Common property regimes in participatory guarantee systems (PGS): Sharing responsibility in the collective management of organic labels

Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are certification schemes, which offer a guarantee that labelled products comply with a related quality standard. They differ from the prevailing Third-Party Certification (TPC) because in a PGS, food system stakeholders are involved in the decision to award a label. With TPC, a single certification body takes the decision and certification costs may be too high to be borne by smallholder producers. According to PGS guidelines (IFOAM, 2019), shared rights to actively contribute to the inspections, participate in exclusion decisions for certification and to manage the contents of the standard are key features of a PGS. Producers have significantly more rights on the label in a PGS than in TPC. Each PGS has a specific governance structure, which reflects how they have adapted to their respective institutional environments. In this paper, we compare the distribution of power in TPC for the European organic label and four PGS, Nature & Progrès (N&P) in France; Ecovida Agroecology Network (EAN) in Brazil; Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) in the US; and Kilimo Hai (KH) in Tanzania. Drawing on the bundle of rights concept developed by Schlager and Ostrom (1992), we discuss how the common property regimes in PGS have potential for bridging the gap between organic labels and their users. We describe each governance structure, by drawing on data from in-depth interviews with key informants and on the analysis of framework documents and regulatory texts specific to each initiative. We show that the distribution of stakeholders’ rights varies considerably between the different PGS. Similar to the commons, these differences can impact the label’s legitimacy, the PGS members’ involvement and mobilization, and the effectiveness of the rules relating to implementation and compliance.