Sustainability standards have seen rapid growth in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. One recent scientific paper notes, perhaps not surprisingly, that the most popular sustainability standards are those that can relax their requirements and reduce their costs. But what is the effect of such popularity?

To explore what we can do to increase the environmental results of these sustainability standards, COSA’s president Daniele Giovannucci joined Brian Milder and an esteemed group of researchers and scientists in compiling the “Agenda for assessing and improving conservation impacts of sustainability standards in tropical Agriculture”, recently published in the Conservation Biology journal.