The governance of sustainability in cocoa, coffee, and other global agri-food value chains is changing fundamentally. Traditional certification such as “Fairtrade” or “Organic” remains important, but next-generation governance strategies are on the rise: European governments have introduced mandatory due diligence regulations; many medium and large corporations operate company-own sustainability programmes, while social enterprises and cooperatives promote social and solidarity economy strategies – and multi-stakeholder platforms aim to orchestrate these strategies.
Empirical results and theories disprove previous assumptions
Promoting mandatory regulation, leveraging sustainable business practices, and negotiating conflicting stakeholder interests are often assumed to enhance human well-being and environmental performance of value chains in cocoa and coffee landscapes. However, empirical results and theories disprove this claim.
Project goals
Therefore, the PATHS project aims to demonstrate how and under what conditions the strategies of due diligence, corporate sustainability, social and solidarity economy, and multi-stakeholder platforms can influence pathways of land systems and governance towards enhanced human well-being and environmental performance. The aim is to answer the following questions:
- How do the four mentioned strategies interact and jointly influence human well-being and environmental performance in cocoa and coffee landscapes?
- What land system pathways and governance pathways lead to positive and adverse well-being and environmental effects?
- Which of these effects hold across commodities (cocoa/coffee) and countries, and how do contextual factors modify general insights?
Research approaches and areas
To address these questions, PATHS combines approaches and methodologies of social and land system sciences. It focuses on the cocoa and coffee sectors of Switzerland, Peru, Nigeria and Cameroon. The project also sheds light on under-researched landscapes in the Western Amazon in Peru and the Lower Guinean Forest regions in Nigeria and Cameroon, helping to understand the mechanisms of land use and deforestation dynamics related to cocoa and coffee.
Creating synergies between the two sectors
Focussing on both cocoa and coffee enables exploring similarities and differences in governance and land management strategies, thereby helping to inform where synergies can be built between the governance of both commodity sectors.
Collaboration between science and practice
PATHS is collaborating from the very beginning with stakeholder platforms such as the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa and the Swiss Sustainable Coffee Platform as well as with farmer cooperatives, trading and manufacturing companies, and policy makers in the focus landscapes.
This transdisciplinary approach enables the co-creation of knowledge by scientific and non-scientific actors, as well as the implementation of scientific findings in practical measures by farmers, cooperatives, companies, social enterprises, NGOs, and international cooperation.
