The vision of a socially sound, economically viable and environmentally sound globalisation is becoming priority for a growing number of national and international actors – from multinational companies to the OECD and G8. At the same time it has become obvious, that international and national laws leave gaps in the implementation of such a demanding vision.

A broad range of voluntary standards have gained momentum during the past few years to fill these gaps and to contribute to shaping a just and sustainable economic globalisation. Standards are an instrument by which the vision of sustainable development can be translated into concrete steps which can be measured and used for binding agreements. As presented in the first “Shaping Globalisation” conference held in Berlin in October 2006, research has shown that these voluntary initiatives are a promising instrument to contribute to poverty reduction, improved working conditions and economic and environmental sustainability. However, the scope still limited: the implementation of voluntary standards is applied mainly in a project environment and has not yet become a normal condition of business. Therefore, another conference to discuss ways to scale up the implementation of voluntary standards was organized in October 2008, called “Shaping Globalisation – Scaling up voluntary standards.”

Voluntary sustainability standards are a success story – this is what a profound evaluation commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has shown – but they are also at a crossroads, says Simon Zadek, AccountAbility’s Chief Executive. Therefore policy makers, standard setters, companies, civil society, producers from developing countries and many more have discussed the question of ‘how can we scale up the impact of voluntary standards to contribute to our vision of a fair globalisation’? Many answers were found – some new questions raised – but at the end, the participants agreed that more of the same is not enough and that a joint effort is needed to make a real difference on a broad scale.