News

March 23, 2020

Leveraging public procurement as a political vehicle to promote the SDGs

Governments’ pledges for sustainable development are flourishing, most notably as they signed up to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But how can they translate such pledges into practice? Voluntary Sustainability Standards, or VSS, have been recognised as potentially transformative tools for sustainable trade, and they offer great potential for governments to realise their sustainability commitments through two main avenues. First, public procurement represents, on average, 12 percent of GDP in OECD countries, and up to 30 percent of GDP in

Read more
February 10, 2020

Establishing the VSS Academic Advisory Council

Reflecting to the UNFSS research element cornerstone, the Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) Academic Advisory Council (AAC) (hereinafter “AAC”), composed of renowned academic experts from across the globe, has been established to function as a think-tank that brings together a wide variety of academic backgrounds, ranging from public international law, global governance, international political economy, economics and public management, to human rights and sustainability studies. This type of multidisciplinary approach not only reflects the implicit acknowledgement of the

Read more
January 23, 2020

Enhancing CARICOM’s Export Opportunities with Sustainability Standards

In the interest of facilitating the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM)’s goal to strengthen trade-related quality infrastructure, the validation workshop held in Saint Lucia in 21-23 January 2020 aims to improve capacity in Standards and technical regulations development and implementation in CARICOM and to conduct a feasibility study for developing trade capacity enabling Sustainability Standards and associated conformity assessment modalities by the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), modelling the success of African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO). Part

Read more
October 14, 2019

Unlocking the potential of Sustainability Standards in South Africa to achieve Sustainable Bioeconomy

The increasing attention towards bio-based economy is partly due to the existing production practices that are contributing significantly to environmental and climate problems. Global challenges like climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, coupled with a growing population is a turning point towards producing and consuming that respect the ecological boundaries of our planet. ‘Bioeconomy’ in this sense has become an important agenda in political and technological interests internationally and nationally as it is considered to have strong links with the

Read more
October 7, 2019

2nd ICSTS: Moving towards the five C’s of Sustainability Standards Systems

Concept Note Programme in PDF Coherence, Collaboration, Cooperation, Convergence and Consensus were five of the most widely ‘referred to’ concepts that highlighted the key-takeaway of the 2nd International Convention on Sustainable Trade and Standards (ICSTS) held in Rio de Janeiro in September 2019. These are the 5 important C’s that could potentially reinforce the positive impacts of sustainability standards systems. Being one of the proud co-organizers of the 2nd ICSTS, the convention

Read more