From the perspective of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the adoption of sustainability standards is a tool that can help promote social protection in an era of global free trade [9]. Examples of these standards in which CSO agendas are embedded include labor standards to prevent sweatshop and child labor and standards for social justice and equitable compensation of small-scale producers and indigenous communities. Some scholars have declared this proliferation of sustainability standards to be the rise of a new “NGO-Industrial Complex” [10].

Sustainability standards are based on the process of production, not necessarily observ­able qualities of the product [11]. Biomass for biofuels, such as corn stover, switchgrass, and wood, can be produced in a variety of ways, some very disruptive to social sustainability, particularly when there are changes in land use and land tenure. Such changes have impor­tant implications for vulnerable populations, particularly indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities holding land in common and small-holders find it difficult to gather together the resources necessary to certify small lots, and certification of cultural integrity is often not amenable to conventional measurement [12].

Tightly integrated value chains in biomass used for energy are highly visible. Thus, production processes of biomass for energy are likely to be monitored by social justice organizations [13]. Activists have found that in tightly integrated supply chains, it is easier to link abusive practices in the production process with their consequences for workers, producers and communities at the production end, versus open markets where “[fjragmented supply chains conceal the social relations and exploitative practices of production” [14: 5]. Exposes of social injustice in bioenergy crop production have had serious implications for sales and stock values of companies involved. And if the driver of the biomass energy value chain is a government, the legitimacy of that government program, and therefore its continued public support, is in jeopardy. Furthermore, if lenders require social sustainability standards to be in place, there is a much higher likelihood that they will be implemented throughout the value chain.

However, large-scale producers are advantaged over small and marginalized producer — groups in certification, even if they do not necessarily contribute more to social sustain­ability. Their size and scale increases their ability to pay high certification costs and deliver large and consistent volumes of products at a constant quality. Certification benefits large corporate downstream firms by allowing them to control and switch between certified, sub­stitutable suppliers. Suppliers unable to conform to the wishes of the buyer are ultimately excluded from the chain [15]. Thus, social sustainability requires standards that are not too burdensome for small scale producers to implement, as social equity is enhanced by multiple producers rather than a single supplier.

While governments once regulated working conditions and protected land tenure, the global sourcing of biomass for biofuels has shifted certification of all types of sustainability to third party certifiers [16]. The shift to market-driven regulation has created a fundamental paradox of globalization. On the one hand, major corporations have become increasingly powerful and have assumed greater market dominance. At the same time, many of these corporations are confronted with a growing assortment of stakeholder concerns about how their products are produced, their social impacts, and the overall sustainability of the system.

Governments, such as those in the United States, Australia, and the European Union, are major investors and eventually major users of biofuels for military transportation. They also set emission standards for all fuel users in their geographic jurisdictions. Attention to social sustainability can help avoid public pressure against biofuels being seen as socially detrimental.