Greening the networked economy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 183

the more than marginal role these informational governance arrange-
ments around labelling play, according to the various stakeholders (cf.
Overdevest, 2005 ).
Similar to the production process standardisation of the Inter-
national Standard Organisation (ISO), these environmental product
labels meet usually reluctant developing countries on their way. The
conditions for applying such labels have often been set by the largest
players without much participation of developing countries, and usu-
ally it is especially the larger, well-resourced producer networks that
are able to institutionalise the arrangements necessary for fulfilling
these labelling requirements. In a detailed empirical analysis of various
ecolabels, Ponte ( 2006 ) shows how, among others, the MSC and the
FSC labels, for fish and forests, respectively, have generally offered
the more sophisticated and larger suppliers an advantage. Most of the
labelled fish and forests relate to the large companies and the devel-
oped countries, and not so much to the small-scale domestic ones in
developing countries. These labels are expensive to comply with, but
in time will become the minimum standards for the market. In gen-
eral, these sustainability labels have moved to “hands-off, auditable,
systemic and managerial approaches to sustainability” (Ponte, 2006 ;
48), in which expert knowledge, scientists and system managers are
key actors that look for conformity to system performance and specific
rules, rather than to stated objectives of sustainability, safe food and
fair trade. Thus, Ponte ( 2006 ) argues, special systems of compliance
and verification are needed to cater to the needs of the developing coun-
tries and small-scale producers, instead of just financial and technical
assistance for them. Labels and labelling processes are unequal power
games, which are not repaired by simple assistance.
The strong increase of labels, and the growing debates and contro-
versies about them, illustrate the importance of informational politics
and the role that labels play as symbol mobilisers and trust generators.
What happens with labelling replicates - but at the same time may
contest - the branding approaches of private companies, in which bil-
lions have been invested. With the growing importance of branding,
sign-value and a mediatised economy (Lash, 2002 ), one can expect
that ecolabelling and environmental symbolism increases. Although
environmental NGOs generally have supported critical analyses on
branding by MNCs (with Naomi Klein's No Logo as the leading view),
they also have learned the importance and power of symbols, trust and
their own logos. The 'marketing' of WWF's Panda logo is arguably