Showing papers by "Stefano Ponte published in 2013"

Certify Sustainable Aquaculture

Abstract: Aquaculture, the farming of aquatic organisms, provides close to 50% of the world's supply of seafood, with a value of U.S. $125 billion. It makes up 13% of the world's animal-source protein (excluding eggs and dairy) and employs an estimated 24 million people ( 1 ). With capture (i.e., wild) fisheries production stagnating, aquaculture may help close the forecast global deficit in fish protein by 2020 ( 2 ). This so-called “blue revolution” requires addressing a range of environmental and social problems, including water pollution, degradation of ecosystems, and violation of labor standards.

Voluntary standards, expert knowledge and the governance of sustainability networks

Abstract: Products certified according to their environmental and social sustainability are becoming an important feature of production, trade and consumption in the agro-food sector. 'Sustainability networks' are behind the emergence and growth of these new product forms, often evolving into multi-stakeholder initiatives that establish and manage base codes, standards, certifications and labels. As sustainability moves into the mainstream, understanding the governance of these networks is essential because they partly reshape the structure and characteristics of commodity flows. In this article, we examine the role of expert knowledge and process management in governing two multi-stakeholder initiatives (the Marine Stewardship Council and the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil) and in shaping their distributional effects. We find that the ability of developing countries, especially small-scale actors within them, to shape standard setting and management to their advantage depends not only on overcoming important structural differences in endowments and access to resources, but also on more subtle games. These include promoting the enrolment of one expert group or kind of expert knowledge over another, using specific formats of negotiation, and legitimating particular modes of engagement over others. (Resume d'auteur)

The Greening of Global Value Chains: Insights from the Furniture Industry

Abstract: With increasing fragmentation of production between independent firms that are spatially dispersed and are responsible for different steps of the production process, a Global Value Chain approach is employed to examine how ‘lead firms’ shape the green features of upstream activities. Comparative case studies in the Italian furniture industry (Ikea, Valcucine) are used to show that lead firms implement ‘hands-on’ governing mechanisms to improve the environmental performance of their value chain partners — moving away from the market but still avoiding vertical integration — but also ‘hands-off’ mechanisms embedded in standards and design. Two governing approaches to the greening of value chains are identified: standard-driven and mentoring-driven, and these are used to provide some reflections on when we are likely to observe one or the other, and also to develop a future research agenda.

Challenges of Agro-Food Standards Conformity: Lessons from East Africa and Policy Implications

Abstract: Standards are used to govern an increasing share of global food trade, and have been interpreted by academics both as market access barriers and opportunities for low-income country producers, exporters and workers. Donors have mostly chosen to treat them as opportunities and today finance a variety of programmes and projects aimed at supporting standards development and conformity. This article contributes to the critical literature discussing the challenges and potentials of standards conformity and supplies policy recommendations for future interventions. It reports the results of a research programme on standards conformity in East Africa. These demonstrate that most interventions underestimate the nature of the challenges faced and that significant impacts are achieved only under rather restricted conditions. The solutions lay not only in more selective support to standard development and better-informed interventions, but also to focus more squarely on supply capacity and welfare outcomes in project planning.

Brand Aid and the International Political Economy and Sociology of North-South Relations

Abstract: This forum brings together a diverse group of scholars from international relations, international political economy, sociology, geography, and development studies to explore “Brand Aid”—a new concept in studies of North–South relations that can be advanced by IPE/IPS scholarship. In Brand Aid, branded products are sold to “ethical” consumer/citizens through celebrities who link them to worthy causes in developing countries. Brand Aid is “aid to brands” because it helps sell products and improve a brand’s ethical profile and value. It is also “brands that provide aid” because a proportion of the profit or sales is devoted to helping “distant others.” Brand Aid reconfigures images and representations of the legitimate role of business, civil society, and the state (and their overlaps) in North–South relations in ways that are not easily situated between “exploitation” and “development.” The contributions collected here stem from a series of roundtables organized in 2011 (including one at the International Studies Association annual convention in Montreal) to discuss how “we” in the North engage to “help” people in the South beyond the traditional international aid and trade channels (see contribution by Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte). The roundtable discussions developed into examinations of the broader aspects of contemporary North–South relations around gender and security, the morality of health, the changing role of the global South, corporate practices and social responsibility, biopolitics, celebrities as global social actors, and mediating material cultures across distance. These areas could be usefully informed by contemporary IPE/ IPS scholarship, but are not yet part of mainstream debates. Five of these points of engagement are highlighted by the contributions in this Forum. First, visual representations are a key feature of Brand Aid. By mediating Richey, Lisa Ann et al. (2013) Brand Aid and the International Political Economy and Sociology of North–South

Brand Aid: Values, Consumption, and Celebrity Mediation

Abstract: What links a handmade necklace of paper beads with a pair of Emporio Armani (RED) sunglasses, or a pack of disposable diapers with a pink BMW luxury car? Belonging in the time of neoliberalism shapes our politics and our purchases. “Beads For Life” are “certified” by Martha Stewart as “eradicating poverty one bead at a time.” The voice of Salma Hayek, famous Mexican-American actress, informs consumers that “one pack of Pampers=one lifesaving vaccine”; and the cast of the hit TV series “Friends” tours in support of BMW's ultimate drive to raise money to fight breast cancer. All of these products are marketed through celebrities to consumer/citizens who want to shop for a better world. “Ethical” products are sold by marketing certain values. But as globalization shifts traditional boundaries of production and exchange, new understandings are needed about what constitutes a better product, a better world, or a more “ethical” consumer. In Richey and Ponte (⇓), we developed the concept of “Brand Aid” to describe how branded products are sold as ethical items through celebrities who link them to worthy causes in developing countries. In our contribution to this forum, we propose a new analytical framework for future work. Our model seeks to explore how causes, branded products, and celebrities manifest social values in diverse contexts of “helping.” We maintain points of meaning in local settings and culturally specific manifestations of capitalism while focusing on the global ordering that comes from branded ethical consumption across borders. This is based on the possible combinations …