This report gives an overview of leading sustainability-oriented certification and labelling schemes in the forestry and fisheries sectors and explores the conditions for such schemes to affect actual management practices. Today, several schemes based either in industry or environmental groups have achieved a level of producer participation and market penetration that will sustain a positive interest in maintaining them: they are here to stay and continue to grow at a high speed though largely, so far, in developed countries. Substantiating causal impact of such schemes requires the identification of causal drivers, or mechanisms, as well as careful assessment of other possible explanations for any development in the state of the problem addressed by the ecolabelling scheme. This article identifies three generally formulated causal mechanisms that may mediate between ecolabelling schemes and environmental outcomes: altering incentives, modifying perceptions of appropriateness, or promoting learning among producers, distributors, and consumers. On this basis, we explore whether certain ecolabelling schemes are well designed to render sustainable forestry or fisheries practices more rewarding, normatively compelling, or cognitively prominent than would otherwise be the case. Particular attention is given to such institutional features as performance- vs. management system-based assessment, differentiation among participants with respect to standards and certification fees, patterns of involvement in the development and application of standards, and the scope and means of verification, review and response.
