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Friday, 20 January 2017
The production and expansion of palm oil have emerged as a major and controversial issue in political and public debates in the North and the South on sustainable food and agriculture. Scientific research has played a marginal role in these debates that are characterized by black and white views on…
Sunday, 1 January 2017
Theories of change (ToCs) are increasingly used to articulate pathways for interventions and to support
learning. This responds to the recognition of the complexity of agricultural development. Through two
examples, this paper examines how ToCs have enabled practitioners to navigate towards impact…
Sunday, 1 January 2017
In een recent verschenen notitie van de Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken wordt een pleidooi gehouden voor 'diplomatie van duurzame ontwikkeling'. Het Nederlandse buitenlandse beleid heeft de laatste jaren sterk ingezet op zogenaamde 'economische diplomatie'. Daarmee lijkt een stap gezet te…
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Monday, 18 April 2016
The past two decades saw a rapid proliferation of sustainability standards created by multi-stakeholder partnerships of multinationals and international NGOs. This paper argues that the transformative capacity of these global partnerships to bring about sustainable change largely depends on how well…
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
The objective of this paper is to understand and trace the emergence of Southern standards in global agricultural value chains. While the trend towards private standards established by developed country or 'Northern' actors has received significant attention in the literature, recently an emergent…
Monday, 1 June 2015
Since the mid-1990s, private sustainability standards and certification schemes have aimed to introduce a new paradigm in the trade of agricultural commodities. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the transformative capacity of these arrangements. This paper discusses three plausible…
Friday, 7 November 2014
It goes without debate that international supply or value chains only add real value to a selected group of companies and people. Cost and benefits are difficult to assess and even more difficult to be distributed in a ‘fair’ manner. The 2013 Max Havelaar lecture brought these three perspectives…
Friday, 31 October 2014
Cross-sector development partnerships (CSDPS) are considered mechanisms for collaborative value creation at the societal, organisational and individual level. However, a criticism of these types of multi-stakeholder approaches is that many times, beneficiaries – a crucial stakeholder – are merely at…