NGOs and private governance/certification challenges

While NGOs have been active in domestic and international politics for at least 150 years since the formation of the Red Cross in the 1860s, it is only in the past two decades that they have become a recognised force in governing global extraction, production, transportation, retail and disposal (extraction–disposal) chains. Today, they are active in developing standards, managing certification and labelling schemes, and monitoring and evaluating actor performance in sectors such as coffee, fish, timber and palm oil. Aiming to achieve sustainable, organic and/or fair trade production at the subnational, national and global levels, NGOs have birthed national and international NGOs to govern and metagovern actors that, intersecting with public authorities, give rise to forms of cooperation, competition and coexistence. While business plays a key role in these ‘non-state, market-driven’ governance arrangements (Cashore et al. 2004), it is no exaggeration to state that, absent NGOs, these schemes would not exist.