Toward zero-deforestation value chains: Environmental upgrading and downgrading among non-certified cocoa producers in Colombia

Global pressure to make value chains less damaging to the natural environment, a process known as environment upgrading, has been building in recent years. Most studies that assess environmental upgrading have focused on the compliance of suppliers, which would be farmers in the case of value chains involving agrifood commodities, to sustainability certification standards. Our case study focusing on cocoa producers in Colombia explores an under-investigated topic in environmental upgrading — that of whether sustainable practices of non-certified farmers facilitate zero-deforestation value chains. Using data from 930 randomly sampled households in the Colombian departments of Caqueta and Cesar, we examined the association of non-certified sustainable practices, i.e., processes that benefit the environment which farmers undertake on their own and not because of adherence to sustainability certification criteria, with reforestation and deforestation: A positive association of the practices with the former suggests environmental upgrading, while with the latter would be environmental downgrading, which denotes negative environmental outcomes from the process of environmental upgrading. We also assessed whether or not there are significant differences between mean deforestation and reforestation rates between certified and non-certified cocoa producers in both departments. Based on statistical tests, we found that (a) non-certified sustainable practices can facilitate environmental upgrading and discourage environmental downgrading but only in some cases, and (b) there is no significant difference in mean deforestation rates between certified and non-certified surveyed cocoa producers, but there is a significant difference in mean reforestation rates between the two groups of producers. These results suggest that implementing non-certified sustainable practices poses another way to enable value chain actors to meet the requirements in markets seeking sustainably produced commodities. One such market is that of the European Union, whose legislation on deforestation-free commodities makes certification an optional rather than compulsory process to support the prescribed procedure on diligence procedure

Food accessibility measurements amongst rural and urban informal dwellers in Buea Municipality

Food insecurity remains a global threat despite advances made to mitigate its effect on human suffering. Numerous indicators have been developed, tested and validated to measure specific aspects of food security, which may likely present different results. This study uses Household Dietary Diversity Scores (HDDS) and Household Food Insecurity Scale (HFIAS) to compare food accessibility status between rural and informal urban dwellers in Buea municipality and Poisson regression to analyse the determinants of food insecurity among the two groups. The two food insecurity measures present different results. HFIAS shows about 97% food insecurity of the sampled population of Buea Municipality and a significant difference of p < 001 between the rural (99.3%) and urban areas (94.7%), the HDDS shows a food insecurity status of 25.8% and an insignificant difference between the rural (24.8%)and urban (26.7%) areas. This difference affirms that multiple indicators should be used to measure food security in detail. The high incidences of food insecurity presented by HFIAS for both the rural and urban areas indicate that policies to curtail food insecurity should be of a broader focus on improving production capacity, training and employment opportunities