The rebound effects of switching to vegetarianism

In order to reduce our environmental footprint, policy-makers have increasingly focused on influencing individual-level consumption choices. Recent years have seen a special focus on sustainable eating patterns, in particular the environmental benefits of a vegetarian diet. However, reliable conclusions on this issue need to take full-scale behavior changes into consideration. This can be achieved using the concept of the indirect rebound effect, which describes the amount of potential environmental improvements not realized due to the re-spending of expenditure saved during the initial behavior shift. This study aims to quantify the potential environmental savings stemming from the shift of an average Swedish consumer to vegetarianism, as well as the most likely rebound effects, in terms of both energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, it estimates Engel curves of 117 consumption goods, derives marginal expenditure shares from them, and links these values to environmental intensity indicators. Results indicate that switching to a vegetarian diet could save an average Swedish consumer 16% of the energy use and 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their food and drink consumption. However, if they re-spend the saved income according to their current preferences, they would forego 96% of the potential energy savings and 49% of the greenhouse gas emission savings. These rebound effects are even higher for lower-income consumers, since they tend to respend on more environmentally intensive goods. Yet, the adverse effect could be tempered by simultaneously purchasing organic goods or by re-spending the money exclusively on services. Thus, consumption advice should shift to promoting holistic sustainable lifestyle changes

Wege in die Ernährungszukunft der Schweiz - Leitfaden zu den grössten Hebeln und politischen Pfaden für ein nachhaltiges Ernährungssystem

Aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht ist klar: Unser Ernährungssystem ist nicht nachhaltig. Um unsere Lebens- und Wirtschaftsgrundlagen zu erhalten, braucht es eine Neuausrichtung über die gesamte Wertschöpfungskette. Diese ist gleichzeitig ein Schlüssel zur Erreichung der Agenda 2030 für nachhaltige Entwicklung. SDSN Schweiz hat das wissenschaftliche Gremium Ernährungszukunft Schweiz initiiert, um einen Wegweiser zu entwickeln. Er soll es der Schweiz erlauben, Chancen rechtzeitig anzupacken und unkontrollierbare Kostenfolgen zu vermeiden. Das wissenschaftliche Gremium hat international wegweisende Pionierarbeit geleistet. In einem interdisziplinären wissenschaftlichen Prozess wurde zum ersten Mal für ein Land ein umfassender Handlungspfad zur Neuausrichtung des Ernährungssystems im Einklang mit den Zielen für nachhaltige Entwicklung ausgearbeitet. Die beteiligten Forschenden schaffen damit eine wichtige Grundlage für die weitere politische Diskussion in der Schweiz und international

A theory of credible cross-temporal corporate commitments as goal-based private sustainability governance

Goal-based corporate supply chain commitments to zero-deforestation, carbon neutrality, or sustainable sourcing have become important elements of businesses' sustainability and reputation management practices. However, we still know little about the conditions under which such cross-temporal commitments are likely to be successful. This article introduces commitment credibility as a crucial but understudied antecedent of success. Drawing on the economic theory of imagined futures, it shows how cross-temporal signaling via commitments may change suppliers' expectations and related actions and thereby co-create more sustainable futures. By using insights from credible commitment theory, it argues that this pathway relies on high motivational and/or imperative credibility of the committed company. Contrasting the example of zero-deforestation commitments in the palm oil sector with commitments to sustainable seafood and no farmworker exploitation, it highlights that the involvement of critical stakeholders (as external accountability partners or third-party implementing agents) is of particularly high importance for on-the-ground success.ISSN:0964-4733ISSN:1099-083

Signaling Southern sustainability: When do actors use private or public regulatory authority to market tropical commodities?

The private regulation of agri-food value chains through sustainability standards has proliferated in recent decades, promising producers to differentiate themselves and gain preferential market access. However, in a number of producing countries, laws exist that mirror and go beyond what private labels demand. These countries have two options for placing their sustainable products in the market: signal their national system's equivalence to private schemes, or utilize the existing regulatory framework as favorable preconditions for widespread certification. In framing this choice as a collective reputation challenge, this study analyzes under which conditions states and parastatal actors opt for either approach, provides evidence of the strategies used, and draws conclusions on their respective success and on-the-ground outcomes. Using an in-depth comparative case study of the coffee sectors of Costa Rica and Colombia, the study finds that the divergence in institutional strategies can be explained by three factors: sector-specific institutional capacities; a country's place in the commodity marketplace, which determines the expected added pay-off of certification; and a country's overall international image.ISSN:0301-4797ISSN:1095-863

Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance's characteristics set the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies' responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals.ISSN:0167-4544ISSN:1573-069

Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector.

Acknowledgements: This work has been generously funded by the SNF project grant nr. 100017_192373 “Assessing the effectiveness and equity of zero-deforestation commitment implementation in the palm oil sector,” as well as by ETH Zurich’s World Food System Center’s Fonds Welternährungssystem and an ETH Zurich Startup Grant. The authors wish to thank Arya Hadi Dharmawan, Nia Kurniawati Hidayat, Fakhrizal Nashr, Rizka Amalia, Faris Rahmadian, and Dyah Ita Mardiyaningsih from IPB University, as well as Kimberly Carlson from New York University and Kristjan Jespersen from Copenhagen Business School, for assistance in accessing the field and sharing local contacts. Thank you also to all interviewees for contributing their time and knowledge. The article benefitted from insightful comments from Tobias Hahn, Samuel A. Levy, Eva Lieberherr, Ignasi Marti Lanuza, Constance McDermott, Garima Sharma, Ferran Torres Nadal, as well as participants of the 2021 International Studies Association conference, the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests (OCTF) seminar, ESADE’s Institute for Social Innovation seminar, the 2022 GRONEN Reading Group, and the anonymous reviewers and the editor.Funder: Fonds Welternährungssystem, World Food System Center, ETH ZurichFunder: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ZurichIn response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance's characteristics set the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies' responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals

Private regulation, public policy, and the perils of adverse ontological selection

What problems can private regulatory governance solve, and what role should public policy play? Despite access to the same empirical evidence, the current scholarship on private governance offers widely divergent answers to these questions. Through a critical review, this paper details five ontologically distinct academic logics – calculated strategic behavior; learning and experimentalist processes; political institutionalism; global value chain and convention theory; and neo‐Gramscian accounts – that offer divergent conclusions based on the particular facets of private governance they illuminate, while ignoring those they obfuscate. In this crowded marketplace of ideas, scholars and practitioners are in danger of adverse ontological selection whereby certain approaches and insights are systematically ignored and certain problem conceptions are prioritized over others. As a corrective, we encourage scholars to make their assumptions explicit, and occasionally switch between logics, to better understand private governance's problem‐solving potential and its interactions with public policy.ISSN:1748-5983ISSN:1748-599

Switching between lenses for a better view: A critical review of private regulatory governance theories and the role of public policy

2018 Utrecht Conference on Earth System Governanc

Private regulation, public policy, and the perils of adverse ontological selection

10.1111/rego.12354Regulation & Governance1541183-120

Designing effective and equitable zero-deforestation supply chain policies

In response to the clearing of tropical forests for agricultural expansion, agri-food companies have adopted promises to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains in the form of ‘zero-deforestation commitments’ (ZDCs). While there is growing evidence about the environmental effectiveness of these commitments (i.e., whether they meet their conservation goals), there is little information on how they influence producers’ opportunity to access sustainable markets and related livelihood outcomes, or how design and implementation choices influence tradeoffs or potential synergies between effectiveness and equity in access. This paper explores these research gaps and makes three main contributions by: i) defining and justifying the importance of analyzing access equity and its relation to effectiveness when implementing forest-focused supply chain policies such as ZDCs, ii) identifying seven policy design principles that are likely to maximize synergies between effectiveness and access equity, and iii) assessing effectiveness-access equity tensions and synergies across common ZDC implementation mechanisms amongst the five largest firms in each of the leading agricultural forest-risk commodity sectors: palm oil, soybeans, beef cattle, and cocoa. To enhance forest conservation while avoiding harm to the most vulnerable farmers in the tropics, it is necessary to combine stringent rules with widespread capacity building, greater involvement of affected actors in the co-production of implementation mechanisms, and support for alternative rural development paths.ISSN:0959-3780ISSN:1872-949