Is environmental justice necessary for human well-being? Comparative analysis of certification schemes, inclusive business, and solidarity economy strategies

Project Information

COMPASS

Grant agreement ID: 949852

DOI

10.3030/949852

Project closed

EC signature date 22 January 2021

Start date 1 March 2021

End date 28 February 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 250,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 250,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET BERN
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - COMPASS (Is environmental justice necessary for human well-being? Comparative analysis of certification schemes, inclusive business, and solidarity economy strategies)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Food and agricultural value chains often create unequal distributions of costs and benefits among producers, processors, traders, and consumers. This increases global inequality. At the same time, land grabbing threatens the livelihoods of millions of small-scale producers. Reshaping the impacts of agricultural investments, land use, and trade on human well-being is an urgent challenge. Numerous certification systems, such as “Fairtrade”, have been developed in hopes of addressing this challenge. But it is increasingly apparent that many of these systems have only modestly beneficial impacts on people’s well-being. As a result, various companies, communities, and non-profit organizations are testing alternatives like solidarity-economy initiatives or inclusive business models that integrate low-income communities in value chains. Still, empirical studies show that these strategies, too, often fail to improve the well-being of affected communities. This is where the project “Is environmental justice necessary for human well-being? Comparative analysis of certification schemes, inclusive business, and solidarity economy strategies (COMPASS)” comes in. It hypothesizes that environmental justice is a precondition for the success of certification systems, solidarity-economy initiatives, and inclusive business models in effectively enhancing people’s well-being. The project seeks to develop a “compass” to help organize value chains in line with the principles of environmental justice. It systematically investigates the three strategies – certification schemes, solidarity economy, and inclusive business models – in terms of their instruments, effects on people’s well-being, and impacts on the institutional anchoring of environmental justice.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the period covered by this report we focused on work packages WP1 (Instruments, Institutions and Value Chains) and WP4 (Integration, Coherence and Synthesis), and we started work for WP2 (Human Well-being) and WP3 (Environmental Justice). Major achievements of the COMPASS project in the reporting period
• include the implementation of a first-of-its-kind survey of certification, inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies (WP1.1);
• the exploratory analysis of public policies and legal frameworks in the cocoa and coffee sectors of Peru and Switzerland (WP1.2);
• one pilot study about gender-inclusive value chains and human well-being (WP2);
• one pilot study about local perspectives of environmental justice in a cocoa producing region in Peru (WP3);
• contributions to the advancement of the archetypes approach, an approach to knowledge cumulation and synthesis in sustainability research, through a Special Issue (WP4);
• advances in the approach of networks of action situations through a Special Issue (WP2, WP3);
• the project’s engagement strategy in selected key networks in Peru, EU, Switzerland and at global levels in line with principles of fair and ethical research (WP4);
• the hosting of an international workshop on environmental justice; and the creation of an international working group about the institutionalization of environmental justice (one of the new research directions that COMPASS aims to influence) (WP3).
• We regularly present our results in scientific conferences, invited presentations, blogs, multi-stakeholder venues and dissemination events.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Phase 1 (first half of the project):
1) The survey in WP1 is the first study of its kind to systematically compare organizational strategies of certification, inclusive business and solidarity economy in terms of their governance instruments and underlying theories of change.
2) The EnJust Workshop 2022 was a highlight event in pursuing our aim to spearhead the development of a new strand in environmental justice research about the institutionalization of environment justice.

Phase 2 (second half of the project):
1) COMPASS shall break new ground by systematically comparing the effects of certification, inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies on human well-being. It will push contemporary theories of inclusive value chains by exploring and tracing the mechanisms responsible for unexplained outcomes.
2) COMPASS shall develop a new strand of environmental justice research on private-sector strategies by analysing the rules through which organizations institutionalize environmental justice in their CS, IB, and SE strategies, and how this impacts decision-making about land use, investment, and trade.
3) COMPASS shall provide and test an innovative synthesis of theories explaining the links between well-being; environmental justice; CS, IB, and SE strategies; institutional regimes; and value chain structures.

Cocoa fruit