Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Many policy prescriptions emphasise poverty reduction through closer integration of poor people or areas with global markets. Global value chain (GVC) studies reveal how firms and farms in developing countries are upgraded by being integrated in global markets, but few explicitly document the impact on poverty, gender and the environment, or conversely, how value chain restructuring is in turn mediated by local history, social relations and environmental factors. This article develops a conceptual framework that can help overcome the shortcomings in ‘standalone’ value‐chain, livelihood and environmental analyses by integrating the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ aspects of value chains that together affect poverty and sustainability.

Pathways to empowerment?: dynamics of women's participation in Global Value Chains

“…More recently researchers have asked about whether workers and communities benefit from efforts by producers at the bottom of the chain to integrate into GVCs, i.e. does global market access and product and process upgrading enhance 'social upgrading' (Barrientos et al, 2011, Bolwig et al, 2010.…”

“…Conventionally, GVC analysis focuses on the firm, but increasingly it is argued that it is important to open the 'black box' of the firm and examine how particular workers or communities benefit from integration in the global value chain , Bolwig, et al, 2010. Several studies have highlighted the problems facing workers employed at the base of global value chains; some related to weak labour regulation or global processes of de-regulation associated with neo-liberalism , Barrientos, et al, 2011, Barrientos and Kritzinger, 2004, Palpacuer, 2008 and others indirectly related to purchasing practices of global retailers and brands (Hale and Opondo, 2005, Hughes, et al, 2010, Oxfam, 2004, Raworth and Kidder, 2009).…”

Value Chain Structures that Define European Cellulosic Ethanol Production

“…It involves setting of the terms of chain membership, the related incorporation/exclusion of other actors and the re-allocation of value-adding activities [31]. Recent literature points out that external actors such as governments, multilateral institutions and NGOs can significantly influence GVC governance [32], especially in emerging industries like those for renewables, thus creating multi-polar chains [33].…”

Value Chain Governance of Malawi’s Artisanal Fisheries: A Case of Oreochromis Species

“…It has been noted that an analysis of upgrading involves actors' profitability assessment and also information constraints currently present in the chain to identify the possibilities for producers to move up the value chain either by shifting to more rewarding functional positions or by making products that have more value-added invested in them or that can provide better returns to producers (M4P, 2008;Bolwig et al, 2008). Humphrey and Schmitz (2002b) came up with four types of upgrading strategies and these are process upgrading whereby there is more efficient transformation of inputs into outputs achieved after reorganizing productive activities, product upgrading which involves movement into more sophisticated products with increased value, functional upgrading which refers to acquiring of new functions to increase skills and lastly there is inter-chain upgrading whereby one's skills acquired from a chain are used in a different chain.…”