Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework

Impacts of climate change and variability on fish value chains in Uganda

This study examines the vulnerability of fish pr oduction in Uganda, particularly as it r elates to the predicted impacts from climate change, using the concept of the value chain. The value chain approach has been recommended as a useful tool to study specific challenges facing a sector resulting from various drivers of change, including climate. Critically, such analyses can reveal context-specific response strategies to enhance a sector (Jacinto and Pomer oy 2010). The specific purpose of the study was to identify curr ent and potential impacts of climate change and corresponding adaptation strategies in fish value chains. The study builds upon information fr om earlier value chain analyses on fisheries and aquaculture production in Uganda to provide a more in-depth understanding of issues facing the fish industry, in particular, those to be incorporated in the CGIAR Resear ch Program Livestock and Fish

Compliance is Not Enough: Best Practices in Responding to The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.V_2012_Compliance_Not_Enough_California_Transparency_Supply_Chain_WP.pdf: 824 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Review of the Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture

The Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture is a knowledge platform which leverages the strengths, opportunities and diverse audiences of the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The objective of the Learning Alliance is to produce and disseminate evidence for informed policy and implementation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions by capturing, analyzing and communicating lessons emerging from the IFAD supported global Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP). The Learning Alliance strives to enable agricultural development policy-makers and practitioners make science-based decisions in the context of climate change. The underlying assumption of the Learning Alliance is that the “provision of demand-driven research outputs to policy-makers and practitioners is a key mechanism for improving the effectiveness of adaptation actions among ultimate beneficiaries, in this case smallholder farmers”. The review aims to identify areas for improvement to achieve the planned outcomes of the Learning Alliance more effectively. It provides recommendations to inform a further phase, based on the experience of those closely involved in the knowledge production and implementation of the Alliance

Report of the first policy advisory group meeting of the regional programme "Fisheries and HIV/AIDS: Investing in sustaining solution"

The WorldFish Center and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are currently implementing a Regional Programme entitled Fisheries and HIV/AIDS in Africa: Investing in Sustainable Solutions, to strengthen the capacity in the region to develop sustainable solutions to enhance the contributions of fish and fisheries to economic and human development. In particular, the programme is building a strategic response to HIV/AIDS in the fisheries sector that will generate benefits for vulnerable groups in wider society. With financial support from the Swedish-Norwegian Regional Programme on HIV/AIDS in Africa, this programme is conducting research-for-development activities and implementing pilot interventions in selected fishing communities in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, namely Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cameroon, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia. In all eight countries, three technical focus areas have been identified through national consultations 1) Options for reducing vulnerability along the fish marketing chain; 2) Enhancing nutrition benefits from small scale aquaculture and fisheries; 3) Institutional change to increase investment in viable support options; This report presents initial findings by the Regional Programme, a regional synthesis and policy implications of these programme findings, and policy recommendations to address HIV/AIDS in the fisheries sector in Africa, as defined by the PAG members during its first meeting in Lilongwe.Fisheries, AIDS, Public health, HIV, Nutritive value

Climate change, agriculture and Fairtrade: identifying the challenges and opportunities

This paper presents the findings of a study commissioned by the UK's Fairtrade Foundation on the implications of climate change for agricultural producers in Fairtrade value chains

What lies beneath? The role of informal and hidden networks in the management of crises

Crisis management research traditionally focuses on the role of formal communication networks in the escalation and management of organisational crises. Here, we consider instead informal and unobservable networks. The paper explores how hidden informal exchanges can impact upon organisational decision-making and performance, particularly around inter-agency working, as knowledge distributed across organisations and shared between organisations is often shared through informal means and not captured effectively through the formal decision-making processes. Early warnings and weak signals about potential risks and crises are therefore often missed. We consider the implications of these dynamics in terms of crisis avoidance and crisis management