Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU’s global environmental governance

Journal article

This paper introduces a new model that incorporates blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) in creating traceability on agricultural supply chains to meet European Union's (EU's) regulation on deforestation-free products. This model stands for the system that would be applied for monitoring origins and routes with regard to verifying the status of products being free from deforestation. Particularly, this addressed the European Union's Deforestation-free Regulation products (EUDR)-related issues in Indonesia focused on smallholders and their linkage to traceability tools. The proposed conceptual model demonstrates how blockchain technology combined with AI in agricultural supply chains enhances transparency and reliability in the line of improving environmental sustainability as well as boosting consumers' confidence. Integration of blockchain and AI increases agricultural supply chain transparency, traceability, and reliability whereby smart contracts can execute automatically such as releasing payments once certain conditions are met

Authors: Kumeh, EM; Ramcilovic-Suominen, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Sustainability Science
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 599-616
• Publication date: 2023-02-18
• DOI: 10.1007/s11625-023-01302-7
• EISSN: 1862-4057
• ISSN: 1862-4065
• Language: English
• Keywords: Footprint; Sustainable development; Physics; Inequality; Mathematics; Geography; Corporate governance; Deforestation (computer science); Political science; Economics; Power (physics); Law