A Qualitative Assessment to Inform Sustainable Supply Chains

Fundamental changes are visible around the globe; part of Mozambique was recently flooded, large Californian forest areas have burned, and glaciers are shrinking. Acknowledging that deforestation is part of the problem, several companies have pledged to address this in their supply chains. However, recent reports show that these commitments were not able to go from discourse to practice, and most companies will not be able to deliver what they have promised.

Our article tries to tackle this challenge. We felt that talking not only to the top company executives that made the commitments but also to different stakeholders along the supply chain would help in identifying what needs to be done to effectively solve the problem at hand.

We went on a journey following cocoa from producing countries (Brazil and Ghana) to processing and consuming countries (Netherlands, Belgium and the US), to ask different stakeholders what they believe are the sustainability problems and how we should tackle them.

The results of the study show the importance of identifying different stakeholder priorities to the design of solutions that are more effective because they accommodate multiple interests.

Our interviews also reveal that deforestation is intrinsically connected to all three dimensions of sustainability. Thus, zero-deforestation definitions and interventions should acknowledge and embrace this connectivity to ensure long- term positive impacts on people, planet and profits. This serves to highlight both the interdependence between livelihoods and deforestation at the landscape level, and also the chain of events from the production of raw material to the end consumer.

We hope you enjoy the article and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions or comments.

The paper Greening the Dark Side of Chocolate: A Qualitative Assessment to Inform Sustainable Supply Chains was published in Environmental Conservation and is available to download until May 31.