Models of public-private and regional cooperation were considered as potential pathways for global solutions to the challenges. In the early 90’s, regional organic standards were limited to the European Union. Today, regional organic standards are being forged in the Pacific island countries and territories, East Africa, Central America and Dominican...

This volume is published at a critical juncture in the history of human impact on the biosphere – a history we can trace back some 10 000 years – to the era of the agricultural revolution. Now, in retrospect, we see a revolution that was indeed slow and by today’s...

As the world seeks solutions for facing the reality of changing climates, the importance of mitigating the effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions becomes increasingly significant, especially in the agriculture sector which both emits and sequesters GHGs. Agriculture causes approximately one-third of global GHGs when direct energy use, emissions from...

This document sets out international requirements for organic certification bodies (IROCB). These requirements are intended to represent a consensus on good practices in organic conformity assessment among private and public institutions. IROCB aims to provide a baseline for assessing the equivalence of services performed by various certification bodies outside a...

The main purpose for the establishment of AROS is to facilitate equivalence between organic standards and certification programmes within and beyond the Asia region. It was also anticipated that AROS could be adapted to serve as the national standard for some of the individual countries in the region. The Global...

The Global Organic Market Access (GOMA) project2 , a joint FAO, IFOAM and UNCTAD initiative, works towards reducing the barriers to trade in organic products. In seeking to reduce those barriers, GOMA works to facilitate harmonization and especially equivalence between different countries’, and private sector, systems for organic standards and...