Evaluation and Research

Auditors for the Rainforest Alliance and its partners in the Sustainable Agriculture Network see firsthand the changes that farms and forestry operations make to comply with sustainability standards. Talk to an auditor and you'll hear stories about places where certification has made a real, tangible difference -- increasing local wildlife populations by enhancing forest cover or markedly decreasing the incidence of worker accidents by requiring enhanced safety precautions. These stories inspire and motivate, but to truly understand and quantify the cumulative impacts of our work in agriculture, forestry and tourism we need additional tools.

To this end, the Rainforest Alliance launched our Evaluation and Research (E&R) program in early 2007. The program examines the impacts of our work using three approaches:

Our research focuses predominately on the impacts of sustainability training and certification on the following areas:

* Water
* Biodiversity
* Environmental degradation
* Threatened and endangered species
* Treatment of workers
* Community health
* Competitiveness of community-based operations
* Overall costs and benefits of certification
1. The collection of standardized information (called 'global indicators') from every Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farm and forestry operation, as well as tourism operations participating in our Best Management Practices program;


2. The incorporation of 'impacts monitoring' into our projects, where global indicators are supplemented by additional indicators and methods tailored to a particular project and, sometimes, to the requirement of the donor; and


3. The establishment of research partnerships with universities or research institutes to use scientific methods to address specific impacts-related questions (projects like these typically have a narrow focus on a single organism or region).

Using these three approaches, we are increasing our understanding of the social, environmental and economic benefits of our work with farmers, foresters and tourism operators -- and communicating these findings to staff, supporters, critics, consumers and other interested parties. More importantly, the information gathered by our E&R team is helping to guide and strengthen our existing programs, and may eventually lead to the development of new programs.