Assessing the cross-scale sustainability impacts of the cocoa sector
Claudia Parra Paitan investigated the sustainability issues caused by the global value chains of agricultural commodities, using the telecoupling and land use change perspectives. International trade has reached a scale never seen before, with production and consumption stages occurring miles away, involving multiple actors and causing multi-fold environmental issues that are difficult to allocate and trace. This confronts us with a new challenge, how to assess, monitor, mitigate, and prevent the negative environmental impacts triggered across multiple geographic and temporal scales while still generating economic opportunities? Using cocoa as a case study, I analyzed the cross-scale impacts of cocoa production and the role of global value chain actors in addressing sustainability concerns.
Claudia Parra Paitan demonstrated that the impacts of agriculture do not stay only within the farm but can span across geographic scales because of the multiple interconnections between agricultural and non-agricultural actors. Agricultural activities that seem harmless at the farm scale can cause larger negative impacts on the landscape or global scale when they have lower productivity and are used to meet growing global demand. Coordinated global action is needed to prioritize sustainability hotspots, integrate small and large-scale actors in sustainability initiatives, and avoid negative spillovers be displaced across locations, sectors, and actors. Without this, we can only achieve islands of excellence but not a net positive impact.
This thesis can be used by policymakers to prioritize action in sustainability hotspots identified and bring key local and global stakeholders into the fold. It can also be utilized by global cocoa traders and global chocolate manufacturers to harmonize their farm-level, landscape-level, and global-level sustainability strategies so that they do not trigger unintended negative impacts across scales and to other actors and sectors. The current European Regulation on deforestation-free products could benefit from the results of this thesis to define a strategy for the engagement of small and large traders operating within the EU and outside the EU to minimize spillovers across scales.
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