William Cook

Thesis in English

Certification of environmental products and management processes is ubiquitous. It has become an important tool in many sectors for improving their practices and gaining access to valuable markets. While some are generally out of the eye of the general public (such as ISO 14001, Green Mark, or IEMA), others are expressly focused on resulting in on-product labels that consumers will see and, theoretically, prefer over non-certified or differently certified products. These kinds of products can be seen in nearly any store: UTZ certified chocolate, MSC certified fish, Fairtrade certified bananas, or FSC certified paper and wood products. All these systems, whether consumer-facing or not, are making claims about the nature of their products and how they were produced. In the field of environmental certification, the claim is usually related to the environmental, social, and economic benefit of the certification over non-certified products. They indicate to the consumer that the product was produced following a set of standards that are better than the conventional production process without the standards. But how can consumers be sure that the goods they are buying were actually produced following those standards?

This is where the compliance audit comes in. In the audit, auditors assess the practices of the producer and either judge the producer to be in compliance with the standards or not. These auditors, accredited authorities on the certification scheme’s normative requirements they audit against, serve to bridge the gap between the abstract standards and the highly contextual practices of the producers trying to implement them. They are the watchmen of the system, ensuring the practices on the ground match the requirements. As a result of this process, auditors generate information that is passed on to those who need it in the form of audit reports, which serve to demonstrate that the audit was performed properly. The producer can then use the label, as their claim to compliance has been verified. This system is the primary check which lends credibility to a certification scheme. Auditors and audits are, therefore, the engine that drives these certification processes. Despite their importance, auditing practices are not often the subject of scrutiny and we do not know much about how auditors and audits work in practice.

This thesis examines the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), one of the most well-known types of consumer-facing certification of forest products. In particular, the thesis focuses on the certification of forests themselves, rather than on the certification of the products’ chain of custody. Commonly referred to within FSC as forest management (FM) certification, this part of the FSC certification scheme focuses on certifying practices of forest managers against the 10 Principles and Criteria of FSC. These guiding principles and criteria represent the highest goals of FSC. Material from forests that are verified as being managed in compliance with the principles and criteria can be sold alone or in combination with material from other FM certified forests bearing the FSC label. In some regions of the world (particularly Europe and Asia), it is difficult to find forest-based products like paper that do not have a FSC label. The thesis provides an examination of how the standards as well as the forest management practices that these standards intervene in are enacted in practice and what values are reflected in those enactments.

Following an interpretive-qualitative approach, the thesis primarily presents first-hand, ethnographic and auto-ethnographic accounts of the FSC certification system, particularly paying attention to the role of auditing. The data presented in the thesis are qualitative in nature, relying on descriptions of what was heard or seen in particular situations. In such an approach, the researcher is the primary tool for data collection and analysis, and as such is inherently part of the data itself. This leads to an abductive perspective on data gathering and analysis in which the topic of research typically departs from a surprise or puzzle caused by a mismatch between the literature and experience of the researcher rather than from a well-defined hypothesis that can be tested. It also means that the exploration of the case is iterative in nature, as the experience of the researcher builds upon, and is built upon by, existing literature on the topic.

The thesis attempts to answer three research questions:
1. How is 3rd party auditing of the environment conceptualized in literature?
2. How are FSC auditing practices and values performed by auditors?
3. How does FSC auditing connect global standards and local practices?

The research questions are addressed by connecting a constellation of theoretical concepts. The first is informational governance (IG). IG can be conceptualized as institutions and practices that aim to steer peoples’ behaviours through information that are themselves organized around and governed by the use of, production of, and control over, information. This description clearly echoes the description of certification schemes and auditing. Certification fundamentally relies on information about compliance which is produced in auditing. Therefore, the thesis focuses on the actual practices of auditing and the ancillary practices around them. Conceptualizing audits as a set of practices in this way means that the meanings of standards are not self-evident and that the standards that are used in the audit should not be considered as external yardsticks that fully determine outcomes. Instead, the standards acquire meaning and are only understandable through the meaning that is constructed in interaction during the audit itself. This is the second theoretical concept of the thesis.

Auditing in FSC and other fields has been subject to scrutiny in both abstract and concrete ways in the past. The thesis draws on the theories developed in the field of critical transparency studies and auditing studies. These fields help conceptualize auditing in two ways. First is the notion that that which reveals can also conceal. Auditors cannot reasonably record and report on every interaction they have to the fullest extent. There is room for discretion exercised by auditors in what information to reveal and which information not to and how and this discretion is informed by values, which is the third key concept of the thesis.

With this in mind, the practices of auditing become acts of performing these values. To examine these practices in this light, the thesis draws on dramaturgy, the fourth key concept. Both using the notion of everyday interactions being performative and a performance and the specific analytical elements of dramaturgical analysis provides a framework for examining the specific actions of auditors and auditees. This does not in any imply that the interactions observed are in some way less real than anything else, but instead provides insight into the nested nature of reality. There is not really a front-stage and a back-stage. It is front-stages all the way down for the purposes of this thesis.

The fifth and final conceptual focus of the thesis aims to describe how the FSC standards travel between and connect global and local levels. The thesis uses friction to analyse the process by which disagreements between actors’ values destabilize the meaning of FSC’s normative requirements and turn them into contested object the meaning of which needs to be negotiated between actors. Alignment between actors then allows the system to stabilize and continue functioning. This friction and alignment happens on multiple spatial and temporal scales from standard development processes lasting in the order of months and years to audit interactions lasting days.

Chapter 2 is a review of literature about environmental certification auditing in general. It explores the way in which literature characterises such auditing. The result is three primary characteristics of concern: 1) objectivity/neutrality of the audit and auditor, 2) effectiveness of the audit and the certification scheme in attaining its goals, and 3) the transparency of the audit and certification scheme. The chapter goes on to link these characteristics with a concept called the “modes of auditing”. At one end of the spectrum is protest-oriented auditing, which is primarily concerned with values of transparency and the aim to reveal as much as possible about the system being audited. At the other end of the spectrum is professionalism-oriented auditing which is primarily characterized by values of objectivity/neutrality and ensuring the audit is replicable and predictable. Somewhere in the middle, or characteristic of both ends of the spectrum, is the characteristic of effectiveness. The result of this conceptual linkage is a nomenclature to discuss audits in terms of their primary values. This will return later in the thesis.

Chapter 3 is an ethnographic account of an auditor training course the author attended twice. It reveals the preoccupation FSC auditors have with objectivity. It demonstrates that FSC auditors are interested in all three types of objectivity: Object-oriented, value-oriented, and process-oriented. Despite the emphasis on objectivity, the chapter also demonstrates awareness that interpretation is indispensable in auditing. In the training, interpretation involved a process by which the auditors make meaning out of what they observe with the aim to ensure any other auditor would reach the same outcome. The combined enactment of objectivity and interpretation is a sign that an auditor has mastered the craft of auditing.

Chapter 4 provides a dramaturgical analysis of FSC FM audits in Africa and Spain, examining how auditors enact the values taught to them in their trainings and the values inherent to the FSC certification requirements. The chapter uses a dramaturgical approach to analyse the interactions between auditors and auditees. The chapter concludes by showing that FSC auditor practices skew towards the professional end of the spectrum of the “modes of auditing”, but they are nevertheless keenly aware of the protest-orientation that is needed for the underlying values of FSC to be put forward. Valuing this mode of auditing (ensuring high accountability) poses a risk to the overall goal of FSC certification (ensuring accountability for forest degradation). Moving away from professionalism is, of course, not without its dangers, but moving entirely away from protest-orientation would be a betrayal of FSC’s roots.

Chapter 5 examines how the FSC standards travel between and connect global certification systems and local forest management practices. The chapter presents examples of friction at the scale of setting standards, operationalising those standards, and friction during the audit and it also shows how alignment is brought about to prevent the scheme from collapsing. While the downward impact of friction and alignment is obvious, the friction in the field during an audit also influences the alignment on the standard-setters, making the situation bi-directional. Furthermore, there is a friction that resides outside the normative framework of FSC: how an inherently consumption-based certification scheme aligns with the goal of good forestry practices, and the original goal of FSC to counter or “turn the tide” on forest degradation and deforestation. Ultimately, this cycle of friction and alignment is in fact necessary for the continued operation of such certification schemes.

By way of answering the research questions, the findings demonstrate how audits are conceptualized in literature as falling somewhere on the protest-professionalism spectrum of auditing modes. These modes have particular values associated with them which can characterize the mode that is preferred or valued. FSC auditors are taught to value characteristics of the professionalism mode of auditing. The audit itself is a space in which auditors need to strike a balance between the modes in order to make the audit contents possible to be accounted for. The actions in an audit resonate not just in the here-and-now but serve to stabilize the overall system. The frictions during an audit are necessary to align and ensure the continuation of the FSC certification system. To allow one mode to override the other completely would disconnect the global from the local, leading to a break-down of FSC certification as a meaningful tool for environmental governance (e.g. standards that mean nothing in the field, or entirely bespoke audits and audit reports that have no value to a larger audience).

The concluding chapter of the thesis critiques informational governance as an example of “epochal thinking” and highlights how considering themes of governance by disclosure and the tyranny of transparency ground the discussion in how and why informational governance happens as it does. It argues for the value of using dramaturgy to examine ethnographic studies of the environment due to its versatility and practice-based nature. Finally, it goes on to point out that the mode of auditing employed by auditors inherently contains certain values, and those values impact which information is made available to which audience, and that those values are in no way natural or inevitable. They are chosen and perpetuated in practice. Having a mode of auditing with values that do not match the values of the certification scheme may very well lead to perverse outcomes. Ultimately, the outcomes of certification are dependent on the values that implicitly and explicitly contribute to the mode of auditing that results. These values are of critical importance and should be carefully considered as certification schema continue to develop.