Zoekresultaten

Towards a sustainable agro-logistics in developing countries

Cross-border climate vulnerabilities of the European Union to drought

European Union’s vulnerability to climate change stretches far beyond its borders because many of its economic sectors, such as meat and dairy, use raw materials sourced from far afield. Cross-border climate vulnerability is a relatively new subject in scientific literature, while of high societal and economic relevance. We quantify these climate vulnerabilities with a focus on drought risk and assessed them for 2030, 2050, 2085 and for RCP 2.6 and 6.0 climate scenarios. Here we find that more than 44% of the EU agricultural imports will become highly vulnerable to drought in future because of climate change. The drought severity in production locations of the agricultural imports in 2050 will increase by 35% compared to current levels of drought severity. This is particularly valid for imports that originate from Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Turkey. At the same time, imports from Russia, Nigeria, Peru, Ecuador, Uganda and Kenya will be less vulnerable in future. We also report that the climate vulnerabilities of meat and dairy, chocolate (cocoa), coffee, palm oil-based food and cosmetic sectors mainly lie outside the EU borders rather than inside.

The story of Tony’s Chocolonely

Collaborative organizing for grand challenges 

The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship focuses on the collaborative paradigm in economic transformation - the ways diverse organizations in globalvalue chains innovate and act in partnerships to address ecological and social grand challenges. Collaboration with multiple and diverse stakeholders is complex and challenging. Stakeholders have different interests, may compete with each other, or are just not ready to move as fast or as radically as others. Yet, we know that grand challenges are too complex and systemic for any one organization to address alone. Business leaders have an important role to play in transforming economic ecosystems and catalysing change among stakeholders and industry actors. They must move from linear thinking, where sustainability is a market for green or social products, to circular and inclusive thinking, where regeneration of natural ecosystems occurs and economic profits are equally distributed.The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship aims to contribute knowledge, support organizations, and facilitate learning about collaborative organizational forms and practices - what we call collaborative organizing - for a more sustainable, regenerative and thriving 21st century economic system.

Systems Thinking, Mapping and Change in Food and Agriculture

Societal actors across scales and geographies increasingly demand visual applications of systems thinking – the process of understanding and changing the reality of a system by considering its whole set of interdependencies – to address complex problems affecting food and agriculture. Yet, despite the wide offer of systems mapping tools, there is still little guidance for managers, policy-makers, civil society and changemakers in food and agriculture on how to choose, combine and use these tools on the basis of a sufficiently deep understanding of socio-ecological systems. Unfortunately, actors seeking to address complex problems with inadequate understandings of systems often have limited influence on the socio-ecological systems they inhabit, and sometimes even generate unintended negative consequences. Hence, we first review, discuss and exemplify seven key features of systems that should be – but rarely have been – incorporated in strategic decisions in the agri-food sector: interdependency, level-multiplicity, dynamism, path dependency, self-organization, non-linearity and complex causality. Second, on the basis of these features, we propose a collective process to systems mapping that grounds on the notion that the configuration of problems (i.e., how multiple issues entangle with each other) and the configuration of actors (i.e., how multiple actors relate to each other and share resources) represent two sides of the same coin. Third, we provide implications for societal actors - including decision-makers, trainers and facilitators - using systems mapping to trigger or accelerate systems change in five purposive ways: targeting multiple goals; generating ripple effects; mitigating unintended consequences; tackling systemic constraints, and collaborating with unconventional partners.

Open for Business: Pathways to strengthen CGIAR's responsible engagement with the private sector