Representing environment and development – tracing links between drivers, representations and power dynamics in cocoa sustainability and beyond

Abstract

How much do misleading representations matter? This article examines carefully constructed narratives of engagement in 'sustainable' cocoa production initiatives, which fail to mention one of the actual key drivers: the need to shore up production in the long term in an embattled sector. Consequently, representations also downplay the need for systemic change, reproducing the power asymmetries they claim to change. The research seeks to establish to what degree public-facing communication differs from underlying priorities in terms of forefronting altruism over necessity, and whether this is problematic for the initiatives' overall outcome. Through semi-structured interviews, focus-group discussions, documentary analysis and participant observation in Latin America and Europe, it reviews relations in two cocoa sustainability initiatives with environmental foci. Crucially, the research establishes a link between representations, underlying priorities and the degree to which they (re)produce pre-existing power asymmetries between global North and global South, private sector and other stakeholders in the industry, speaking to a variety of political ecology questions. It argues that public-facing, altruism-focused communication distracts from the sector's underlying systemic issues: the emphasis on altruism works to reduce pressure to transform power asymmetries and omnipresent inequalities.

Transforming land use governance: Global targets without equity miss the mark

“…Corporations thereby risk side-lining the livelihoods and concerns of already marginalized cocoa smallholders (Ahenkan & Boon, 2010). Similar to the CCP in Peru described in Section 5.2.1, the intensification narratives for the cocoa cash crop dominant in CSC have so far neither transformed trajectories of deforestation, nor markedly improved smallholder livelihoods (Krauss, 2018;Maguire-Rajpaul et al, 2016;Odijie, 2018Odijie, , 2019.…”

Plotting the coloniality of conservation

“…Indeed, more than a century of extensive cocoa cultivation has deforested the world's top two cocoaproducing countries (Kroeger et al, 2017a), which are now predicted to lose much cocoa-suitable land by 2050 due to deforestation pressures and climate change (Läderach et al, 2013;Schroth et al, 2016). Multinational chocolate corporations have responded with 'climate-smart' cocoa (CSC) and 'zero-deforestation' cocoa schemes (Ingram et al, 2018;Krauss, 2018;Kroeger et al, 2017b). However, the corporate focus on the biophysical target of zero deforestation risks side-lining the livelihoods and concerns of already marginalized cocoa smallholders, and compounding their existing vulnerabilities (Nasser et al, 2020;Newell and Taylor, 2018).…”

“…In the 2010s, municipal climate collaborations were funded by the German government to connect different German towns and cities with municipalities in the Global South, all in the name of climate change mitigation or adaptation (Krauss, 2018). However, closer inspection of one German-Colombian 'partnership' suggests problematic qualities that belie aspirations of equitable partnerships.…”

“…For the cocoa-climate partnership, 90% of project funding stemmed from German sources, and the discrepancy of who provided funding translated into an equivalent divergence in whose priorities were to be enforced: despite German municipalities also recognizing the importance of renewable energy, the marketoriented cocoa production prevailed over renewable energy as the project's chief impetus (Krauss, 2018). The project thus prioritized chocolate, quite literally more palatable to German voters, over the Colombians' socioeconomically vital renewable energy consideration, whose climate impact may also have exceeded sequestered emissions from 90 families growing cocoa.…”

Using Cultural Framings to Disentangle Viliui Sakha Perceptions, Beliefs, and Historical Trauma in the Face of Climate Change

“…In some cultures, the practice of forecasting entails the power of words, specifically, in performance the speech act itself shapes how humans perceive change and the future they are entering with that change (Taddei 2013). One study looks at how words represent the central power reinforcing a corporation's false altruistic intent, to shield a company's true interest in exploiting a local community's resource base (Krauss 2018).…”