How ethical is Rainforest Alliance?

Rainforest Alliance claims to “drive sustainability at scale”, and has been widely favoured by multinationals such as McDonald’s and many UK supermarkets.

However, over the years, many experts and campaigners have raised concerns about abuses on its certified farms and other flaws in the label’s approach. In this article, we explain how the label works, explore some of its criticisms and look at how it compares to Fairtrade.

How does the Rainforest Alliance standard work? 

Rainforest Alliance primarily focuses on setting rules for both producers and buyers, and checking whether participating farms and other companies are likely to be complying with these, through a series of risk assessments and some in-person visits.

Since 2020, the Rainforest Alliance has also introduced something that it calls a ‘Sustainability Differential’. This essentially requires buyers to provide an additional payment on top of the market price of a product, in recognition of the added value from the certification scheme.

This additional payment is important because poverty is one of the biggest causes of workers’ rights and environmental issues. For example, over half of cocoa farmers in Cote D’Ivoire – one of the biggest cocoa producing regions – are below the global poverty line. Many smallholders in the country therefore rely on children, often their own, to work on farms in order to try and earn enough to survive.

Rainforest Alliance’s ‘Sustainability Differential’ is similar to the Fairtrade ‘premium’, which also ensures a set amount is paid to farmers on top of the price of their goods. However, Fairtrade goes far beyond the Rainforest Alliance standard in tackling poverty, as we outline below. 

How strong is the Rainforest Alliance standard?

The Rainforest Alliance standard includes important measures for the environment and workers’ rights. For example, it requires that workers living on site have access to “clean and decent living quarters”, prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and bans use of particularly high-risk pesticides. It has strong rules on deforestation, prohibiting all growing on land that has been deforested since 2014.

However, the certification also falls short in vital areas, particularly living wage. While it requires farms to move towards paying a living wage to workers, producers can remain certified without ever actually achieving this goal.

Rainforest Alliance has taken a positive step by introducing its ‘Sustainability Differential’. However, the payment amount is small and very likely does not go far enough to address the abject poverty many smallholder farmers face. For cocoa, for example, as of July 2024, the ‘Sustainability Differential’ was less than 1% of the global market price for cocoa beans.

Over the years, the scheme has also faced concerns about whether it has adequate checks in place to ensure that farms are complying with rules.

Certifications often check farms through onsite audits – visits by experts who speak to management and workers, and check conditions. Rainforest Alliance only requires these kinds of visits for farms deemed to be medium or high risk – and even then they may only take place once every three years for medium risk sites.

If abuses are found, Rainforest Alliance will generally not decertify a producer. Instead, it requires companies to have risk assessments, grievance mechanisms and remediation processes in place to identify and address any violations found. This kind of approach can be constructive: for example, it has helped address the problem of child labour in the cocoa industry, where most farms are owned by smallholders. However, there is less evidence of its appropriateness for other problems.  

Problems with Rainforest Alliance 

In recent years, investigations have found a number of serious issues on Rainforest Alliance farms.

For example, in 2020, the Guardian published an article stating that Rainforest Alliance was “facing allegations of labour exploitation, use of illegal agrochemicals and the concealment of hundreds of undocumented workers at some of the pineapple plantations it certifies in Costa Rica.” The investigation suggested that auditors may have been duped by farm owners, with one whistleblower suggesting that a plantation owner hid over 800 undocumented workers.

Ruth Rennie, director of standards and assurance at the Rainforest Alliance told the Guardian, “We are aware that some certificate holders will try to hide nonconformity. To avoid this, we rely on unannounced audits and the auditors’ team to identify the nonconformities.”

In 2021, the certification was again implicated in serious abuse. The law firm Leigh Day announced that women working on southern Malawi tea plantations were “suing their employer Lujeri and its British parent company PGI over allegations of systemic sexual harassment including rape, assault and discrimination.” The claims included 22 cases of sexual harrassment, 13 cases of sexual assault, 11 cases of coerced sexual relations and 10 cases of rape.

Lujeri was said to be certified by Rainforest Alliance, which published a statement on its website. The scheme stated that it had previously decertified two farms in the region over evidence of violations and would continue to work in “partnership and collaboration” to tackle the issues.

Rainforest Alliance has also faced criticisms over environmental issues. In 2021, environmental campaign group Greenpeace published a report titled ‘Destruction: Certified’. It looked at whether certifications had helped companies to end deforestation in their supply chains, concluding “certification is a weak tool to address global forest and ecosystem destruction.”

The Rainforest Alliance label is probably better than nothing. But it is far from sufficient in addressing the major issues in the food chain – and may at times help greenwash companies that are not taking other meaningful actions. 

Does the Rainforest Alliance label mean a product is organic?

No, the Rainforest Alliance label does not mean that a product is organic. 

Like organic certifications, Rainforest Alliance bans genetically modified crops. However, it does not ban chemical pesticides and fertilisers – a core tenet of organic farming.

Is it worth looking for the Rainforest Alliance label on products?

The Rainforest Alliance label indicates some commitment to workers rights, so it’s likely better to buy bananas or chocolate sporting the label than those that have no ethical credentials. However, other labels like Fairtrade involve far stronger commitments and are a better bet if you’re looking for meaningful measures.

Most companies offering Rainforest Alliance products are major multinational corporations that may perform poorly on ethics elsewhere in their business. You’re therefore often better to look for smaller ethical businesses that have placed workers’ and farmers’ rights at the centre of their model, whether or not they have the certification.