The rise of buyer-driven sustainability governance: Emerging trends in the global coffee sector

Janina Grabs ()
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Janina Grabs: Universität Münster, Institut für Politikwissenschaften

No 73 / 2017, ZenTra Working Papers in Transnational Studies from ZenTra - Center for Transnational Studies

Abstract: The coffee industry connects millions of smallholder farmers with global markets and has historically been a frontrunner in sustainability efforts. Yet, the governance of this value chain and its sustainability depends on the distribution of power between market actors. This paper applies a Global Value Chain approach (Gereffi, 1999) to characterize the current distribution of power and opportunities in the coffee sector, and examines how this characterization has influenced the sector’s non-state market-driven (NSMD) sustainability governance structure (Bernstein and Cashore, 2007). The study finds that in a strongly buyer-driven chain, the reinterpretation of sustainability as supply chain management has led to the emergence of more company-owned standards and direct-impact projects as alternatives to third-party certification schemes, as well as their coordination in pre-competitive sectoral platforms. The simultaneous rise of producing-country definitions of sustainability points to a continued fragmentation of sustainability governance and a loss of authority of traditional NSMD channels.

Keywords: Sustainability governance; non-state market-driven governance; Global Value Chain; coffee; Corporate Social Responsibility; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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