Ulrich Hoffmann, a German economist, was a senior lecturer and had a chair on trade and international financial relations at the Institute on Economics for Developing Countries in Berlin before joining the UN secretariat in the mid-1980s. Most of the time, he worked for the secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, focusing on production and trade of commodities, issues of sustainable resource management and the transformation of agriculture as well as on the economics of climate change. For many years, he was principal editor of UNCTAD’s regular Trade and Environment Review, one of UNTAD’s flagship publications. After retiring from UNCTAD in 2015 he was a senior associate at the Research Institute on Organic Agriculture and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Arpit Bhutani has a Master of International Law and Economics from the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. He worked at United Nations, Geneva as part of the team that prepared and launched the UN Forum on Sustainability Standards. He is also an expert on the circular economy, having worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He is a TEDx speaker and a Huffington Post contributor. Arpit is a serial entrepreneur, handles his 70-year old food processing family business in India, Hind Agro Sales, and now is also co-founder of two circular economy startups in Copenhagen, Circular Innovation Lab and ShopC.

“The African food sovereignty movement has been tackling with the restricting impact of markets on the biodiversity of African agriculture for a long time. Reading the book, I was alerted to the importance and ambivalent role of global sustainability standards in global food markets. I learnt how, as a constituent part of the current unjust global agro-food system, Voluntary Sustainability Standards can jeopardize the food sovereignty of our African peasant-based systems and exclude our smallholders from linking to markets.”—Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Centre for Biodiversity, Johannesburg

• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes – Preface – Acknowledgements – Introduction – Sustainability Standards, Their Systems, Role and Impact – VSS at a Crossroads – Is There Any Future Perspective for VSS and What Might It Look Like? – List of Acronyms – Explanations of Some Technical Terms – References – Index.

Ulrich Hoffmann, a German economist, was a senior lecturer and had a chair on trade and international financial relations at the Institute on Economics for Developing Countries in Berlin before joining the UN secretariat in the mid-1980s. Most of the time, he worked for the secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, focusing on production and trade of commodities, issues of sustainable resource management and the transformation of agriculture as well as on the economics of climate change. For many years, he was principal editor of UNCTAD’s regular Trade and Environment Review, one of UNTAD’s flagship publications. After retiring from UNCTAD in 2015 he was a senior associate at the Research Institute on Organic Agriculture and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Arpit Bhutani has a Master of International Law and Economics from the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. He worked at United Nations, Geneva as part of the team that prepared and launched the UN Forum on Sustainability Standards. He is also an expert on the circular economy, having worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He is a TEDx speaker and a Huffington Post contributor. Arpit is a serial entrepreneur, handles his 70-year old food processing family business in India, Hind Agro Sales, and now is also co-founder of two circular economy startups in Copenhagen, Circular Innovation Lab and ShopC.

“The African food sovereignty movement has been tackling with the restricting impact of markets on the biodiversity of African agriculture for a long time. Reading the book, I was alerted to the importance and ambivalent role of global sustainability standards in global food markets. I learnt how, as a constituent part of the current unjust global agro-food system, Voluntary Sustainability Standards can jeopardize the food sovereignty of our African peasant-based systems and exclude our smallholders from linking to markets.”—Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Centre for Biodiversity, Johannesburg

• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes – Preface – Acknowledgements – Introduction – Sustainability Standards, Their Systems, Role and Impact – VSS at a Crossroads – Is There Any Future Perspective for VSS and What Might It Look Like? – List of Acronyms – Explanations of Some Technical Terms – References – Index.

Ulrich Hoffmann, a German economist, was a senior lecturer and had a chair on trade and international financial relations at the Institute on Economics for Developing Countries in Berlin before joining the UN secretariat in the mid-1980s. Most of the time, he worked for the secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, focusing on production and trade of commodities, issues of sustainable resource management and the transformation of agriculture as well as on the economics of climate change. For many years, he was principal editor of UNCTAD’s regular Trade and Environment Review, one of UNTAD’s flagship publications. After retiring from UNCTAD in 2015 he was a senior associate at the Research Institute on Organic Agriculture and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Arpit Bhutani has a Master of International Law and Economics from the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. He worked at United Nations, Geneva as part of the team that prepared and launched the UN Forum on Sustainability Standards. He is also an expert on the circular economy, having worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He is a TEDx speaker and a Huffington Post contributor. Arpit is a serial entrepreneur, handles his 70-year old food processing family business in India, Hind Agro Sales, and now is also co-founder of two circular economy startups in Copenhagen, Circular Innovation Lab and ShopC.

“The African food sovereignty movement has been tackling with the restricting impact of markets on the biodiversity of African agriculture for a long time. Reading the book, I was alerted to the importance and ambivalent role of global sustainability standards in global food markets. I learnt how, as a constituent part of the current unjust global agro-food system, Voluntary Sustainability Standards can jeopardize the food sovereignty of our African peasant-based systems and exclude our smallholders from linking to markets.”—Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Centre for Biodiversity, Johannesburg

• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes – Preface – Acknowledgements – Introduction – Sustainability Standards, Their Systems, Role and Impact – VSS at a Crossroads – Is There Any Future Perspective for VSS and What Might It Look Like? – List of Acronyms – Explanations of Some Technical Terms – References – Index.