it's time to start. So please take your seat.
So then I would welcome you all to this session a start by
and
by paying respect, and recognize the
the spirit of the country, and
recognize the importance of the contribution that first nation thinkers have made to sociology, including the challenges so dominant ways of thinking.
And
oh.
so yes.
First, as you have seen in the program. But this is 2 different sessions, 2 sessions that follow each other. So we start with these 5, we, we d 6 presentations, and then we have a second session, where Jonathan Fox from us, and Michelle Mahoney from Australia will give keynote speech, and we will discuss the concept of accountabilities. I hope that you will be able to stay on both
sessions. And this is an integrative session. It's organized by the social audit of organization, or it's 17 A Rc. 24. And I'm Society, or C, 40, sociology of Agriculture and Food and Task group force, group, social or the risk and Uncertainty.
Yeah.
it's 15 meet needs to each. Presenters include. And and it cannot be longer than that, because we will really try to have some time in the end to to raise questions about the different topics that are, they will present.
So I start by by welcoming and Organ Higgins.
To the sure, please.
Thanks very much. so
good afternoon. Everyone. sorry I stand close to the speakers, so good afternoon, everyone. So I'm going to be talking to you this afternoon about some results from a recently completed Australian Research Council discovery project that was focused on how Australia's shared approach to bi security can be improved
just to provide a little bit of context to to all of this.
So for those of you that may not be familiar with the term bi security, it's very much focused on the prevention, and also management of biological invasions, such as pests and diseases, and for those of you who came here from from abroad to Australia. For this conference, you would have seen signs up in the airport. You would have seen you might have seen detector dogs. You had signed forms. All of this is bi security.
Now. in recent times, probably in the last 15 to 20 years. In Australia.
what's called a shared responsibility approach has become very, very prominent, and how bi-security is managed. So this recognises that bi-security is no longer the sole of governments, but it also needs to be shared beyond governments, to industries, farmers, and and private citizens as well.
The problem is that in practice shared responsibility continues to be seen as a significant challenge to achieve in practice
a lot of the
social science bi security literature, so suggests that really focuses on the devolving of cost and responsibility to farming industries, farmers and Citizens. And a lot of this work has been published in Australia, New Zealand, the yeah Uk and and and and so forth.
But a lot of the focus to date has been on, far on, on how, by security and
what's called devolved responsibility, how that impacts on farms and farmers. There's been much less interest in how shared responsibility is enacted at what we might call an organisational or Meso level
in recent years that there has been more and more work in this area. the work that my team have been doing is, I guess, being part of that as well. We've used the not that we've used the framework of what's called institutional logics.
to help try and tease out some of the complexities around shared responsibility. There's also a research team at the University of Melbourne, too, have used the framework of adaptive governance to try and understand, shared responsibility in a bit more detail.
I I guess in terms of this particular paper. What we see is that those frameworks are are good in terms of providing a nice broad overview at at a Meso level of governance, but they don't necessarily well, they are finer grained. A finer, grained analysis of how shared responsibility is experienced, managed, and also made workable
and practice. And so in the course of analyzing our data, and I'll talk about a methodological approach in a second. In the course of our analysis.
we found we we sort of found that the notion modes of ordering, which again I'll talk more about in the moment provides a useful way of helping to provide this more finer-grained analysis.
So modes of ordering
really a term that was developed, or I, I I guess, as emerged from the work of British sociologist, John Law, as part of the broader
broader tradition of Hector network. theory. it focuses on the multiple processes by which organising organizing in this case by security, is performed through through shared responsibility, I guess, for our purposes, for the purposes of this paper. these
4 interesting processes to focus on the first is that modes of ordering are characterized by material heterogeneity. So there's an emphasis here on relate what's called relational materialism. So ordering involves interlinked social and material processes. So if we
use this to understand shared responsibility, most existing analyses of shared responsibility tend to focus primarily on social relations, but not that relationship between the social and material.
There's also an emphasis on as ordering as precarious and partial accomplishments. So this means that ordering is something which is never complete.
and so existing analyses of shared responsibility to
focus on how she had responsibility can be best achieved, and also the best means of of achieving it. So there's always an assumption that she had. Responsibility is kind of an end goal or somewhere out there in the distance, and it can be achieved at some some point. And thirdly, modes of ordering a multiple, and they interact in different ways to generate complex and variable effects.
if we take the spec to the again to the notion of shared responsibility, the literature to date tends to it does tend to focus on different interpretations of shared responsibility, but it often sees these as being largely separate from one another. It also assumes that some framings of shared responsibility are closer to some kind of ideal of what shared responsibility should. That's ideally look like.
There's also a few. I've I've also referred to the bottom to some recent work which suggests which points to contradictory modes forwarding. And the reason I put this there, you'll see more about how that might be relevant in the context of our work. in a moment.
a methodology, though I I brought the the broader sort of epistemological approach guiding our project was very much constructionist, and I think that's good, because it fits very nicely with the modes of ordering approach that we thought was pretty relevant. in this context, I'll just go through this very briefly.
As part of this approach, we we largely used semi-structured interviews. We didn't speak to any farmers. Our main interest was speaking to the organisations and agents who are involved in the implementation of of of bi security.
and those who were involved in what we might call a shared responsibility approach. So in total, we interviewed 89 stakeholders across Australia from Federal state and also regional We were particularly interested in regional stakeholders because they are the ones involved in day-to-day implementation of a shared responsibility approach.
And so we had a number of regional case studies that we used for that we
I guess. coming to some of our
our results, using it, using an ordering lens.
The reason I mentioned contradictory modes of ordering before is this, is something that emerged quite strongly through our results, and one of the key contradictions.
Our results was between what's called cost-sharing and cost shifting. So
cost-sharing is very much embedded in national level agreements, such as what's called asvet plan the intergovernmental agreement on bi security, emergency, animal disease, relief arrangements and quite a few others. Now, these are a way of organizing roles and responsibilities. and, as you can see, with the quote on the right-hand side of the table there.
those agreements and deeds and protocols are very important in terms of defining those responsibilities, and also a sense of identity in terms of where people fit within the bioscurity system.
But this is tempered by another mode of ordering that came out quite strongly in our data, too, which is around cost shifting.
And this is a really important one, because I guess it reflects the influence of neoliberal.
what he might like to call the near and liberal mentalities of government or or similar, which, in which resourcing has become a real issue, especially at a state government level. So there's less resources.
So what this means is that while cost sharing is seen as
an ideal and practice, what happens is that a lot of stakehold bi-security stakeholders are not actually able to do what they would ideally like to be doing.
So in this particular quote on the right-hand side, the stakeholder is saying, it's something that's handled around between different government departments and organisations. So liver it wants to take ownership. the practicality of it is that they can't necessarily do that.
Another important contradictory contradiction, sorry is
what I call between partnerships and silos. So again, I think this is an interesting one, and that
partnerships is something which is very much emphasised as part of a shared responsibility approach.
In Australia. There's been the creation of what's called animal health, Australia. And thank you, plant health, Australia. And these are quasi- non-government organisations who play a fairly key brokering role between government and industry. So
this, this is where others, public private partnerships that this particular national government agency representative was talking about. But there's also silos as well, and this in many ways reflects Australia's federal system of government with is different
jurisdictions, jurisdictional differences, organisational differences, which also have a pretty important influence on the way that our responsibility is understood.
Okay, I am running out of time. So I'm just going to quickly move into
here.
Stakeholders in our in our interviews, talked about managing these tensions, these contradictory modes of ordering, and this is where we think the the notion of of calculation from the work of colon and law might be quite relevant because it's
not necessarily trying to It's a process of not necessarily trying to make these different contradictory mode of order.
contradictory modes of ordering the same or trying to resolve them. It's about in some ways try to move between them in fairly fluid sorts of fluid sorts of ways.
So in our research, we sort of I I guess we
we found it about. We we found pretty much 4 examples of where we think calculation is relevant, and I put up a couple of examples of these in the second, but
negotiating pragmatic solutions to
to resourcing constraints. So this is where stakeholders were working with other agencies or organisations to term to determine who, as might have the resources to provide assistance in managing.
you know, specific problems, such as unknown deaths and cattle that were occurring on a farm, or something like that. collaboration with the private sector. So governments working with, you know, government vets working with private bits.
by security officers and regional locations, working with land care groups to pull resources
and sharing of expertise and experience was relevant here, too. So
this was where State government agencies, where they didn't have the expertise, they would reach out to others, but without without without necessarily infringing on those jurisdictional differences which have a pretty important influence on their day to day operations, and finally developing new and responsive ways of working with industry and
this is all about working, I guess, working around ingrained ways of working or jurisdictional differences. And I've got a couple of examples on this next slide. I found the second example quite interesting. I have to say about
government agencies and industry, organisations developing in this case what's called gentlemen's agreement to ensure that problematic plants which might government agencies might see as weeds are not actually sold through nurseries. So these are examples. This is just one example, I think, of how
security stakeholders are finding new ways of working with one another
so just quickly. Some conclusions. we think that a focus on modes of ordering highlight, some of the complex and the also the multiple ways to. And what shared responsibility is is organized. There's no kind of silver bullet here that we can somehow
see, shared responsibility. That something is which is singular and achievable. It's it's it's it. In other words, it's achieved in multiple sorts of ways. And we need to understand those multiplicities, but also the fluidity between them as well.
and finally, I think that focus on calculation is important too. It provides further insight into the everyday material practices that we think may well contribute to more adaptive, flexible, and also responsive approaches to managing by security risk.
So I'll leave it at that and thank you very much.
impressing 14Â min and 40Â s.
So then our next presenter is heater level.
is she?
Heather Lovell: Hello! I'm not sure if you can hear me, I'm actually online apologies. I wasn't able to come to Melbourne in person.
Heather Lovell: Can you hear me? Okay.
we we here, you. But maybe we should share you. Should
Heather Lovell: I have a technical, so you can use your slides. Okay, I you can use the sl. The slides are unchanged. So if someone's kind enough to just run through the slides when I say, next slide, we could go with
Heather Lovell: What was there on screen just a moment ago?
Yeah, I'm just going to get it so that we can see you.
Heather Lovell: Oh, okay.
which is a little bit better.
Nope.
Heather Lovell: sorry.
I'm gonna just share your screen. One for 1Â s.
This one. Yeah. perfect.
Heather Lovell: Great that looks right. So if someone would be kind enough to just move to the next side when I say next slide, that'd be great.
Heather Lovell: So, thanks to your presentation.
Heather Lovell: Thank you.
Heather Lovell: My name is heather level, and thank you so much for this opportunity to present today and please it set my apologies. I was hoping to be Melbourne in person, but at a bit of a family situation, so couldn't
Heather Lovell: So I'm presenting on behalf of the team based at the University of Tasmania in Australia, and working in partnership with the Tasmanian Government on an Australian Research Council funded project
Heather Lovell: called Sustainable Hydrogen Certification.
Heather Lovell: A multi-stakeholder governance approach. And that's led by Professor.
Heather Lovell: So the team is actually mostly political scientists. and yet we're working on a really interdisciplinary topic that a certification and standards. which has been researched significantly by sociologists.
Heather Lovell: So I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to present today and look forward to your questions and feedback
Heather Lovell: next slide.
Heather Lovell: So in this short presentation, I hope to cover some background on the topic of green hygiene, because you might be wondering what is green hygiene? in the 10Â min. So we have available briefly touch on some theory, and then present
Heather Lovell: some findings from a a case study within the project
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So what exactly, is green hygiene? essentially, it's hydrogen gas produced by renewable energy as this definition from their green hygiene organization explains.
Heather Lovell: So it's a simple down. But even the definition of green hygiene which looks to be pretty straightforward has been highly contested.
Heather Lovell: for example, there are slightly different names for it. not just green hydrogen, but clean hydrogen and renewable hydrogen.
Heather Lovell: the with they all have slightly different boundaries for what constitutes low carbon emissions, and there are also a range of different colors of hydrogen, so not just green hydrogen, but, for example, blue hydrogen which is produce using fossil fuels. but carbon emissions are captured and stored.
Heather Lovell: so that the focus to date has been very much on the role of hydrogen and mitigating climate change rather than broader sustainability issues
Heather Lovell: both social and environmental water use, social acceptance, etc. So that's
Heather Lovell: that's a large part of what we're looking at in our research is this broader conceptualization of hydrogen?
Heather Lovell: The next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So this is quite a long closed you don't need to read all of it, but I think it sums up quite nicely. a a key problem that the sector is dealing with, and that we're researching the for that from which is fragmentation. So there's lots of competing standards being developed, a significant duplication of effort
Heather Lovell: and significant rest of the confusion and loss of trust just to name a few
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So We don't need to get into the detail of this But just to make the point that there is lots of standardization and certification activity.
Heather Lovell: So these are 24 standards. that are either completed or in the process of being developed internationally.
Heather Lovell: that Professor Fred Gail has been leading on this component of the research. and there are more emerging all the time.
Heather Lovell: so these are some of the questions. from the session organizers for this session. I'll come back to these in conclusion. But really the purpose of this slide is just to show the number of different schemes under development. and also just to emphasize again this point, that most of the certification schemes are very focused on carbon emissions and climate change rather than sustainability issues more broadly.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So I'm just going to touch now on some theory that we're using within the project, and then I'll move on to briefly tell you a bit about the case. Study
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So in our reviews or literature on standards. These are the main different areas where we've identified
Heather Lovell: social science standards and certification, research
Heather Lovell: and apologies. Law is the discipline that I missed off here. But should be added to this
Heather Lovell: erez agmoni list. as I mentioned at the start, most of our project team of political scientists. So in truth, to date, we've been largely concentrating on political science, scholarship on standards 150
Heather Lovell: and its focus is, as one might imagine, particularly on the governance of standards, and especially the role of public and private sector, organizations.
Heather Lovell: and issues of, for example, issues of authority, legitimacy, and credibility.
Heather Lovell: whereas in sociology we can see some differences.
Heather Lovell: the focus is really on seeking to better understand how our social world is organized and underpinned by a complex raft of standards.
Heather Lovell: and sociologists in lots of different contexts made this genuine observation that standards are mostly invisible. unless they go wrong.
Heather Lovell: and I would also argue in there largely invisible and less.
Heather Lovell: We've got a new thing that's appeared, such as greenhouse, and which needs to be standardized in some way.
Heather Lovell: so I won't say much more about the sociological literature. I'm so many of you are really familiar with this but I particularly like timelines, and it seems paper an annual review of sociology, and they have already useful definition of band as as ubiquitous but underestimated phenomena that help regulate and calibrate social life
Heather Lovell: by rendering the modern world equivalent across cultures, time, and geography.
Heather Lovell: which I think is a really helpful way of explaining the work that standards do
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So I'm just gonna touch on a case study meeting on which is on the international partnership for hydrogen and fuel sales in the economy a bit of a nice I'll refer to it as ipat
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So what makes the iph significant in relation to greenh and hydrogen standards is the methodology that they've produced. for determining greenhouse gas emissions from hygiene production.
Heather Lovell: And this methodology is significant because it's really gaining credibility and traction and being used within other green hydrogen standards that are being developed.
Heather Lovell: so the the I. Ph. E.
Heather Lovell: was formed. It's a government initiative. It was started actually in greenhouse in terms of really long time ago, in 2,003, and there are 9, 22 countries involved, and a number of working groups and task forces which include private sector organizations as well.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So I mentioned the methodology that the Ipt has developed. This shows you the front page of the report, which is an A. 130 page report that quite a substantial body of work which covers several different production pathways for hydrogen
Heather Lovell: and its scope is very deliberately and clearly just about the production of hygiene, the initial production.
Heather Lovell: So it doesn't cover other issues, such as how that is, and then transported to be used in other places, or how it might be later converted into something else.
Heather Lovell: and it just very slowly focuses on carbon as well.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So this is a quote from the Australian Federal Government team lead
Heather Lovell: in a recent Oecd forum on hygiene certification earlier this year. and I've included it because
Heather Lovell: It shows here the very strong endorsement of the work of ipt
Heather Lovell: and the recognition of the need for international collaboration
Heather Lovell: so Australia is seeking to be in the exporter of green hydrogen. And then so it's very much in Australia's interest to have an internationally agreed method for measuring greenhouse gas emissions from hydrogen production.
Heather Lovell: with that this is a real risk that it makes it really hard to export and trade green hygiene for obvious reasons. because each country will develop their own set of rules, 150.
Heather Lovell: So in terms of international relations, this does happen. But it's not ideal.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So this slide I'm conscious of time. So I won't go into these examples in detail. But this just showed some examples of how the I Phd methodology has been taken up
Heather Lovell: by really well established credible international organizations, such as the International Energy Agency and the International organization for the standardization as well.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: And again, the detail of this is not important, but just in terms of again coming back to this issue of the complexity and the number of standards that are being developed in this space, which is a real feature. So the dark green box there is the I Phd methodology. And that just shows you visually how it's linked to different standards. being developed
Heather Lovell: next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: But next slide.
Heather Lovell: So thanks so much. Everyone for your attention today. just briefly. In conclusion, I guess I'll I'll cut to.
Heather Lovell: What I see is the main thing, and I pick out here, which are the unintended consequences of what's happening in the development of international green hygiene standards.
Heather Lovell: So there's lots of activity. And most of it is really not well coordinated. there are several competing standards being developed by a mix of public and private sector, lead organization
Heather Lovell: and the significant unintended risk
Heather Lovell: in terms of confusion, a lot of trust from other stakeholders.
Heather Lovell: and duplication of effort.
Heather Lovell: Next slide, please.
Heather Lovell: So thank you, everyone. I'll leave it there. I'm not sure if this time for questions, but That's we'll get on to those later. But yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you. Heater for your presentation, and we continue with directly with the third one, and that is also removed one.
I just
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): yes, we're here. Do you hear us?
Yes, yes, we have a question. Do you mind if we share our own presentation? Because we made some small changes.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Thank you.
Yep.
share any time.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): yes. Can you see our presentation?
We can see it
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): perfect.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Are you still seeing it?
We can see your screen. Yes, go for it.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Okay, thank you.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Hi, everyone. So my name is Diana. This is my colleague Vincent. We're in 2 Phd students at the K. You live in Belgium. specifically, we're working at the Heva Institute, which is a research institute for work and society and for our reh, t, we're both working on topics.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): shortly said social sustainability governance in global value chains. And they were going to present one of the papers that was working that we've been working on. So it's a Co title to rise of quantification and high risk supply chains in which we focus on how what we call theing or so called sustainability check is what their risk management is and how they aim to extend their control in a supply chain, maybe just certainly for the context. So
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): we all know that with globalization, there's also common increased exposure of human rights violations and environmental violations link to business conduct and sustainability governance. Our corporate sustainability. Governance has become these very important things to manage all these violations. And there's a lot of literature on it from different disciplines.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and within sustainability governments, we're seeing that supply chains are really becoming very central. So it's not just about doing the Csr, it's now about extending your managerial control throughout the supply chains and then different disciplines of literature. We see a really big focus on big corporations.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): but for our research, we wanted to focus on other types of companies. And I'll later explain what we need by a state ability champions. maybe just as an overview because in our presentation, we really want to focus on the results of of the paper. So the argument is
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): the following. So we see in our case cities that companies have a shared discourse on sustainability, transparency, and quantification. At the same time they use similar tools, part of their sustainability governance, but because they have different business models. They valorize these tools very differently. So tools like audience or on the brand visits. So that is our core. arguments.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Now, maybe to show who are these 8 sustainability champions? And what are they? So the sustainability champions for us are the companies that are really that we know, a central place to sustainability their business models. They have this personal motivation to do things differently in their respective sectors, and, as you can see, we have 8 companies from different sectors like textiles.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and they're in a way trying to resist certain dominant practices or bad practices in their opinion, in their sectors, so that those are the sustainability champions. And for the past 2 years we've been doing several methods like interviews, participants, observation. We've been analyzing corporate
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): documents to do our research now
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): to go into the results like I said. they have a shared discourse all these different companies of different sizes. And first of all, we see that these companies really see themselves as a moral Hector, so they are not just doing business. They have a responsibility to act sustainably. at the same time. And this comes from some inherent values that all these different people in those companies have
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): at the same time we see it. This role as a moral actor is not with our boundaries. There is still always is imperative to make profit, or there is still always this, this argument, that they say that they have a limited capacity or limited power to change things
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): at the same time. Transparency is very crucial, so there is this imperative to unveil things. So they have to
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): first of all trying to see what's going on in their supply chains, and afterwards they want to prove what they have been doing or what that, what has been going on. And then 30, we see that there is this inevitable superiority of numbers. So there is really a quantified logic in the majority of these companies
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): which was not always the case. So as they were progressing in their sustainability, governance, the centrality of fortifying logic increased at the same time, even though they really wanna quantify everything. They also struck with how we present our policy and practices in first trustworthy way. How can we show that we are not doing Rem? She is, often
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): I'm in solitude that they have, or a struggle that they have.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Then, if we continue, we also see. And like, I said, there's a mediating role of a business of their business models. So we see 2 types of groups. first of all, we see a group that has
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): privilege relationship with their supplier. So they kind of rely on a limited number of key partnerships. And when we look at their sustainability policy, we see that in their sustainability policy and in there a communication. They really concentrate all thought and action on these partnerships, and they are mutually
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): privileged relationship. They're the core of the communication strategies regardless of sustainability. At the same time, the other group, we see that they have a cloud of lives. There is, greater complexity in their supply chain. So their sustainability efforts are much more
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): if you
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): discursive layer of what, how they see, what they are supposed to do what is important to be a sustainable company, and how you should do it. And we saw that they they also have, like a lot of differences in these 2
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): 2 types of business models that you would say, that's working quite a different way. So we see that this is common or the shared discourse, or this, this shared discursive elements they they filled through these business models or these 2 groups of business models in quite a different way to result in what we done in Cs 2 different logics of seeing sustainability?
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and so we see that in this first group, with a which has a small group of very privileged suppliers set that is really the center of their sustainability policies. We see that that logic of seeing is going into that.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): So what they want to do is create complexity. So they're constantly on the search for finding more complexity about the in the information that they have about this limited number of suppliers. So they're going to. Very, in a very tired of its way. They really try to deepen their knowledge all the time like it's about. It's a constant efforts. And so they're looking for detail they're looking for. They're looking for the complete use of the information. So it's to. It's never finished.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): And it's always things deeper into these few suppliers. While the logic of seeing of the second group this is quite different is that they have more logic of breath. You could say they. They often use the metaphor of mapping their supply chains, and
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): if people have been to to like this meetings of companies who here it's often and so for them, it's not about creating complexity. You could say that about really reducing complexity. So they have this cloud of suppliers that is very for them. It's very chaotic. They don't really have an oversight. So for them, it's really commission to create this oversight to create clarity, but they see as a very opaque field.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and they also need ways of prioritizing their actions. So they are really trying to in different ways, trying to cut down on the complexity and try to to to be able to see
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): sustain and sustainability for them.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): so it's quite 2 quite different logics. and so we see that these 2 groups of companies.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): they're struggling with the same tensions when trying to, to, to, to, to apply this transparency and quantification. So.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): of course, the costs are are always a problem, the cost of all these sustainability sustainable policies. they also are constantly struggling with with this. This is this, this need to improve, but also this need to to be compared with their with their colleagues or the competitors in the same sector or cross sector. So you see that there's icon to struggle to. Yes, this, this, this competition.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): At third. We also see that all the companies are struggling with, how exactly they are weighing the their economic interest and their their their interests for transparency, because some companies can maybe
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): give away more of their profits and others not so we also see that there's a constant struggle in this And so, even though again, we see that they, all these companies share this. We see that because they also have a different logic of seeing their sustainable policies for them, they have different ways of, of, of, of of how they perceive that
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): how they can like tackle these challenges, and also what they can do about things like And so we see that they have a they, even though they use often the same tools. They've in a very different way.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): so we see that the first group who puts the suppliers at the center. The supplies are in the center of of these limited groups through the center of all their policies. and for them. Visits are mostly the the preferred to you could say, or the way to to see and or to quantify, and they really want to be close to their suppliers. They want to go there, or they invite them to come here, even though they can be on the other side of the world. And so these regular visits for them, this personal connection is really crucial.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): we also see that they're they're setting up different kinds of programs for mutual learning also projects that are outside of this direct commercial logic that can go a lot farther to to, to, to to
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): yeah, a lot of different initiatives. And so we also sometimes the use audits. But they really speak about our to something that is deeply flawed. It's very problematic, and they also communicate is a lot to, for example, their their their clients. They will always say, we do. Audience, but it's it's not sufficient. We go beyond our. It's sort of. They use art, and also certificates really as a sort of thing to to to contrast their approach with. And they they
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): they are. There's very deep critiques of out in the second group. You see that outlets for them are really the main instruments to understand their supply chains
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and to reduce this complexity that they're struggling with the real time. And so for them, they're really deeply engaged in trying to find the right out. It's in trying also to be engaged in most stakeholder initiatives that again group the efforts of companies to to to try to to unravel this complex situation, that they have to deal with also certificate. They try to use a lot and serve there. We see that this critique is
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): a lot less, or even in existence, and then they're actively looking to, to implement more out. It's to get more certificates. and so we see that the the the ways that they're approaching this is very different.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): so this is a little bit to our argument. I think that
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): of course, it's it's it's quite interesting. Because, according to the 2 different groups, there's also really different possibilities for for implementing different ways of being sustainable. And I think it's it's even though on the on surface they're all doing the same things. They're working with the same certificate biological fair trade. They're using the same kinds of audits. It's really a different approach to sustainability. And so our argument would also be that
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): these different groups there's really different possibilities of going further in the sustainability. But there's also different risks of this, the kind of information that they create, for example, on their suppliers, and the kind of inequalities that exist between the this mostly Western companies, Western companies, and and and their suppliers that are mostly located in the global South.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): so what I I think this is what our arguments So we also uploaded the paper. I I if if someone managed to read it, or minutes to find it
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): then we would also. We would really appreciate to have some comments back. You can always contact us here. and there. You also will find more of the details of how we frame it in the literature and also more the invariable details, because, I think, you know, we really made our arguments clear that we didn't really go into the details. But there's quite some interesting details.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): So what are we? Thank you to
to?
So thank you for this presentation means in Indiana. And now it's the fourth presenter.
I don't know how to get back to the
go back to the
was not my team. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So then instead, we have to drop that, and we are instead inviting the
if presented. We are Tama. Yes, please
take the floor
right
how to dismiss this enough.
So
good afternoon, everyone.
Firstly, I'd like to obey my respect and acknowledge the spirit of country and our inclination ruin Jerry Wu as the sovereign people, and I would also like to acknowledge and Channel, my gratitude and respect to the local communities and the customary stakeholders of
the people that I'm working with. the green chimerang and and Sri Lankan. so Customary. People in Jambi, as well as the Ishirawa come to an Orria tribe in Papua, with whom we call construct our understanding about resilience, livelihood, and conservation.
So I made a bit of a a slide of a change in the title. It's
this now. So I talked about arguing to listen more and measure less
To start with.
I would like to say that in Indonesia, despite all all the pressures going on to the government in being accountable for the forest destruction and deforestation happening in the country. The Government has been
showing Try to prove that they've been doing good in terms of adding more and more for us through programs such as socio, forestry and community-based conservation even though in terms, even though in terms of the real impact of this numbers of hectares of forests. There's there's been a mix and contradictory results. And particularly because
I think we're using probably the wrong indicators to show that it's actually successful in terms of community-based conservation. So there are many factors influencing whether a community-based conservation can be seen as successful or a failure, particularly in terms of how the community links with Ngos with community of practice. and so many other different factors.
So when you talk about accountability.
it's actually quite difficult to really
made the government accountable in a sense that using the right indicators. I've just been talking to Stephen about what accountability means. And I think I'm understanding it from. I'm really sorry about it. But basically what I understood is that we talk about accountability as being some. We need to be able to measure things that then we would.
you know, be responsible of it. And And so Stephen's paper, on being, you know, understanding the legitimating and the legitimated actor as well as the artifacts of accountability. So reports things like that. But what I've understood is that this type of accountability would serve
go closely to more newly world types of governance, all neil neural environmentality. So I'm quoting the works of Rob Fletcher in his 2,000 12,017 paper on differentiating between different forms of environmentality, or environmental governmentality.
So Indonesia sort of experience many different stages in our ways of of managing or conserving forests. We went to the stage of forest fortress conservation. We talk about sovereign environmentality where we basically try to fence the forest so that people will be able to come in. We talk about community-based conservation, which is basically more about how we discipline the communities to
to comply to what the government wants in terms of forest management. And then what's happening now is that the communities are
probably quote unquote, forced to develop a way to make money out of out of forests on the basis that if they have incentives from doing sustainable utilizations to a business, then they would It would provide that incentive for them to really protect the forest.
Our argument is that I think we need to move into a different forms of environmentality, and that would imply a different forms of accountability which is on community conservation which is based on ethics of care, sense of the spiritual affinity between humans and non-humans, and these connections between people and forests.
So
The big question, is that? how? What can we do differently in trying to understand how people manage the forest in terms of assessing how conservation work in line with livelihood strategies. So if you've been trying to experiment with many different methods. But what we try to do basically is try to use
qualitative approach and many different methods all together, which is based on resilience, narrative, or story. So it's it's all about storytelling in many different ways.
Just to give a bit of a context, we focus on 2 provinces in Indonesia. The first one is in Papua, the eastern part of Indonesia, and the other one is in jamb. So that's in Sumatra.
They Each have different characteristics in terms of numbers of populations, the extent of forests there. there in the locations, the the Gdp and and other factors as well. But basically what I will show here is that in Papua you have massive amounts of forests.
And Fewer people are there, and there are many resources untapped, if that sort of looked into from a new liberal perspective.
So these are just 2 locations. We focus on 3 villages each in in each profits.
And this is to some of our work. We've been working with the communities we try using visual ethnography using photographs. But what I think what's also interesting is that we're using a methods called voiced. I think you probably are familiar with that and we ask people to really just take pictures and try to, you know, to take photographs of what the things that they they think most important in their lives.
And we use graphic recording. We ask our colleagues to help with drawing and and
giving back these pictures to the communities, and you know, as for their opinions and their their perspectives and their responses on it.
And then, at a class, we? We had a an exhibition, and we invited a lot of particularly students. general audience in the big series in Jakarta and Bandu. So their photograph
exhibitions. But some of the key findings. I think that I want to share you here with you here is that we identified at least 5 findings that we think show positive
values in terms of how it supports conservation and livelihood. But go beyond this achievable numbers. It's it's intangible, you cannot measure it.
The first is our understandings about diversity of livelihood. So when we talk about neoliberal environmentality, we talk about how big, how
how the Aroi you know, of this business aspects on on community based conservations conservation enterprise. But what we found is that
they they're not relying on one particular you know, small horder plantations, coffee or coco, or anything. It's the way they can move from one
one mode of lifelihood to the other. It's they're very flexible. So when when the coco experience price fluctuations, they can just basically move to things like huntings and gatherings and stuff like that. So these are some of the documentations of that
they're doing in terms of utilizing their resources. This is Sagu. We have examples of cinnamons, coffee as well rubbers, and many other different examples of how they make use of their resources. And we're also engaging with bird watching as part of ecotourism. So it's a bit.
you know, new Liberal in that sense, but it's a part of what they're, you know, part of their local knowledge as well.
Then the the other aspects about this intangible aspects of community conservations is how they could never measure the the hectares of their forests. So every time we ask them, how many hectares that you've protected in your community schemes. They always say that there is just immeasurable.
And the way. They said that it's also related to the way they see for us as their mother. So it's not about resources. It's not about source of livelihood or source of economy for us, for them symbolizes something deeper and more profound. we talk about mother to talk about, you know, carrying large tasks of taking care of their children, managing farms and others. And the same holds to
for forests which bear many benefits. for communities not necessarily the economic aspect of it. So this is just some of our illustrations of the forest, the the vast, immeasurable forest that they've mentioned, and they use that as well for how things, for you know. fishing but not necessarily in economic terms.
We'll talk about saving. They never talk, saving as being part of investment they can never measure. How much they they save. So saving for them is just a matter of securing, you know, making sure that their their future is secure. It's all about risk absorption during periods of crisis.
And yeah, and they are valued and used as such through specific life of the strategies. So for us, for them is this is they're saving. They don't know how much is it? Is it value? But but it's just so much that they think that they can secure their lives of their children and grandchildren for generations to come.
Cattle is also part of that. They've never really counted how many kettles they have but basically they know that they are there so they can make use of it anytime. They need
You know, fish in the in the river. They know that it's always there. They they. They know that anytime they need it. They can always get it.
And then markets. They have different understandings of the market. And one of the things that that interests me is that they're still using butter mechanisms in and particularly in Papua. And it's seen as a you know, multi-functional role in the economy, but also in livelihoods. It's it access buffer for the imperfections of a gas economy.
but also in in terms of building and stranding social ties through the act of give-giving. So when it comes to new liberal environmentality. We don't start us as something that's promising for conservation, but apparently it does. So. This is just some of the examples. What's interesting about. But here in Papua is that market value is no longer relevant, so you can have, like a bowl of
crab 7 individual crabs it could. you know it costs around 80 Us. Dollars in the in the modern market, but it's you can exchange it with a with a one. Kilograms of white sugar which surprised only 2 Us. Dollars. So
And then, of course, lastly, we talk about social creation and collective works. We talk about the voluntary collective forks in its many forms, and it's a feature of rural communities across Indonesia.
although it's get it gets eroded as more more and more capitalistic and grabs hold. And I think the key here is to provide social space where one can still practice this form of collective action. So this is just one example. There's one lady that Her house was kind of damaged, and just within a day, people coming bringing timbers, and they're working together in a day. They can sort of build a house for for her
without any payment in any way. So it's just amazing. And this is just another examples of how women cooked in a large walk for someone's wedding ceremony.
So lastly, I would like to highlight this the politics of care. And I think when we talk about liberation environmentality, we talk about something that's totally beyond market economic logic. we ask our informants. especially during the photo voice. What do you see is most important in your life? And they their answer is unanimous who talk about their family and their place.
So I think the implication would be that government should provide as much space as possible for these communities to build a balance and healthy relationship.
And when we talk about the politics of care, we talk about how we should listen more to what local people need, and to believe that in their ability to care for the forest without having to have you know
those
quantitative indicators. for accountability. So this picture rehears your shows Josephina and Jacobus. We asked them to make a photo voice. But what? What are the things that they think most important? And they just show love.
which is amazing.
So in summary I guess. What I want to ask is that we talk about the accountability? within the conservations and and forest management. It's all about, you know, going back to comfortable, comfortable to whom? and we, I guess if we start thinking about liberation and environmentality we, I guess we then should provide space for our local communities to do what they think is best.
And I guess also commodity things that are intangible. They're visiting some of the indicators. So we don't talk about a number of the Hector. So for us anymore, or about about household being involved, or about biodiversity, per se. But we then should probably talk more about diversity of income, about quality of life.
about access, equality, about social capital, and about trust. I don't know if if it's
right or abstract, but I think it sorted to discuss more about it. So
let's do the
so.
No, it
may, I may I ask, is this presenter here. So in
so Augustine was.
yeah, no cause he it was not scheduled in the in the program. Isn't that correct? Or
it's a this to go.
Yeah, it's a distributed paper. Yeah. So I think that we, you know, have time for discussing. And I would like to start by
thanking for 4 very interesting presentations that all have rather different empirical objects, but also concerns governance indicators, the responsibility and accountability.
I would like to invite
organ and anger to the
table. and then we have a heater, and we have Vincent and Diana. Butcher on some. And
now I open the floor for questions, and, Nadine, you have to help me.
Those who would like to raise questions virtually presume, or through the chat. and I will try to coordinate everything.
So now the floor is open and we have a microphone here. Please use the microphone.
Start with you and or
and they are off to Stephen. Yeah, please.
Hi, thanks much for the presentation. My question is for anger, a great presentation anger.
So I would just like to know your observations and reflections. Maybe it's not just, you know, part of the presentation because of time constraints. But What are your reflections on the changes on these more intangible aspects of
livelihood strategies
and how they intersect with culture, because I'm pretty sure these are not like isolated sort of detached from broader processes of change, even though they are they can be found in, you know, I like remote places, right so. And because drawing on my own research on transformational adaptation, the Philippines.
There are a lot of very valuable intangible heritage and informal institutions with a very important role in adaptation, but these are all being threatened by so many forces. So I would just like to know your thoughts on that things.
So thank you. we we yeah, I, yeah, I've what's your presentation? I think it's amazing, you know, seeing some of the connections, some of the similarities. but yeah, I think so. Part of my research is not only about seeing the
the status quo, but also the changes and the challenges that they, these communities faced, and
especially when it comes to new development. so the people in pop water experience are a bit of pressure because of palm oil plantation. so revenue in Jambi. They also experience palm oil plantations, but more
internally from from the local communities as well. and so when it comes to changes that they experience. It's It's something that that becomes a trend as well. And I think when it's all about resilience, they are resilient to them, extend.
So if the tribe is just too big, the too massive they they lose that that space to be able to adapt to. you know, to to shops and and utilizing the resources.
But also we've been trying to. So with this project, we've been having several workshops and particularly inviting the government to just really change the way they see conservation. So we propose some of the
different ways of you know, measuring things or looking at things. We. We propose some of the indicators, and and even though for the government is still a bit difficult because they have, they have kpis. You know things like that, but it's something that it's
within their reach as well. So I think, I really really need help to really try and understand what kind of indicators that might be used to, you know, within this
scope of liberation, environmentality, and and the politics of care, so that we can then push that forwards towards the government. So I think that's I mean.
we can have more discussions about that.
Thank you. Thank you. Next, Stephen.
Thanks. Von and Ana and our presenters online.
So I'm Stephen Wolf, representing our C 40 in this collaboration. And I thank Chen Xin representing risk. Ralph, representing 24 in an environment generating representing 17 organization online.
And I don't want to hijack this session. But the Isa rules don't allow the session organizers to present a paper which I think is a a terrible flaw, which I hope will be remedied. I want to offer a little bit of intellectual context about what motivated me and others to get involved with this.
I stride with Allison, Allison, Luconto, and I organized a Phd. Summer school 4 years ago.
coming out of Toronto. In fact, it fed into the World Congress in Toronto. We scheduled it 2 days before they're 4 days before it could feed into it, and
I must admit it was a frustrating experience, because I organized it with my colleagues around accountability and standards, and everyone just wanted to talk about standards.
And Nadine Arnold and I have now a special issue coming out very soon in environmental policy and governance.
And we organized a workshop. participated in others. And again, I admit it was somewhat frustrating in that. The accountability that I'm interested in was not quite found. And so at the risk.
okay.
I don't know upsetting people. I want to suggest that my motivation is that
while Ana, this idea of enchantment and I am thoroughly disenchanted, and I admit that it's wonderful that you champion this embedded approach to sustainability.
And I think we say, great. I wish maybe you're a romantic. Maybe I'm a cynic.
for maybe local problems lend themselves to common pool. Resource management and global problems do not. for von
shared responsibility is the language of governance which I teach and I believe in. But I think we know that shared responsibility can be code for organized unaccountability
where no one is responsible, and we have no
mechanism for demanding accounts.
Many in this room will believe that market-based instruments, and using cash flow in return on investment. To produce discipline and order is a dead end.
Many would recognize and heather. I know your work well from carbon governance that standards and metrics and quantification is a quite limited logic. This is the logic of informational governance. This is the liberal logic
where, if we solve the information asymmetries, we solve the information and completeness. The system is self-correcting.
That is the neoliberal paradigm.
I find it fascinating and ultimately frustrating that no one in this session calls on government
the State as a legitimate mechanism for accountability.
What does that say
about our imagination and our politics that no one can say the word
regulation.
I think there's tremendous self-censorship
and cultural censorship and organizational and even disciplinary censorship.
Now, of course, to say, I want the state to intervene. This sounds like the language of fascists and authoritarians, perhaps, and I'm very conscious of that risk.
But I think when we talk about inequality and sustainability, it's time to take some risks.
So I think Eleanor Ostrom
and I hosted her at Cornell before she received the Nobel Prize, and I was apologetic, but I gave her a hard time. I think she's taken us down the wrong road.
and her late work on panacea was an effort to recall common pool resource management and to recognize that it's not an answer to all our problems.
I think many, as I said again will critique markets. I think we must invest in democratic forms of regulation
for accountability, and I admit to some frustration that we haven't discussed it.
This session will be followed by 2 keynotes and a panel. As Ralph has said, there's plenty of time for discussion. You don't have to react to me and my diatribe.
We can engage with the speech.
but that's the background that brought me here. So thank you.
Thank you.
If anyone would like to give a comments, or that from the presenters, and so on. So please feel free. Yeah.
Nadine Arnold: well, I think there is a comment.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): maybe a small comments, because I think it links quite a lot to the context of our research, because actually, our research
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): so immersed from the context of the human rights due diligence. legislation that is coming up in Europe. and this is a bit of work of our of our research, which is also it's a little bit about regulation. But actually, it's about regulating how companies can govern their value chains. So it's not thickly about the regulation from government. But
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): we didn't mention it now in the presentation, because we had not enough time. It it it does. Our our presentation does frame in this. maybe a critique of this of saying if we're letting companies
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): be and remain the central actors of governance in value chains? then these are the things that can happen, then probably it will be about our this. It will be about all these tendencies which.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): who is, is quite critical, of course. but it also may be still present, some, some some options, but we are also quite, I don't know, not surprised. But there, that is really, I think, at least in the field that we're looking at. There is very, very little discussion about
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): actually letting other actors and companies govern the value chains. I don't even know if it's yeah, it's actually perfectly feasible. But there's really no no discussion about it also. No, I think
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): I I share it. I think we both share it with the the, the frustration on this. We're also trying to wiggle ourselves out of the framework that was decided for, like like on our research sometimes. So yeah, it's interesting.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): I can.
And add a comments from the presenters.
Heather Lovell: yeah, thank you for that provocation. I think it's it's a really good one.
Heather Lovell: I guess. Yeah, just one kind of
Heather Lovell: thought in response to the main thing that brings to mind in terms of the research that I've done on energy and carbon
Heather Lovell: is that this State? In some instances, Max, the capacity to regulate the fast moving, complex technological area of governance.
Heather Lovell: So it really looks to industry? and in some cases civil society.
Heather Lovell: as the
Heather Lovell: as as people being at the forefront of the knowledge and information. so I I do you think there a certain instances like with green hydrogen
Heather Lovell: where it makes a lot of sense for the the to what with private sector organizations. and I think there are models of being able to do that in an accountable way.
Thank you. Now we got a question here, please
thank you.
It even provoked me, but not fully.
because I actually had a question. And it's linked to what Stephen had said. Alison Oconto, for those of you online and others who don't know me. What I really enjoyed about all of the discussions and the presentations.
and the guiding questions of what is made visible to the standards and the metrics.
For me it always poses the question, What is a bit invisible? And this goes to the point of Stephen about accountability. So if you can't see something, you can't actually be held accountable for it. And so my question actually is for everyone
what has been made invisible? Because I think this? This question came out very clearly in Heather's presentation, but it was in all of them actually.
that by making visible certain metrics, certain kind of values.
You're making invisible others. And therefore you're reducing the accountability. And I think that goes even to the question of the role of the state and linked up with the the work on what's emerging in Europe. Because right now, along with the human rights due diligence, there's also it's already been passed in France and in Germany that you're going to have 0 default. 0 imported deforestation, which is very important for particularly cocoa and other crops, soy, and things that are that are 150
strongly linked to deforestation. And so the Government the European Commission
has pushed now of kind of, let's say, regulatory instruments to focus on
trying to reduce deforestation.
But the mechanisms that they're adopting are these standards that are focused on very, very specific indicators, and that are not necessarily those that we need to curb deforestation. So I want to hear from the presenters about that question of invisibility.
Thank you.
Thank you. I would like to start.
Yes, please hold on.
thanks. Thanks very much. Allison, I think. in the case of by a security in Australia. like, I guess, a sort of a key context which I didn't mention in my presentation. Is that that whole shift to shared responsibility has been a fairly long shift. So by security, up until the late 19 nineties, early 2 thousands was very much. It was highly centralized. It was governed
primarily through the Federal government in Australia and
what we find what we found in our research through talking to bi security stakeholders is that even though in many ways we
stakeholders feel as though harm that responsibility and also accountability, has been become more distributed
in practice, that centralized the that centralised form of control is still quite prominent. And what that means in practice is that a lot of bi-security stakeholders feel as though they have greater responsibility and accountability. They don't necessarily have the resourcing to go along with that.
So what we find in practices that we.
there's aspects of that responsibility that are still quite invisible to the central state, to the, to the, to to central governments, if that makes sense. So what we find is that the knowledge and the experiences of a lot of those regional level stakeholders are still not really taken into account.
and a lot of what characterizes shared responsibility in Australia is still around formal rules and regulations, deeds, agreements, pro holes, and so forth.
and that
it means that everyday experiences, the everyday practices
tend to be invisible, and I guess
what I was trying to do in my presentation was to start revealing some of those every day
practices the messiness, I suppose the
forms of quality calculation. I'm still not convinced that's the right theoretical way to go. But that's something that I need to work through. But yeah, look, I guess hopefully. That answers your question in some way, in partial ways, also traces the concerns that Stephen was talking about to.
you know.
before the okay? So yeah, that's a really good question. So I think.
I guess the issue with deforestation is that you can always measure the number, the amount of forest being lost. And you have this satellite data and everything. But what you cannot actually measure is that it's the or you can actually see it. The process?
you know within it. So we talk about deforestation or the government sort of claim that we've made some efforts to reduce deforestation. But it's still happening. And then in the end, what
the local communities become, some of the the culprit.
because they are actually closer to that. But so I think, what's missing is this, local nuance is local
practices. But the problem is that with indicators and and standards, you have you know, rather universal way of seeing things. But you missed to see some of these differences happening at the local level. So we sort of suggest that that if we can measure or we can assess
things on the basis of these local processes. It will be really hard work. You can actually, you know, at the national level, sort of see it one by one. But if it if the accountability processes happens at the local level, and you trust people that they're doing the right thing, I think it's.
It's far easier for the government
basically to do that. So yeah, I don't know whether it's answer your question.
It's her and Diana and mean, Sant, do you have any
reflections?
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Yes, I I think we' that some reflections. I I think. Yeah, it's it's also really resonates with what we are trying to do, or what we are seeing, or also what we're still thinking about
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): in in general. This, what at least what we're at identifying is a sort of shared discourse that is, maybe even something that is globally like. At least you'll find it's popping up everywhere. This idea of quantification as the central. I guess something very important to some feeling, I think, already. There, you see that it has a lot of power to show some things and really not show others.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): But I think what is interesting in what we were researching is that it does showed it, that it really plays out in different ways according to a lot of different factors, some of which we touch upon. And I think that in if you look at the 2 different groups, for example, that we are studying.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): and they are both in the same id, so they are both
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): code in both groups. Some things are upskirts and others not. But I think that in this second group, which is looking at the more, you know, like this bigger cloud of suppliers. with more standardized instruments, I think there is this way harder for, as you say, for like as these local nuances or this is more specific.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): or maybe the UN unseen to actually emerge because there's really a lot of boundaries between how the companies here are looking at things and where the where the information actually comes from, you have some some little examples, for example, from companies that that receive textiles with little notes. So into them.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): thing, like all our working conditions, for example, are not not okay, here in China. I think it's quite a general thing. I think there there are even here. I think there's ways that it's that some other view points of view see through. But I think in this first group, I think that they create way, more possibility for these things to to happen and for this interactions to happen, because even if they also are reading this logic of trying to quantify a lot of things, and they are
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): having often the very extensive measures of of really seeing, even like how much a farmer spends on on things that he's using or she's using it. So it's very detailed. But at the same time they come into contact with all these people. And so there are way, more occasions where actually some
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): things that cannot speak will speak back more easily, I think, or they they see the environment. Sunday. So
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): I think, yeah, the the both ways of seeing hide things. And then and that highlights others, but I think there's maybe some are more porous than than than than others, or something meets. Allow for more things to emerge. I don't know.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): Yeah, maybe I wanted to add something, not maybe, about this article specifically. But when we talk about, for example, the human rights and diligence legislation, we've been thinking a lot. The big question is, will it be effective? Another, and it kind of resonates with your question, what will be visible and what's been visible. And I think we're arguing now that this focus on management systems, on on systematically trying to address and assess risks will
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): keep a lot of things invisible, because
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): it would be very naive to think that all the power dynamics in the the global economy will disappear. I mean, who are who our company is going to speak. To which stakeholders are they going to going to involve in the conversation? That's a big question. And also when engaging with stakeholders
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): which voices will win. How will it? I mean, that's also a big question that we have. So in that sense, we still think that a lot of things will
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): still be invisible, and by quantifying things it will, it won't come back. So it's maybe a small
heater. Would you like to do you have any reflections.
You no.
Nadine?
Nadine Arnold: Yeah, maybe. Then. first of all, thank you for all the presentations, and I think I probably have a follow up question, and like happy to connect to Allison's questions about the invisibility, because I think what was really nice, or what I really found very fascinating is what
Nadine Arnold: heather told us about the unintended consequences of standards and standardization of that it actually makes Co 2 emissions and claim a change very visible. So it's kind of narrowing down sustainability to to climate change and based on this insight. I was wondering in Diana's and vintage presentation. Because you have this 2 groups, one group focusing very strongly on standards and standardization and big believe in certification mechanisms
Nadine Arnold: and audits. And then the other group. yeah, was more in favor of yeah, direct relationships and non-standardized exchange. So if heather is right, we we would say that in the first group. that is if I remember correctly, relying a lot on standards and audits, there should also be a strong focus on climate change. So climate Change and Co. 2 emissions should be very visible.
Nadine Arnold: and it shouldn't be the case then in in the other group, and I was just wondering whether you see this patch, and also when comparing your 2 groups.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): I think we're we're mostly focusing on the human rights issues, of course. So so. But it is true that
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): oh, it's inevitable now, in the almost all companies also have this courses on on sustainability. And I I I think yeah, I think we could. Of course we didn't really, systematically look at this topic, but I think we could a little bit for me. I think, if I see the data. See that like? not necessarily only on all on the carbon emissions, for example, but but there are, of course, and it was actually the way around. So like the second group was more working around around audits. And it is as a more standardized way of seeing. Of course, they will need indicators. So I think.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): for example, I think some of them are working on. Yeah, it depends, again on what you see, like, biological things, for example, are quite, quite, quite an important one. But then they focus only on, for example, the the label, while when looking at at sustainability in the first group, which is more like going deep into things there. I think there
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): the they also say that they they generally don't believe in these, so they will have to go there and see what this biological meet like, what are you actually doing with? And often they also see that it actually is not doing anything on the ground, and I think it's the same for deforestation, or I I think, for for Co. 2 emissions. I don't know if you have a lot of
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): company's work is. But for this I think it's the same that in the first group they are quite some companies quite actively working, for example, to go there and like I try to figure out also in a bit of a
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): new colonial sense. Sometimes, like I can, we plans to trees and like how can we do it? And they they they're putting money into projects to plan trees and stuff like this. why not even like they put some pictures on the website, something, but they won't even ask like, for
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): they they try to quantify it. But again they don't.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): They try to quantify themselves, and then they try to communicate about it. They don't. I don't know. They're still trying to simplify things, but maybe not through all these mechanisms that
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): they consider to obey or to fake. I don't know if it's a good, maybe where we also see is not really necessarily a narrow focus on certain topics of sustainability sometimes. But we do see, apparently a narrow, sometimes focus on certain geographic locations. So there's really this sense of what is going on in global South
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): can be or is possibly problematic. And what is happening close to us is not as problematic. And that's that's something that we are going to be seeing So in that sense, it's not maybe about one hop topic, but it's like a a notion that what happens, for example, in for
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): there is a case where they're buying natural. So from India. And there are certain provinces where a lot of research has been done about the working conditions in the natural stone sector. So there is really this big focus on India. And meanwhile they say, well, in other maybe global south countries, there could also be issues with what happens close to Europe is fine. There won't be any problems there. So there, we do see a very specific focus, just wanted to add them.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): So in that sense it adds on what he says, this new colonial Id. It's it's really there.
Guys, are you willing to comment on what?
Based on your research, on standards, both hydrogen and carbon.
Can I ask you, what do you think is reasonable to expect from
the logic of making things visible, and making the information compatible and accessible. And what types of things should we not expect from this
logic of governance?
Heather Lovell: Sure, thank you for that question.
Heather Lovell: in terms of what's going on with hygiene at the moment. I do think it's reasonable to expect this
Heather Lovell: broader sustainability issues will become much more visible.
Heather Lovell: there is one of the organizations that I had on the slides. in that definition of green. I jen they called the Green Hygiene organization that they're not for profit
Heather Lovell: organization based in Geneva and they've put out a standard which is quite different to the dominant focus just on greenhouse gas emissions. So it's much. But it has a whole range of social sustainability, metrics included. And yeah, interestingly, that's an industry that.
Heather Lovell: And they're the ones who are talking about social license and needing to broaden.
Heather Lovell: what green hydrogen is about, and standardization of green hygiene. So I I do think that after 24 standards that I listed on one of my sides, I do think there will be a shift
Heather Lovell: to to broader of of criteria for sustainability.
And are the comments on that
further questions? Yes, please.
Hi, everyone. Jonathan Smith. I'm a visiting torture at Gadjamata University in Indonesia, and I wanted to ask
and good question, but it kind of brings in some of maybe the other panelists as well. looking at
accountability from a top down or bottom up approach? I think I guess maybe the the type of accountability looks different. If you're talking about creating a new technology like green hydrogen as opposed to a community led process to manage a forest. So I wanted to ask Anka if you could say a bit more about You talked about how there's a
kind of immeasurability of the community and how they look at their assets. Are there also local systems for accountability to help protect. And, you know, preserve the forest or reserve. You know the economic system in a way that's sustainable, that that might look at a different way of looking at accountability without necessarily the kind of top down verification systems which may be applicable more in other settings. Thank you.
Thank you, Jonathan. yeah. So
from from my cases. I think you're right, that there is a way the local communities have their own, their own standards, their own way of accountability. When it. Talk about the amount of you know, the the
the hectares of forests. They don't know how to measure forest, but they know their boundaries, so say the the traditional communities in Papua. They they they know that
this area here belongs to us. And then they know that if there's there are some indicators, some local indicators, that they can sort of relate that to environmental damage. One empirical example would be the way they see their water.
So they know whether, if if the supply of water is getting lower, there's some sense of what is being scarce, then they know that there's something happening to the to their forest, so that stops them from, say.
harvesting timber. So they know their limits. in Jambi. They have their ways of what they call, which is basically on how they limit the use of river resources for a certain period of time up until a period where they can. Still they. They can then have as their fish.
So there are small indicators, local indicators not necessarily countable, but exist unless you know, qualitatively speaking, so I think if we could better document those kind of things, we know that there are some, but I think if we dig deeper into the communities, they would probably have some more information about the way they measure, or, you know, have a comfortable
of their their forest management. So yeah, I think it's a. It's not really answering a lot, but I think it's a we know that there are things that we can understand from the local wisdom.
Thank you. I see no more hands waving. Is there anyone who would like to raise her questions?
Is it possible if percent are asked questions to the audience?
Yeah, yeah.
My question is, I guess all of you represent the experiments with
different forms of standard different forms of indicators. Knowing that. Say what? Stephen said, some of the indicators are really just. You know me liberal in that. In it's me chair. I was wondering if you could share
the types of indicators that you think are
unique from the local that
can we see it as an alternative to this regime of
measurements and accountability
yeah, yeah.
short short responses. Yes, please. I'm aware of something that farmers are using in Australia called participatory guarantee schemes, and that's in place of the costly certification systems like organic certification that might exclude small scale farmers.
So if you, if you search those terms, there's there's quite a little bit written on that in Australia at least, and maybe even beyond participatory guarantee schemes. Yeah.
I apologize in advance. So I would say, what I have seen is that this idea? And I sort of. Maybe it was our Belgian presenters we're talking about kind of granularity
and more integrated ways of representing the information.
For me. It's a dead end. This question, of what kinds of indicators are we going to make them more spatial, temporal, granular? We're going to get more precision and one more.
Yes, more point.
you know I think it was the fore of the business. People say, if you can't manage it, you can't measure
my view. Is your measurement. Instead of managing
the performative dimension
eliminated action and outcomes. So
with all respect, we're friends. I think it's not the right question about which indicates this indicator that I think Vaughn's idea if I understood this.
while gulation
is
like on this comment about less measurement and more listening. So it's a kind of in hybrid between quantitative and qualitative, and the idea that information has different formats, and we must
look across information format which I think is encouraging.
But again.
I think the question is not measuring things differently.
I think it's a dead end.
Yeah. yeah.
Short responses from 2 person here fully disagree with that last comment. because I think what is also important is, I think it's a very good question that you asked anger, so I think, keep asking those questions, and your work is fantastic, and it's very interesting. And I think these are the important questions to ask, because these are the people who don't often have a voice in these debates, and you're raising that voice and and looking at ways to support them.
I I think the issue with standards and the and the the race to the bottom in terms of the granularity isn't always the issue. The issue is, who owns the standards?
Who who has the power in standard setting. And what kind of systems can be used to offset that power? And if they give, if people can use these local guarantee systems amongst themselves to verify and certify even informally the products that they're selling that opens up tests to markets and improves livelihoods. And it's what what's to lose
is my response. Sorry, Stephen. You can have the mic again if you want.
So I've been working on participatory guarantee systems for one time now, and we've looked at them across the world. And me. Specifically, I've been working
in Africa in the past 2 years with a number of participatory guarantee systems that have been up and running. And what I think is the fundamental difference between Pgs and the third party certification systems is the notion of knowledge, and whose knowledge counts.
And I think when you actually shift to make that shift and you're able to begin to standardize.
they qualify a different way of knowing
that can be put into some sort of more democratic process.
You do have opportunities, but I do have to admit
we have very serious problems in Pgs as well, and most of the Pgs that I have been working with recently
and have turned into internal control systems.
And so you're actually losing the former knowledge, even though it's a principle, and it's a lot of discourse. A lot of that is not there. And so I'm really excited. What are some interesting things of trying to change what we're trying to measure.
and I fully fully believe that the idea of an individual farm is not what we should be measuring in terms of trying to understand sustainability.
I think we need measurements that are that go beyond an individual responsibility. And if we don't get to that level of trying to figure out what can be measured out of collectives.
because even the Pgs still rely upon control of an individual forum.
And so I think we need to shift there. And so I have some really exciting new projects. We're going to try to do that are going to look at more collective and territorial level metrics. And how those can be developed. So that's where I'm really excited.
Go to.
But I don't know how to do that yet, so
I see that Diana and, Vincent, you have raised your hands. Is that correct?
Yeah. So a short, short response or comments. And then we will end this session. So please.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): yeah, it's super interesting, very difficult, I think, to have short comments, I think, first.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): like on the granular measuring devices. We're not in any way saying that they're a very good solution. I think they can be a very pretty solution also. Sometimes they we had a company thinking about. If farmers shouldn't have less children and things like this like that, having very detailed information, is, as you say, it can be, a very strong power tool as well.
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): but I think in general, because we're looking at working conditions which is very different from from from a lot of environmental standards. So they're also the data that you're producing. You can actually go and ask people themselves, how are you feeling? Our like, your working conditions are defined. So I think there for us point of what what I think is would be interesting is, if you're looking at
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): the source of the information looking, for example, a trade unions, seeing like, how can actually, people like people that are working in very different places. How can they organize themselves to then have a voice that I'll spec, as you say, or that can you organize to, for example, to
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): stop stop deliveries or like those interactions with with with workers in the global global north, and make make alliances there. I think sometimes it is already happening, or there's there's starting point. So that I think on the social side of things, it's quite an interesting thing to see you, say I. Instead of this, this idea of measuring is already flawed or strange, I think in this sense, because it's actually just about relationship with zoom people, and we don't have to measure if someone is sustainable, if they just
Diana Pietrzak (HIVA-KU Leuven): ask. And I think if people can put stand up for themselves and have a bullet at the power to do so. Measurements are even redundant. We don't need that anymore in the social part, I think, and we could just say, as long as people can organize and make their own priorities felt throughout the value chain, then we can stop measuring it all. I think there would be even a an e to Utopian for up the a little comments I don't know.
Thank you, and
that
for will be the last words. In this session we have 15Â min before next
part of the accountability session starts, and there we have 2 keynotes, and we will also have space for discussion. So
we need 15Â min to get some energy and then come back. And I will.
So so great, thanks to the 4%, 35%. There's Vincent and and Diana and Heater and Oregon. Yeah. And he, yeah, so please, thank you.
Right?