Marginalized Small-Scale Farmers as Actors in Just Circular-Economy Transitions: Exploring Opportunities to Circulate Crop Residue as Raw Material in India

Anna Härri, Jarkko Levänen and Katariina Koistinen
Additional contact information
Anna Härri: Department of Sustainability Science, LUT University, 15210 Lahti, Finland
Jarkko Levänen: Department of Sustainability Science, LUT University, 15210 Lahti, Finland
Katariina Koistinen: Management and Organisation, University of Turku, 20500 Turku, Finland

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-18

Abstract: Facing substantial sustainability challenges, sustainable transitions to circular systems are increasingly called for. The use of biomass to produce textile fibers is a niche that could contribute to a circular textile system. In this niche, farmers supplying biomass would play a crucial role. Through a literature review, we argue in this article that farmers are important actors in this context, but their agency is limited by numerous institutional factors, such as cultivation practices, labor markets, and information systems. These factors together can create an institutional void, which can hamper both the agency of farmers and their ability to participate, as well as the justness of the niche. The void’s strength depends on the institutional interface a farmer is subjected to. Before just transitions to circular systems can occur, marginalized actors’ agency and ability to participate in the niche, in a just way, must be improved, by decreasing the strength of the institutional void.

Keywords: agency; transition; institutional void; crop residue; straw; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/24/10355/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/24/10355/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:24:p:10355-:d:460386

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().