Abstract
The Better Cotton Imitative (BCI), the world's largest multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) for sustainable cotton production, is a prime example of a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model used by some MSIs to engage farmers and on-farm workers in the global South. Using a mixed methods approach, we investigate the impacts of this hybrid model on economic, environmental, and labor conditions of farmers and on-farm workers on irrigated cotton farms in Pakistan and India. In one of few cross-national comparisons of BCI impacts, we find evidence that farmers participating in BCI's “cooperation-compliance” model report (a) higher gross incomes and (b) lower input costs than comparison farmers. However, (c) BCI had no positive impacts upon labor conditions on cotton farms, as compared to conventional peers. Finally, (d) BCI's impacts are mediated by institutional and geographic differences across the study sites. We conclude that effects of MSIs are hard to generalize but can most meaningfully be understood within particular institutional designs, value chains, specific time periods, and institutional contexts.
Highlights
Multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are organizations that bring together private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders to develop and implement standards for improving economic, social, and envi ronmental conditions of production in different global value chains (Auld et al, 2015; Gueneau, 2018; Josserand et al, 2018; Riisgaard et al, 2020; Rueda et al, 2018)
The Better Cotton Imitative (BCI), the world's largest multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) for sustainable cotton production, is a prime example of a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model used by some MSIs to engage farmers and on-farm workers in the global South
We suggest that cooperation between brands/retailers/MSIs and local producers in global value chains precedes and enables local producer compliance with sustainability standards
Summary
Multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are organizations that bring together private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders to develop and implement standards for improving economic, social, and envi ronmental conditions of production in different global value chains (Auld et al, 2015; Gueneau, 2018; Josserand et al, 2018; Riisgaard et al, 2020; Rueda et al, 2018). Alongside MSIs driven by organizations from the Global North, stakeholders interested in alternatives have turned to “home-grown MSIs” headquartered in the South (Sippl, 2020; Sun and van der Ven, 2020; Van der Ven et al, 2021) While their numbers have grown rapidly, it remains debatable to what extent MSIs improve economic, social, and environmental conditions for the pro ducers and workers they target (Nelson et al, 2018). We contribute to the literature on compliance-based and cooperation-based approaches, arguing that these strategies, often described as opposed orientations, are frequently deployed in tandem Acknowledging these overlaps, we present a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model of sustainability in global value chains. Following Van der Ven and Cashore (2018), we argue the cooperation-compliance model's impacts on farmers and on-farm workers are shaped by interactions with geographic, institutional, and other conditions in the places and times it is applied
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