthen authoritarian decision mak-ing. Export–import networks are increasingly able to control production andconsumption around the globe (Fuchs et al., 2009). The worldwide networkof major food production companies and major food retailers establishes aspecific way of assembling material and institutional resources into a net-work, the structural characteristics of which imply hierarchy, continuousconquest, submission and exclusion, linking and usually draining alreadyexisting local resources (Van der Ploeg, 2008). In this process, existingand alternative modes of organization (as in local households, peasant com-munities and indigenous territories) are supplanted or entirely rearranged(cf. Jessop et al., 2008; Swyngedouw, 2004; Van der Ploeg, 2008).

The growing use of irrigation water for export agriculture by large com-panies has led to competition with local water user communities in manyregions. The ‘water question’ is about the struggle over access to waterand the rules and discourses that legitimize differential water access andcontrol. When confronted with powerful new actors, such as agribusinessenterprises, mining companies, or drinking water utilities, the less power-ful local water user groups and the environment tend to lose out (Bakker,2010; Castro, 2008; Swyngedouw, 2004; Zoomers and Kaag, 2014). In someinstances, agro-export companies have informally or lawfully, but withoutconsent by or consultation with local users, gained access to water (Boe-lens and Vos, 2012; Swyngedouw, 2000). These cases of ‘water grabbing’have led to large protests and conflicts (Mehta et al., 2012; Smaller andMann, 2009; Sojamo et al., 2012; Woodhouse and Ganho, 2011). Watergrabbing affects many smallholders in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Wepresent some examples as illustrations. In Peru, agribusinesses exportingvegetables and fruits to Europe and the US dispossess highland users andover-extract groundwater on the dry coast (Hepworth et al., 2010; Van derPloeg, 2008). In Ecuador, companies that produce export crops and sugar-cane have accumulated nearly 75 per cent of formal water rights, but ontop of that they accrue much more water informally and illegally, especiallyfor export banana (Gaybor, 2011) and flowers (Breilh, 2007). In Paraguay,health effects are reported from the production of soybean for export, whichseverely pollutes soil and groundwater (Palau et al., 2007). Meanwhile, inNorth and Central Mexico, smallholders are deprived of access to waterbecause of groundwater depletion by agribusiness vegetable production forexport to the US (Pena, 2011); the same applies to Israel (Zeitoun et al.,2009), Pakistan and India (Chapagain et al., 2005), and East Africa (Bechtet al., 2005).


CSR and Water Stewardship Certification

Since the 1990s, it has been common for transnational retail companiesto engage in certification schemes to ensure product quality. Increasinglyduring the last decade, social and environmental criteria have been addedto the control points for certification. Thus, certification has shifted fromsimple product quality assurance to prescribing and controlling the on-farmproduction process itself. The focus on social and environmental issuescoincided with a growing interest in CSR. Certification is an importantstrategy related to CSR. At the same time, in order to secure their access towater, multinational companies have increased their involvement in watergovernance (Sojamo and Archer, 2012).

There are three related reasons for retailers to engage in private cer-tification schemes4 (Henson and Humphrey, 2010; Hughes, 2001). First,supermarket chains need to control the supply lines to guarantee constant (orat least predictable) volumes of supply with acceptable quality. Increasinglystringent quality and safety standards also require high levels of traceabil-ity in the supply chain up to the level of individual producers. Regulationsby national governments and permissive international regulations (such asthe Codex Alimentarius) are not sufficient in that respect. Second, notwith-standing retailers’ global trading power, these companies are very vulnerableto reputational damage. Consumer organizations, environmental and socialNGOs and the news media can easily damage the reputation of a companyor brand by exposing cases of low quality products or adverse effects ofthe production process. Third, while most certification schemes used by re-tailers are business-to-business schemes, and thus no labels appear on theproducts, some supermarkets do seek to convey an image of social and envi-ronmental responsibility to appeal to new consumers. Different certificationschemes seek to win support and legitimacy for their standards by appeal-ing to scientific values such as objectivity, consistency, independence andtransparency, and/or social standards such as sustainable production and fairtrade.

Certification schemes have four main features (Mutersbaugh et al., 2005):a published document detailing the norms; an inspection process, usuallyperformed by a third party; a quality seal on the product to alert the consumer,or a label used only by the retailers; and a certification organization thatestablishes and communicates the norms, trains producers and inspectors,and authorizes inspection agents.

Retailers are able to impose their standards upon producers because ofthe increased horizontal and vertical integration of value chains. This con-centrates trading power in a few leading multinational retail companies (theworld’s five largest are Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Ahold, Metro and Tesco; see

4. Private schemes refer to standards that are developed and enforced by non-state institutionssuch as retail organizations.


Fuchs et al., 2009: 34). These supermarket chains can set and enforce min-imum standards because they control the supply chain from producer toend-consumer. All growers that produce for supermarkets in Europe areobliged to subscribe to one or more certification schemes (Fulponi, 2007).Examples of widely used private quality assurance standards are: the BritishRetail Consortium (BRC), the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), Glob-alGAP, FOODTRACE and the International Food Standard (IFS) (Hensonand Humprey, 2010).

Besides food quality assurance (conventional certification schemes), spe-cific ethical and environmental certification schemes have emerged in linewith ideas of CSR (alternative certification schemes). Unlike food qualityschemes, ethical and environmental schemes label products for consumersin order to gain niche market shares from ‘conscious’ consumers. Exam-ples are the Fair Trade (FLO) labels, ecological (organic) production (forexample IFOAM, USDA Organic, EU Eco-regulation, and the Soil Asso-ciation), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Aquaculture Certifica-tion Council (ACC), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and specific‘carbon-neutral’ certification (such as the Rainforest Alliance). Other eth-ical certification schemes focus on labour conditions (Ethical Trading Ini-tiative), animal welfare or biodiversity. Recent discussion of export crops’large water footprint has moved several certification schemes to incorporatecontrol points for water use and/or water pollution. While water use andmanagement are widely recognized as very important issues, both in termsof environmental care and in terms of social justice, remarkably, the waterissue did not receive much attention in international certifying schemes untilrecently.

Before examining the potential effects for smallholder communities ofthe recently developed ‘water sustainability standards’, we first elaborate onsome of the critiques levelled at mainstream certification schemes and fairtrade/organic standards.

Existing Critiques on Quality and Sustainability Standards

In terms of important flaws in conventional and alternative certificationschemes, six main critiques can be distinguished.

� Technocratic definitions of standards. The technocratic approach tocertification results in normalizing scientific knowledge. Uniform def-initions and values are applied, to the detriment of local environmen-tal knowledge, concepts and values (Friedmann and McNair, 2008;Gulbrandsen, 2009). Eden (2009), for example, explains how the FSCseeks confirmation for its standards and verification through scientificdiscourse. Similarly, in the certification of wetland credits related to theClean Water Act in the US, the loss of wetland is mitigated by private


parties that sell wetland credits to offset the area affected. The wetlandarea is thus compensated for, but the value of the biodiversity, specificecological functions and people’s territorial linkages to the location arenot taken into account (Robertson and Hayden, 2008).

� Low levels of transparency and democracy in standard setting. Stan-dards are set by dominant market players such as the GlobalGAP boardmembers, who are all representatives of major producers or supermarketchains (Amekawa, 2009; Campbell, 2005). Bacon (2010), for instance,showed that smallholder producers have little say in Fair Trade coffeeprice setting.

� Exclusion of smallholders from producing for supermarkets. Severalstudies indicate that small farmers have difficulties complying with thestrict regulations and high certification fees (Fuchs et al., 2009; Van derMeer, 2006). Studies by Amekawa (2009) and IIED and NRI (2008)indicate that, after introduction of standards in Kenya and Uganda,the number of smallholders exporting vegetables was reduced byhalf.

� Environmental benefits are negligible. Discussion continues regard-ing the effectiveness of environmental and fair trade labelling. Auldet al. (2008), Gulbrandsen (2008) and Klooster (2006, 2010) have as-sessed the positive and negative impacts of FSC certification. Theyconclude that some positive changes can be noted in practices of cer-tified timber production companies; however, overall FSC certificationhas not improved the protection of forests. The already ‘good’ produc-ers obtain certification, but the alternative market volumes are relativelylow, so the vast bulk of producers continue their ‘business as usual’.Gulbrandsen (2009) concludes the same for MSC certification: prac-tices of certified fishing companies improve, but overall fish popula-tions and marine ecosystems worldwide are not better protected. In bothcases the authors stress the importance of government regulation forconservation.

� Risk of co-opting by conventional market forces in the case of fair tradeand organic labels. Mutersbaugh et al. (2005) and Guthman (2007) in-dicate that growth in the alternative market share increases the riskof capture by conventional market forces with less stringent criteriaor development ethos. Equally, Taylor (2005) and Jaffee and Howard(2010) assert that large companies take over the markets for alterna-tive products to appropriate the ‘premium price’ on those products.Standards that were originally driven by small producers’ movements(such as the organic standard of IFOAM: see e.g., Buck et al., 1997;Raynolds, 2004) or consumers’ movements (such as dolphin-safe tuna:see Baird and Quastel, 2011) tend to be copied and ‘mainstreamed’ bylarge players in the industry (Gulbrandsen, 2009).

� Susceptibility to poor monitoring and fraud. Some authors highlightthe need for strong public social and environmental regulations, for


example in the case of coffee certification and FSC, as certification isvulnerable to pressure from private interests (Auld, 2010; Gulbrandsen,2008; Klooster, 2006). The third-party audit business has grown intoa real industry, moving millions of dollars annually. This industry,similar to the financial auditing sector, is based on building trust (Zagataand Lostak, 2012). However, for consumers it proves impossible tocheck the attained levels of compliance at farm level. Some reports(Albersmeier et al., 2009; Auld et al., 2008; Gulbrandsen, 2009) suggestthat field audits face many problems, such as multiple interpretations ofcriteria and susceptibility to fraud, making third-party monitoring muchless effective than claimed. Auld et al. (2008:197) report that in the caseof corrective action required for FSC certification, most changes relateto documentation and monitoring practices, not to actual changes onthe ground.

GOVERNMENTALITY AND WATER STANDARDS

Below we analyse sustainable water standards using Foucault’s (1991) con-cept of governmentality, approaching governance as a diffuse but strategicprocess of norm and value setting, and internalization of those norms byboth governors and governed. Emerging regimes of transnational govern-mentality regarding the management of natural resources involve a constel-lation of local, national and transnational actors who not only attempt toregulate, distribute and process natural resources, but in the process also re-shape knowledge frameworks and truth claims (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002;Sawyer and Gomez, 2008). In this interface of knowledge/policy interactionregarding natural resource management, new norms, standards and rules aredeveloped — new ways of defining and tackling the problems, includingnew ways of framing the water question. They compose ‘modern’ regimesof thought and action with powerful steering potential, with their own setsof rules, water engineering and cultivation practices, technologies, mea-suring instruments, product features and social relations of production andexchange.

Based on the notions of governmentality described by Hughes (2001) toanalyse certification standards, we distinguish three themes for analysis: (1)standards as ‘production of truth’ and ‘mentalities’ that constitute systemsof collective rationalities, values, norms and knowledge; (2) standards asnetworks that prescribe roles and establish power relations between compa-nies and producers; and (3) standards as ‘techniques of visibilization’ thatcontrol practices and discipline producers. In our analysis we are particularlyinterested in the effects of standards on the ‘water question’: how are waterrights and practices of access to water of smallholders affected by watersustainability standards?


1. Standards as ‘production of truth’ and ‘mentalities’Standards can be related to the ‘production of truth’: in the words of Foucault(1980: 102), ‘It is the production of effective instruments for the formationand accumulation of knowledge — methods of observation, techniques ofregistration, procedures for investigation and research, apparatuses of con-trol’. Thus, in the water domain, new valid water knowledge is produced inendless ‘degrees of validity’ to be measured according to the new standards.This involves the full range of key issues in current water policy thought,which all have a strongly normative character: efficient water use, produc-tive irrigation systems, equitable water allocation, best watering practices,democratic water governance, sustainable water extraction and distributiontechnologies, etc. These normative foundations, however, are objectified anduniversalized in water certification regimes and become measuring tools for‘certifying good water use’: the varied array of existing local water knowl-edge, practices and values are all judged according to their deviation fromthese standards. This way, ‘truthful’ water knowledge and ‘optimal’ wateruse norms tend to be entirely depoliticized, as are the agents and relationsthat set the standards (see Boelens and Vos, 2012).

2. Standards as networks that prescribe roles and establish power relationsbetween companies and producersAs a logical consequence, beyond the issue of how ‘true’ water statementsare, and how ‘valid’ water knowledge and ‘universal’ scientific norms mightbe when placed in local contexts, this raises a number of other questions:how these standards, statements and knowledge claims are produced; howthe rules are established that separate true and non-true water knowledge,or good and bad water use practices; and how they are linked to the powerrelations that sustain them.

Beyond just monitoring local water realities according to the ‘modern’, ex-ternally developed standards, the intimate relationships among agribusiness,agricultural policies and intervention, and water scientific development, alsolead to the scientization of existing water and agricultural production sys-tems — the systematic, constant remodelling and reorganization of concepts,tools and practices according to the standards of scientific design (Van derPloeg, 2008). In many local water user realities, this implies a process ofprofound externalization (or at least subjugation) of local water rights andknowledge frameworks, technologies and practices, also detaching norms,rights, skills and forms of water management organization from any partic-ular cultural space and place (see Boelens, 2009; Boelens and Zwarteveen,2005).

Water sustainability standards are all based on management roles, rulesand organizational forms developed by Western-scientific ‘water schools’and are mostly composed and decided by companies in Europe and the US.Within the supply network, clear roles are established between the board thatdefines the norms, the retailers, the auditors and the producers. The roles that


actors assume and the positions they occupy imply social power relations. Inthis way, certification schemes aim to produce ‘order and control’ throughoutthe agro-food (virtual water) chain, and also influence water authority outsidethe direct supply chain (Hughes, 2001). This happens, for example, whenstandards are reproduced locally and set new norms for national markets.

3. Standards as ‘techniques of visibilization’Standards can control practices and discipline producers by making somepractices visible. As Foucault argued, ‘Visibility is a trap’ (1975: 200),and certification systems may be seen as ‘panopticon-like’ instruments(Foucault, 1975) — not only to control and correct, but also to auto-correctin accordance with the water use norms established by the enterprises whichgovern the chain. In this sense, standards can be seen as ‘techniques of visi-bilization’ (Boelens and Vos, 2012) in two ways.5 First, standards highlightcertain aspects of production and obscure others. This ‘foregrounding’ and‘backgrounding’ forms an effective technique to control discussions on whatis regarded as ‘sustainable agriculture’ and how to assess it. Second, tech-niques of visibilization render small producers visible. Through inspectionat farm level and through the systems of administration and traceability, re-tailers (and sometimes consumers) can ‘observe’ producers. Combined withstringent regulations that denounce particular smallholder production prac-tices, this forms an effective technique to discipline small-scale producers.

The most commonly used technique of regulation in certification schemesis auditing by third parties. This is an important mechanism of controlwithin supply networks. The auditing is an engineering instrument to en-force conformity to the regulations set by the buyer. This monitoring andenforcement changes producers’ ‘mentalities’ and practices. Standards arethus techniques of visibilization that render producers’ conditions and ac-tions visible. Certification demands that auditors and producers registeran increasing number of characteristics of the production process. Trace-ability is increasingly important as retailers want to know the origin ofthe products they sell, not only in the context of product quality andhealth risks, but also sustainability claims. Documentation on producers’characteristics and actions is available to retailers and sometimes to con-sumers. However, the same is not true in reverse: farmers do not haveaccess to information from retailers or consumers; the flow of informa-tion is one-way (Mutersbaugh and Lyon, 2010). The spotlight falls onsmall producers, while agro-export companies and consumers remain in theshadows.6

5. See also Vestergaard (2012: 180) for the use of this concept in the international financialsector.

6. Agro-export companies stay out of the limelight for a number of reasons: because theirpractices (such as using drip irrigation) are more closely aligned with the standards; becausestandards do not address the important off-farm effects of large companies, such as aquifer


RESULTS: WATER SUSTAINABILITY STANDARDS

Recent discussion on the water footprint of export crops has moved sev-eral certification schemes to incorporate control points related to water useand/or water pollution (for example GlobalGAP, MPS-ABC, the RainforestAlliance and IFOAM; see Table 1). During the past decade, GlobalGAP hasbecome the leading standard for growers who sell to the European market,with over 110,000 certified producers in more than 110 countries. Controlpoint CB 6.4.1 of the GlobalGAP standard demands that water should be‘extracted from a sustainable source’. The examples of control points shownin Table 1 show how current certification schemes refer to water use ef-ficiency, groundwater depletion and water quality. Some are very specificwhile others are very broad and vaguely defined or voluntary. There is hardlyany consideration of water management and governance issues at watershedlevel. The GlobalGAP standard is widely applied (and is required for sellingto retail markets in Europe); the other standards represent relatively small(but rapidly growing) niche sectors.

Recent documents on standards for major bulk products such as sug-arcane, cotton, soy and biofuels are now being developed through sec-tor dialogues. The draft versions of these standards also show criteriarelated to water use and environmental quality. We reviewed the draftdocuments of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Better Sugarcane Initia-tive (BSI), Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and the Round Ta-ble on Sustainable Biofuels (RTSB). As can be seen in Table 2, theseinitiatives show different approaches to ‘water sustainability’. The BCI,RTRS and RTSB address groundwater depletion. The BSI, on the con-trary, does not address groundwater use and sets relatively permissive stan-dards for water pollution. This might be due to the membership of theBSI board — mainly major companies that buy sugar — whereas the BCI,RTRS and RTSB boards include representatives of NGOs and researchinstitutes.

An initiative that is entirely devoted to water use certification is the Al-liance for Water Stewardship (AWS). The AWS is a collaborative multi-stakeholder effort initiated by several NGOs in 2008 to develop a water stew-ardship standard and certification system to guide and reward sustainablewater resource use (AWS, 2011). These standards will be developed throughglobal water roundtables. Most water sustainability standards are B2B(Business to Business) schemes. At the consumer level, just a few brandshave developed specific labels related to water standards. One example

depletion; and because inspection is susceptible to biased interpretations and fraud. Com-panies may thus be accused of a form of ‘greenwashing’ — the act of claiming compliancewith certain sustainability standards, whereas in practice the company does not adhere tothem. The intentional practice of greenwashing by transnational companies is an invisibilitystrategy, but that discussion is not part of this article.


Table 1. Examples of Water Issues in Existing Standards

Certificationscheme

Control pointno. Control point related to water Version

GlobalGAP (1) CB 6.2.1 ( . . . ) The irrigation system used isefficient. The producer uses the mostefficient irrigation system – as istechnically available and financiallyaffordable, and complies with anylegislation about local restrictions onwater usage. (Major Must)

Final Version4.0_Mar2011

CB 6.4.1 To protect the environment, is waterabstracted from a sustainable source?Sustainable sources are sources thatsupply enough water under normal(average) conditions. (Minor Must)

CB 6.4.2 Has advice on abstraction been soughtfrom water authorities, wherenecessary? Where necessary, theremust be written communication onthis subject (e.g. letter, licence, etc.).

MPS-ABCFlowers (2)

2.8.4 Drip irrigation or recirculation(requirement depends on region andtype of production system).

Version ratified by theMPS Board on 24November 2010.

2.8.6 Records of irrigation usage. Recordsneed to be kept solely of the quantityof water used for irrigation which issupplied by human (mechanical)action (m3).

IFOAM OrganicStandard (3)

2.2.6 Operators shall not deplete norexcessively exploit water resources,and shall seek to preserve waterquality. They shall where possiblerecycle rainwater and monitor waterextraction.

Version 2010 – Draftversion 0.1.

Rainforest Alliance– SANSustainableAgricultureStandard (4)

4 4.1 The farm must have a waterconservation programme that ensuresthe rational use of water resources.The programme activities must makeuse of the best available technologyand resources. It must consider waterre-circulation and reuse, maintenanceof the water distribution network andthe minimizing of water use. ( . . . )

July 2010 v2.doc 22

Sources (all accessed 25 April 2012):(1) http://www.globalgap.org/cms/upload/The_Standard/IFA/Version_4_2011/Final_V4/Documents_clean/110420_gg_ifa_cpcc_cb_eng_final_v4.pdf(2) http://www.my-mps.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=dSlKZ3Fssqk%3d&tabid=168&language=nl-NL(3) http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/norms.html(4) http://sanstandards.org/userfiles/file/SAN%20Sustainable%20Agriculture%20Standard%20July%202010.pdf


Table 2. Water Issues in the Draft Standards of Sector Roundtables

Roundtable Draft requirement related to water

Better Cotton Initiative(BCI) Version 2.0December 2009 (1)

2.2: Management practices are adopted to ensure that water extractiondoes not cause adverse effects on groundwater or water bodies.

Better SugarcaneInitiative (BSI),BonsucroProduction StandardVersion 3.0, March2011(2)

4.1: Oxygen demand by calculation of quantity and analysis of runoff.– To protect any existing riparian areas, wetlands or other significantlyaffected natural habitats in a satisfactory state, to provide habitatcorridors and to conserve any rare, threatened or endangered species.– To minimize air, soil and water contamination, use less than 5 kgactive ingredient of herbicides and pesticides per hectare per year.

Round Table onResponsible Soy(RTRS)Production Version1.010 June 2010 (3)

5.1: The quality and supply of surface and ground water is maintained orimproved.5.1.4: Where irrigation is used, there is a documented procedure inplace for applying best practices and acting according to legislation andbest practice guidance (where this exists), and for measurement of waterutilization.

5.2: Natural vegetation areas around springs and along naturalwatercourses are maintained or re-established.

Round Table onSustainableBiofuels (RTSB)Version 2.0

Principle 9: Biofuel operations shall maintain or enhance the quality andquantity of surface and ground water resources, and respect prior formalor customary water rights.Criterion 9a: Biofuel operations shall respect the existing water rights oflocal and indigenous communities.

20 January 2011 (4) Criterion 9b: Biofuel operations shall include a water management planwhich aims to use water efficiently and to maintain or enhance thequality of the water resources.

Criterion 9c: Biofuel operations shall not contribute to the depletion ofsurface or groundwater resources beyond replenishment capacities.

Criterion 9d: Biofuel operations shall contribute to the enhancement ormaintaining of the quality of the surface and groundwater resources.

Sources (all accessed 25 April 2012):(1) http://www.bettercotton.org/files/BCSInfoPack/2A_Production_Principles_and_Criteria_2.0_final_eng_ext.pdf(2) http://www.bonsucro.com/standard/bio_diversity_eco_systems.html(3) http://www.responsiblesoy.org/(4) http://rsb.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/rsb2/files/Biofuels/Version%202/Indicators/11-03-08%20RSB%20Indicators%202-0.pdf

is the Elovana oat flakes brand of the Finnish company Raisio, which has alabel on the package indicating the water footprint.7 Mekonnen et al. (2012)propose to introduce a water label for cut flowers from Kenya, but theydo not explain how the flower producing companies would reduce waterconsumption and contamination. An example of a water label from the gar-ment industry is Levi’s Water<LessTM jeans.8 Compliance with the interna-tional standards by producers supplying supermarkets and food companies iscertified through third-party auditors. For instance, the GlobalGAP schemehas accredited some 130 international, national and local inspection com-

7. Source: http://www.raisio.com/www/page/4397 (accessed 30 October 2012).8. Source: http://eu.levi.com/en_NL/waterless (accessed 30 October 2012).


panies.9 Some important international certifying companies include BureauVeritas Certification (France), BCS (Germany), SGS (Switzerland) and TUVCert (Germany).

Governmentality Mechanisms and Effects of Water Sustainability Certification

In this section, we analyse how water certification control points aim toenhance governmentality and how they may affect smallholder families andcommunities, again using our three analytical themes.

1. Standards as ‘production of truth’ and ‘mentalities’ that constitute sys-tems of collective rationalities, values, norms and knowledgeInternational private standards have direct and indirect effects on produc-ers’ practices. Standards have discursive power and wield political pressure,among others, because of the economic importance of the sectors, and be-cause the Foucauldian power–knowledge–truth regimes from which theyemanate confirm their great importance and validity. The norms and valuesof international private standard schemes are often internalized by profes-sionals and national legislators (Bailis and Baka, 2011). However, localusers’ communities also may internalize the norms of ‘efficient’ water useand ‘best practices’ (Boelens and Vos, 2012; Guevara, 2010). This im-plies that, even if farmers are excluded from export because of certificationschemes, the same certification schemes might affect them indirectly throughthe subtle, capillary processes that normalize and homogenize national orlocal rules and regulations.

All environmental standards applied and developed at this moment (seeTables 1 and 2) tend to express the presumably ‘natural’, self-evident andunquestionable rationality of ‘modern’ water control. Modern water controlis commonly presented as the technical manipulation of water flows andhuman behaviour with the most accurate infrastructural and managerialtools and according to scientifically established, measurable and universalcriteria, to maximize agricultural outputs with minimal use of water andfunds. Water control modernization sets standards for what is achievable;current performance levels must be measured against these norms to evaluatetheir degree of ‘modern-ness’; mainstream ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’standards are a clear example of this (Boelens and Vos, 2012).

A micro-level example of a set of standards that seeks to naturalize ‘bestpractices’ is the ‘Smallholder Guide for GlobalGAP Soil and Water Module’

9. Source: http://www.globalgap.org/uk_en/what-we-do/the-gg-system/certification/Approved-CBs/ (accessed 4 December 2013).


(Version 1.0 of February 2010).10 The guide provides ‘best practices’ in soiland water conservation. While some recommendations may indeed supportenvironmentally sound practices or leave manoeuvring space to local farm-ing skills, other so-called ‘best practices’ would yield counterproductiveeffects in specific local circumstances. For example, ploughing across theslope to avoid soil erosion may generally be an environmentally friendlypractice, but in many highland production systems one can also find sustain-able ploughing down the slope to facilitate quick drainage of storm water onslopes that might otherwise collapse. Ploughing down the slope also preventsdamage by night frost as relatively warmer air can rise from the bottom ofthe valley through the crop along the furrows and rows of crops on the slope.

Normality and the desire to become ‘normal’ water users and follow the‘modern standards’ are not the autonomous ideals of an individual, but areprofoundly relational. It is the wish to belong to the ‘Western’ irrigationand water management school and resemble its image. Standards in sucha normalization process have the function to compare, categorize, hierar-chize and (self-)correct farmers according to the gaps that they show whenmeasured against the norm. Previously excluded indigenous and peasantgroups feel the obligation and need to participate in this game that setsnew rules for their households, communities, irrigation systems, etc. Yet theless privileged social groups — who might expect to gain equal advantagefrom the universal standards — internalize and reinforce these norms butmostly do not derive the benefits (see for example Boelens and Vos, 2012;Boelens et al., 2014; Guevara, 2010). Their participation often results indisappointment, in their being defined as ‘permanently backward people’,due to the constant self-measurement in relation to an inaccessible norm, theimpossibility of actually matching up to the standards necessary to becomeequal (Boelens, 2009).

The certifiers’ preference for drip irrigation over the surface irrigationpractised by most smallholders in the world is a typical example. Driptechnology is widely regarded as more efficient and therefore several sus-tainability standards promote drip irrigation as ‘best practice’. Introductionof drip technology, however, also has social consequences. With drip irri-gation, less water percolates to deeper parts of the soil; while commonlyconsidered a loss, this more deeply infiltrated water is often utilized by otherusers downstream in the watershed (Lankford, 2006). Thus, more efficientwater use at farm level through the introduction of drip irrigation mightlead to a concentration of water and land by large farmers, to the detri-ment of smallholders (Hepworth et al., 2010). Moreover, smallholders (inand outside certification schemes) are trained to see themselves as ineffi-cient, anti-modern surface water users and feel pressured to introduce drip

10. See: http://www.efreshindia.com/efresh/Headers/images/pdf/GAP/SmallholderGuideforGlobalGAPSoil&WaterModule%28Version10-February2010%29.pdf


technology, even if their economic situation prevents them from meetingthe standards. When smallholders do convert to drip irrigation, this can neg-atively affect smallholders’ irrigation schemes because conversion to dripby individual plot owners can disturb long-established, effective methods ofwater distribution (Boelens and Vos, 2012).

In general, agricultural export chains, combined with developmentalistprogrammes and national water and agricultural policies, often make hugeefforts to align water user families and collectives to the export marketby means of technification. Many training programmes by national NGOsand international donor agencies teach smallholders how to comply withinternational standards (see e.g. Jaffee and Howard, 2010), and internationalnorms also become the regional and local norms for good water management,efficient cultivation and social justice, as the drip example shows.

The next example involves the insistence by certifiers that standards mustadhere to national legislation as the single true allocation mechanism ofwater rights. In fact, it is precisely by making it a compulsory condition forcompanies to respect national legislation and obtain legal water rights titles,that standards tend to reinforce local inequalities. In most countries, partic-ularly in developing and (formerly) colonized countries, water rights existin conditions of legal pluralism, whereby a diversity of official, customaryand other local law systems interact (Boelens and Gelles, 2005; Guevara,2010; Rodriguez de Francisco et al., 2013; Roth et al., 2005; Saldıas et al.2012). Requiring acquisition of formal water rights as a certification con-dition leads to five problems. First, most local communities and water userfamilies manage water according to their own rules and rights; they typicallylack official land and water titles and are thus excluded. Second, national leg-islation is often biased towards recognition of water use rights practices andmanagement forms of larger (‘modern’) land owners who ‘set the norms’.Third, the latter commonly have far better access to the political and legaldomains to get their water access practices legalized. Fourth, whenever localcustomary rights communities do manage to get access to the official systemto have their rights legalized, the legal system tends to undermine customarywater norms and organizational forms. Fifth, in many countries, the factthat some (often large) farmers have their water use legalized through for-malization processes means automatically that the rest (often poor farmersand communities with collective rights) become illegal water users, open toencroachment by new enterprises that do have legal titles (Boelens, 2009).Thus, by making legal titles and compliance to one normative framework(national law) a condition, the international certification process tends tocontribute to undermining local and customary water rights frameworks andorganizations, and to increasing legitimacy for unequal allocation of nat-ural resources between export-oriented companies and local water users’communities.

These effects can be seen, for example, in the Andes of Peru. As in otherparts of the Andean region, most water user communities do not have official


(legal) rights to the water they historically use and own. Therefore, peasantand indigenous communities have difficulties defending their rights vis-a-vismining, agribusiness, drinking water and other companies. In Peru, waterrights (licencias) are granted to individual farms (predios), except for newrights that are allocated to blocks of users. Of the 1.8 million irrigated prediosin the country, only some 380,000 have an official licencia, leaving the restwithout legal recourse.11 Consequently, as in other legally and culturallydiverse countries, the certification criterion that participants must have legaltitles directly benefits the large-scale, private farms.

Ancient irrigation practices in Ecuador offer a micro-level example ofnaturalized ‘best practices’ in water management. In the Andean highlands,canterones are used to irrigate vegetables and alfalfa on long sloping fields.Canterones are long, zigzag furrows running down the steep hillside. Ir-rigation experts advised that this practice be changed because water usewas perceived as being inefficient. However, these regions have a patternof intermittent outmigration of men to earn income in cities, so that it ispredominantly women who use the canterones. They prefer them to multi-ple straight furrows, because they save on irrigation labour time. Moreover,the fields comprise long strips of land perpendicular to the contour linesas a result of equity principles applied during plot division at inheritance;this inhibits long straight furrows along the contour lines as proposed bythe ‘experts’. Still, modernization discourse might create a sense of guiltand backwardness among the irrigators. The techniques, the knowledgeand the standards of the ‘experts’ all become desirable. The wish to be-come a tecnico and to represent oneself in their terms is fundamental in thispower play: water users see themselves as inefficient, and their assumed lackof ‘progress’ becomes directly associated with self-reproach (see Boelens,2009).

2. Standards as networks that prescribe roles and establish powerrelations between companies and producersThe criteria of environmental standards are developed by companies andorganizations that come mainly from Europe and the US. As a consequence,it is not water users embedded in local water cultures and community liveli-hoods, with long-standing practical experience, who determine standards,but certification experts and water specialists from water modernizationschools who decree what is (universally) right, imposing particular normsand values and ways of looking at farming and resource use. The settingof standards for ‘good’, ‘efficient’ and ‘sustainable’ agricultural and wa-ter management practices is implicitly left to experts from Europe or theUS, who follow international or Western norms rather than, for example,the heterogeneous norms that are established by peasant and indigenous

11. Source: http://www.ana.gob.pe:8080/rada/wfrmConsDUA_xCD.aspx (accessed 3 Decem-ber 2012).


knowledge systems. Private standards are generally developed and moni-tored with little involvement from national or local stakeholders from theglobal South (Amekawa, 2009; Bacon, 2010; Campbell, 2005). Certificationand audit companies are also almost exclusively from the North12 (Fuchset al., 2009; Ouma, 2010).

Even when roundtables are set up to involve different stakeholders inspecific sectors (sugarcane, biofuels, cotton, soy beans), large transnationalcompanies, international NGOs and supranational policy networks dom-inate the negotiation table; it is far more difficult for organizations thatrepresent small farmers to participate and stake claims. For example, theboard of GlobalGAP that decides on standards is composed of eight mem-bers: four elected representatives of retailers, and four elected representa-tives of suppliers. Currently, all members are from either Europe or the US.The standards of GlobalGAP are discussed in various Sector Committees;GlobalGAP reports that one representative of smallholders participates inthe Sector Committees. According to its webpage, GlobalGAP wants toincorporate the needs of smallholders into the application and further devel-opment of the standard. This was the rationale for establishing the AfricaObserver project, with substantial international funding from the UK De-partment for International Development and GTZ. Since 2009, however,only one ‘smallholder ambassador’ has represented the views of smallhold-ers in all GlobalGAP Sector Committee meetings.13 This seems a meagrerepresentation of the vast and diverse group of smallholders, compared tothe many representatives of large agribusiness and food industry companies.Moreover, this smallholder ‘representative’ is Chief Executive of an associ-ation of exporters from Kenya that, according to its own website, ‘representssmall, medium and large exporters equally’, and thus can hardly be takento be a representative of small farmers only.14 Transnational power groupsdeploy concepts such as ‘local’ and ‘small’ in strategic ways. As a conse-quence, it is common to see that standards imposed are discriminatory forsmallholders.

The power of retailers to control the production and processing chain isexpressed in the ability to exclude certain producers, in bias towards particu-lar (technocratic) farming practices, and in the reshaping of local productionstructures and resource use in accordance with the demands of global foodnetworks (Blowfield and Dolan, 2008; Fuchs et al., 2009). Technocratic

12. Standards and norms spread in the sector at different levels through diffuse processes. Forexample, national certification bodies adapt international norms. Also government and non-governmental organizations react to and adapt international norms. However, national auditcompanies are obliged to apply the international norms for certification of export agriculturalproduce.

13. Source: http://www.globalgap.org/cms/front_content.php?idcat=70 (assessed 22 April2012).

14. Source: http://www.fpeak.org/about.html (accessed 22 April 2012).


water sustainability certification by private companies strengthens the al-ready strong economic and political power of leading supermarket chainsand food industries, to the detriment of local water user communities (cf.Friedmann and McNair, 2008; Gulbrandsen, 2008).

3. Standards as ‘techniques of visibilization’ that control practices and dis-cipline producersWater standards highlight certain aspects of production and obscure others.For example, they focus attention on smallholders’ customary water rightsframeworks and label them as illegal. Or they highlight the use of drip irri-gation as an important indicator of sustainability, so that most smallholdersare made visible as ‘unsustainable’. At the same time, the negative conse-quences of drip irrigation mentioned above are made invisible — the darkside of visibilization techniques. Drying of rivers and aquifer depletion arenot halted by installing large-scale drip irrigation. Moreover, surface irri-gation can be very efficient (especially in conditions of deficient irrigationsupply), and in some circumstances water lost from the fields through deeppercolation offers benefits such as using peak river flows for groundwaterrecharge.

There are many examples of standards being used to render small produc-ers visible and to discipline them. Certification agencies commonly requireproducers to register the use of irrigation technologies; the GlobalGAPstandard requires water users to keep records of their water turns. Theserecords and the massive administration that enforces the rule of traceabil-ity (each product is traceable from consumer to farmer by use of specificcodes) make the small producers visible and controllable. Farmers are re-quired to build latrines and install places where they and their farm work-ers can wash their hands (water comes from buckets, as they often donot have running tap water near their fields), thus disciplining the hygienehabits of the smallholders. Those farmers who insist on their ‘bad habits’of not installing a latrine and not washing their hands before entering thefield (they might have a toilet and running tap water at home, some dis-tance from the field) are denied the possibility of producing for the exportmarket.

These examples are a few out of many. The ‘panopticon’ makes small-holders feel obliged to convert from basin and furrow irrigation techniques todrip irrigation although, at basin level, no water is saved by this technology.They feel obliged to wash their hands, while legal insecticide applicationmight be much more harmful for consumers’ health. One-size-fits-all ratio-nality of standards that visibilize ‘bad habits’ of farmers and make the latter‘traceable’ disproportionately affect smallholders, who tend to be more di-verse and to ‘deviate’ from outside (national and transnational) rules, whilethey also have fewer financial means to comply with these supposedly ‘goodhabits’.


DISCUSSION

Water sustainability standards have the potential to prevent water grab-bing and water contamination. However, current standards target on-farmirrigation technology and record keeping, disregarding how water use is geo-graphically and politically embedded in catchments, territories, and broaderinstitutional, socio-economic and cultural contexts. On-farm sustainabilitylabelling focuses only on micro processes disconnecting farming from thespecificities of local ecosystems and regional societies (Van der Ploeg, 2008).For instance, it is common to see that water use in golf courses or agribusi-ness enterprises is regarded as highly ‘efficient’ and ‘sustainable’ in narrow,technocentric terms, but actually it is highly inequitable and unsustainablewhen set in the wider territorial geography — the spaces and places fromwhich the water has been taken.

This does not imply that environmental and third-party effects cannot betaken into account in certification schemes. The monitoring process could in-volve representatives of, for example, watershed organizations, water users’associations, labour unions, organizations of small farmers, community or-ganizations, local and regional water agencies, drinking water utilities, etc.This would also allow them to include issues that are pressing at a localscale. The importance of this is highlighted by Elgert (2012), who notesthat certification of ‘sustainable production’ does not currently address thefundamental issues that affect smallholders, such as inequitable distributionof land and water.

Under pressure from activist movements, consumer networks and farmerfederations, some certifiers have started to discuss broader issues of envi-ronmental and social impacts, for example, applying a watershed view orsocio-territorial focus instead of a reductionist view focusing only on farmplots and companies (Friedmann and McNair, 2008). The challenge is toinclude third-party effects, as well as more integrated hydrological planningand evaluation beyond the farm-plot. This requires a move from ‘prescrip-tive’ to ‘consensual’ and ‘learning-based’ certification (Auld et al., 2008).What is especially needed is to invert the visibility mechanisms that areassociated with standards — to establish strategies and norms that addressand visibilize the practices of large agro-export companies, in order to tackleextreme behaviour such as water grabbing and water contamination, sincethose practices disproportionately affect smallholders and ecosystems.

At the international level, we see a crucial development: farmer associa-tions (together with consumers’ organizations) are engaging in multi-scalaraction to take part, politically and critically, in different roundtables, ex-pressing and defending the visions, norms, knowledge and interests of localfarmers and communities. If prevailing certification practices, norms anddiscourses are to be reshaped, smallholder water user federations will needto collectively and critically debate such norms and interests with theirconstituencies; they will need to ‘jump scales’ and lobby for inclusion in


policy- and decision-making platforms (Bebbington et al., 2010; Borraset al., 2008; Horowitz, 2011; Swyngedouw, 2004). Their aim would be torespond to transnational agro-food chain governmentality through ‘counter-conduct’ (Foucault, 1978/2002), strategically linking territories and scalesin networks to defend their own interests and worldviews (Boelens et al.,2014; Jessop et al., 2008; Swyngedouw, 2000), contesting the modernist andenvironmentalist discourses of ‘sustainable development’, ’efficient wateruse’ and ‘good water governance’ as expressed in official and universalistunderstandings (Boelens and Vos, 2012; Perreault, 2008).

CONCLUSIONS

On a vast scale, transnational agro-food industries and large-scale agro-export companies are reshaping local–global relations of water governanceand water-based production and export, draining local communities’ funda-mental resources. Increasing global trade has led to accumulation of landand water rights, depletion of aquifers, and contamination by agribusiness.

International private certification schemes have significant flaws whenit comes to operationalizing sustainable and/or fair production and tradeof agricultural products, e.g., by protecting local communities’ and small-holders’ water rights and access. They fail to deal adequately with thespatial and social diversities that underlie local livelihood strategies, agro-environmental production processes and water control problems. Moreover,their governmentality projects commonly aim to steer the conduct of localwater user communities. They introduce standards that either exclude, oralign, normalize and ‘correct’ the latters’ production practices according tothe interests of transnational agro-food chains.

Alternative modes of certification could be based on schemes that recog-nize local or regional diversity and elaborate on context-based conceptual-izations of sustainability and fairness. However, these cannot be left to theinitiative of current agro-food companies and chains or private certificationschemes; rather, water user communities must engage in ‘counter-conducts’,in particular by deploying scalar strategies to influence water and environ-mental governance simultaneously at local and at wider geographical andpolitical levels. Farmer and water user organizations need to strategically ad-vocate for protection of their interests in international arenas. In this respect,scaling up local water rights and access struggles — including certificationstrategies — is not just a strategic move but also a direct consequence of theincreasingly transnational character of the ‘water question’, including theexport of virtual water, and the transnational background of smallholders’adversaries. Both the governmentality-driven politics of the latter (trying toalign water user communities to their frameworks, rules and regulations,or supporting large farms which challenge local communities’ water accessrights) and the resistance strategies of local user collectives and federations


(aiming for the localization of water access and decision-making power) arefundamentally related to their power to compose patterns of multiple scales.

As most initiatives for sustainability certification regarding water are intheir initial stage of development, it is too early to evaluate their overalleffects. However, certification and labelling of products is an increasinglyimportant economic and political phenomenon, and the flaws that we haveidentified will negatively affect the most vulnerable groups in developingcountries. It is vital that ways be found to improve the development ofcertification processes and their political control, for instance by empoweringlocal producers’ organizations, inverting visibility mechanisms (to exposeextreme behaviour by export companies), and challenging roundtables toallow for the concrete, substantial inclusion of local producer organizationsand smallholder water use interests.

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Jeroen Vos ([email protected]) is researcher and project coordinatorwith the Environmental Sciences Group at Wageningen University, TheNetherlands. He conducts research in Peru and Ecuador on transnationalpolitics, corporate social responsibility and local effects related to virtualwater export. Prior to that he worked as water policy advisor in Bolivia andPeru.

Rutgerd Boelens ([email protected]) is Associate Professor, En-vironmental Sciences Group, Wageningen University; Visiting Profes-sor, Catholic University of Peru; and Chair Territorial Studies, CONA-CYT/Mexican Science Foundation, Colegio San Luis Potosı. He directs theinternational Justicia Hıdrica/Water Justice alliance (comparative researchon water accumulation, conflict and grassroots action); his research focuseson water rights, legal pluralism, cultural politics, and political ecology, inLatin America and Spain.

Sustainability Standards and the Water Question

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