Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 193, March 2022, 107312
Ecological Economics

Compliance and cooperation in global value chains: The effects of the better cotton initiative in Pakistan and India

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107312Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • The BCI combines a compliance-based verification approach with cooperative capacity building.

  • BCI is associated with improved prices and lower costs for farmers.

  • There is no evidence BCI affects worker wages or hours.

  • BCI's impacts are shaped by local geographic and institutional contexts.

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.

Keywords

Global Value Chains
Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives
Better Cotton Initiative
India
Pakistan

Cited by (0)