• GI - Geographical Indications
• COSA - The Committee on Sustainability Assessment

 
GI
Geographical Indications Project

In partnership with the United Nations International Trade Centre.

What do Parmigiano cheese, Tequila, Idaho potatoes, and Darjeeling tea have in common?

Geographical Indications (GIs) or appellations are a potentially unique form of competitive advantage available even for small farmers and enterprises. In more than a hundred nations, they are a unique expression of local agro-ecological and even cultural characteristics that have come to be valued as high quality traditions and are sometimes protected.

A multinational team is reviewing more than 100 studies and publications on the topic and gathering together new case studies in order to evaluate what different developing country origins have done and document best practices and lessons learned.

Our goal is to provide an objective 'Guide' to understanding, forming, and using GIs effectively. The 'Guide to GIs for Developing Countries' will be published by the UN's International Trade Center (see below for abstract).

The research team includes contributors that are among the world's most respected in this particular field of intellectual property:
♦ Fred Abbott (Edward Ball Eminent Scholar, Professor of International Law FSU)
♦ Daniele Giovannucci, (Team Leader)
♦ Justin Hughes (Director, Intellectual Property Law Program at Cardozo)
♦ Catarina Illsley (Head, GEA Grupo de Estudios Ambientales)
♦ Ricardo Juarez (Researcher FAO)
♦ Tim Josling (Professor Emeritus Stanford University)
♦ William Kerr (Agricultural Economics chair at University of Saskatchewan and editor of the Journal of International Law and Trade Policy)
♦ Bernard O'Connor (EU Attorney and Professor of Law, author of 'Agriculture in WTO Law' and 'The Law of Geographical Indications').
♦ Koen Oosterom Technical Cooperation Coordination International Trade Centre, UNCTAD/WTO
♦ Dwijen Rangnekar (Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation and the School of Law Warwick University)
♦ Kira Schroeder (Project manager INCAE-CIMS)
♦ May Yeung (Policy Analysis Research Associate The Estey Centre)
 

 
COSA
The Committee on Sustainability Assessment

In partnership with International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID), Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Ensenza (CATIE), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), and INCAE Centro de Inteligencia sobre los Mercados Sostenibles (CIMS).

The COSA (The Committee on Sustainability Assessment) is also a program for building information and management capacity in sustainable agricultural practices at the global level. As a partnership between leading research institutions in consuming and producing countries, the COSA program aims to develop a rigorous assessment tool and to also train producers and other stakeholders to measure and understand the costs and benefits of undertaking different sustainability initiatives.

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid growth of voluntary standards systems (i.e. organic fair trade,…) promoting sustainable development within agriculture, especially in the coffee sector. Despite the rapid growth of such systems, there has been comparatively little objective research or information available on their actual impacts or costs and benefits.

The core of the methodology is an innovative "econo-enviro-social" tool to assess both the direct and indirect costs and benefits at the economic, environmental, and social levels. This tool will be implemented under different conditions (rainforest, semi arid plains, mountainous, etc.) and for both small and large producers using several hundred original case studies in three continents.

It is expected to generate a series of insights and recommendations that will serve governments, private enterprise, and producers to develop sound strategies with regard to sustainability initiatives. The research will cover at least six initiatives: Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Certified (EUREP-GAP), 4Cs, and Starbucks CAFE Practices. Although initially being developed for coffee, these approaches and lessons are designed to be adapted and applied to other commodities as well.

COSA is a project of the SCP, a global consortium of 20 institutions promoting sustainability. These include: CATIE, CIMS-INCAE, CIRAD, IISD, ICO, UNCTAD, and USAID. The Director of Research is Daniele Giovannucci.

The International Advisory Panel includes leading stakeholders and is currently chaired by the Executive Director of the International Coffee Organization.

The Scientific Committee is independent to  ensure  the  overall  rigor,  quality and objectivity of the research. Members include: Larry Busch of Michigan State University, Alain de Janvry of UC Berkeley, Steven Jaffee of the World Bank, Jeremy Haggar of CATIE, and Sietze Valeema of Wageningen University.

 
PUBLICATION [PDF 686KB]
Seeking Sustainability: COSA Preliminary Analysis of Sustainability Initiatives in the Coffee Sector
International Institute for Sustainable Development. Daniele Giovannucci, Jason Potts, et al. (2008)

Abstract:
The growing economic value and consumer popularity of sustainability standards inevitably raise questions about the extent to which their structure and dynamics actually address many environmental, economic and public welfare issues. The Committee on Sustainable Assessment (COSA) was formed, in part, to develop a scientifically credible framework capable of assessing the impacts associated with the adoption of sustainability initiatives. This paper examines the pilot phase of vetting and testing the COSA method, an innovative management tool used to gather and analyze data using economic, environmental and social metrics.