With and beyond sustainability certification: Exploring inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies in Peru and Switzerland

Oberlack, Christoph; Blare, Trent; Zambrino, Luca; Bruelisauer, Samuel; Solar, Jimena; Villar, Gesabel; Thomas, Evert; Ramírez, M. Isabel

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106187

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…They do so by promoting collective activities such as post-harvest processing, logistics, trade or marketing (Blare et al 2017). The collective bargaining power of cooperatives can strengthen producers' market position vis-à-vis buyers (Oberlack et al 2023). They also facilitate natural resource management of smallholders through training, access to inputs, credit, market information, technical assistance, and cooperatives often implement standards for certifications (Bijman et al 2016).…”

Section: Cooperatives Inclusive Value Chains and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, land for cacao cultivation is predominantly held privately by smallholders (Voora et al 2019). Asymmetries of control, benefit and access can persist, and cooperatives are embedded in larger systems of production, such as value chains (Oberlack et al 2020). Therefore, cooperatives may deviate from a view of commoning among fully equal (land) users.…”

Section: Cooperatives Inclusive Value Chains and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tackling Gender Inequality in Community-Based Organizations: The Contribution of Cacao Cooperatives to Environmental Justice for Women in Peru

Maeder,

Thomas,

Villar

et al. 2024

International Journal of the Commons

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Persistent gender inequalities challenge theory and praxis of community-based collective action. Here we adopt an innovative approach which integrates environmental justice, value chain inclusion and collective action theory to diagnose inequalities in communitybased organizations (CBOs) and identify strategies to address them. Drawing on the findings of case studies conducted at six CBOs in Peru's cacao sector, this article aims to make three contributions. Empirically, we analyze the current situation of, barriers to and strategies for environmental justice for women in the six selected CBOs. Theoretically, we contribute to theory on community-based collective action through an analysis of environmental justice and value chain inclusion. Methodologically, we propose a framework that analysts may use to assess environmental justice for women in community-based collective action. Results show that overall, women participate less and benefit less from cacao CBOs. Furthermore, recognition of women's contributions and capabilities for cacao value creation tend to remain limited. We discuss 18 strategies and recommendations through which CBOs can address gender inequality for their female stakeholders on a cooperative, community, household and individual level. Most salient recommendations include workshops, generating income opportunities for women, increasing the rights of partners of official cooperative members, and introducing quotas for women in leadership positions. If such efforts are reinforced and better theorized, and gender strategies continuously implemented, CBOs such as cacao cooperatives have the potential to improve the environmental justice outcomes for women within their organizations, families, and communities at large.

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Section: Cooperatives Inclusive Value Chains and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cooperatives Inclusive Value Chains and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling Gender Inequality in Community-Based Organizations: The Contribution of Cacao Cooperatives to Environmental Justice for Women in Peru

Maeder,

Thomas,

Villar

et al. 2024

International Journal of the Commons

Self Cite

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“…Some studies have documented positive outcomes of solidarity economy, inclusive business, and participatory guarantee schemes in sustainability outcomes and inclusive value creation. These bottom-up schemes use participatory tools to build trust-based schemes for the definition, measurement, and assessment of sustainability(Loconto and Hatanaka, 2018;Oberlack et al, 2023).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The factors that make voluntary sustainability governance arrangements attractive for participating companies are arguably also what potentially limits their impact.Though certification schemes are third-party audited, which in principle provides them higher accountability than voluntary sustainability commitments, the capacity of auditing bodies is questioned(Greenpeace, 2021;Ruf et al, 2019) and even certification shows limited evidence of efficacy, with heterogeneous impacts on farm worker incomes and deforestation(Dietz and Grabs, 2021;Meemken et al, 2021;Oberlack et al, 2023;Tayleur et al, 2018). Moreover, certifications focus on an even narrower set of sustainability topics than commitments, and their benefits have been reported to not match with the implementation costs(Ingram et al., 2018a; Mcdermott et al, 2022; Thorlakson, 2018; van der Ven et al, 2018) .…”

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confidence: 99%

The telecoupled sustainability impacts of global agricultural value chains

Parra Paitan

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Agriculture is a major contributor to the global environmental crisis. Natural ecosystems are being replaced by agricultural land, which leads to the extinction of species and the release of tons of carbon emissions. Global agricultural value chains (GVCs) have grown due to the intensification of international trade. While GVCs have undeniably created economic opportunities for the agriculture sector, they have also led to the escalation of local environmental issues. Several initiatives have been implemented to reduce the negative impacts of agriculture, including government regulations, sustainability certification labels, and voluntary sustainability commitments. However, the effectiveness of these initiatives has been questioned due to several reasons, including the mismatches between the scale of the problem and the solution, the lack of monitoring and verification of sustainability actions, and their weak enforcement. Sustainability initiatives are informed by studies assessing the impacts of agriculture that often only focus on local impacts, while disregarding larger-scale – telecoupled– dynamics that can trigger impacts across geographic and temporal scales. This thesis aims to help bridge these knowledge gaps by examining the impacts of agricultural GVCs across scales, studying the role of GVC’s configuration in modulating these impacts and investigating the role of GVC actors in mitigating sustainability risks across scales. The global cocoa value chain is used as a case study. Chapter 2 examines various impact assessment methods and their ability to capture the effects caused by telecoupled dynamics across different scales. The study concludes that no single method is sufficient to capture all telecoupled cross-scale dynamics and that the integration of different methods is necessary to bridge gaps between methods and complement their scope. Chapter 3 implements the recommendations outlined in Chapter 2 by analyzing the impacts caused by cocoa agroforestry and cocoa full-sun production in Ghana. Impacts on carbon, biodiversity stocks, and environmental pollution were analyzed within and beyond the farm-level. This chapter reveals that findings drawn from farm-level assessments can contradict those from landscape-level assessments. Decision-makers focused should be wary of extrapolating farm-level assessment results to larger scales. Chapter 4 expands the scope to the global scale by examining the role of the cocoa GVC configuration on the capacity of the sector to address sustainability challenges across scales. The chapter identifies different types of cocoa traders, their market dominance, and sustainability commitments. The chapter highlights that to address the telecoupled impacts of the cocoa GVC, coordinated action between traders is required, along with government interventions to balance power asymmetries. Chapter 5 measured the degree to which cocoa traders, as identified in Chapter 4, are exposed to deforestation and climate change. This chapter highlights that sustainability challenges in agricultural value chains cannot be resolved in isolation as farming systems are constantly interacting with other farming systems and land competing sectors. To avoid displacing negative impacts across scales, it is necessary to have a coordinated and collaborative effort from stakeholders and sectors involved in making decisions related to land use. This thesis shows that addressing the telecoupled impacts caused by agricultural value chains needs a good understanding of the cause-effect dynamics at play. This requires the quantification of impacts caused by agriculture across scales and the characterization of the GVC network of actors modulating these impacts. Interdisciplinary methods need to be leveraged and integrated to generate actionable insights. The findings of this thesis can assist decision-makers and private actors in devising customized sustainability strategies, prioritizing action, and addressing the most vulnerable hotspots while being mindful of global teleconnections and avoiding spillovers.

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Capturing the Sectoral Performance in Swiss Economy: An Input-Output Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA)

Yasmin,

Refae,

Eletter

2023

Studies in Big Data

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With and beyond sustainability certification: Exploring inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies in Peru and Switzerland

Cited by 7 publications

References 70 publications

Tackling Gender Inequality in Community-Based Organizations: The Contribution of Cacao Cooperatives to Environmental Justice for Women in Peru

Tackling Gender Inequality in Community-Based Organizations: The Contribution of Cacao Cooperatives to Environmental Justice for Women in Peru

The telecoupled sustainability impacts of global agricultural value chains

Capturing the Sectoral Performance in Swiss Economy: An Input-Output Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA)

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