This article systematically evaluates whether, how, and to what extent twelve prominent forestry and fisheries certification schemes address human rights in their standards. In line with the broader cross-fertilization of the fields of international human rights and environmental law and policy, our results demonstrate that human rights norms and considerations – primarily Indigenous, labour, and procedural rights – are increasingly reflected in the rulemaking of these schemes. At the same time, our analysis also demonstrates the mixed and underwhelming performance of certification standards in protecting human rights norms, including those relating to women, children, racialized and ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, workers, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, and peasants and rural peoples. Through descriptive statistics, we also show that levels of human rights adherence vary significantly across schemes and that standards developed in the forestry sector tend to outperform those for fisheries. Our methodology and results add a new dimension to efforts to assess the stringency, equity, and legitimacy of private authority in the environmental field.

本文系统地评估了 12 个著名的林业和渔业认证计划是否、如何以及在多大程度上在其标准中涉及人权。随着国际人权与环境法和政策领域更广泛的交叉融合，我们的研究结果表明，人权规范和考虑因素（主要是原住民权利、劳工权利和程序权利）越来越多地反映在这些计划的规则制定中。与此同时，我们的分析还表明，认证标准在保护人权规范方面表现参差不齐，表现平平，包括与妇女、儿童、种族和少数民族、残疾人、原住民、工人、2SLGBTQIA+社区和农民有关的人权规范和农村人民。通过描述性统计，我们还表明，不同计划的人权遵守水平差异很大，林业部门制定的标准往往优于渔业部门制定的标准。我们的方法和结果为评估环境领域私人权威的严格性、公平性和合法性的努力增加了一个新的维度。