Journal article
Can sustainability certification enhance the climate resilience of smallholder farmers? The case of Ghanaian cocoa
- Abstract:
- Sustainability certification has been posited as a key governance mechanism to enhance the climate resilience of smallholder farmers. Whilst many certifications now include climate resilience in their standards, their ability to deliver this for smallholders remains untested. We take the case of the 2015–16 drought-shock to cocoa production in Ghana to examine whether certification can enhance smallholder climate resilience. We used a novel transdisciplinary methodology combining participatory outcome definition with household surveys, biophysical measurements, satellite data and counterfactual analysis. Utilising our climate resilience framework, we find that certification has a strong effect on the adoption of basic management, e.g. fertilization, but a weak influence on more complex resilience strategies, e.g. agroforest diversification. Beyond certification, we identify strong regional patterns in resilience. These findings suggest that certification has some potential to enhance climate resilience but greater focus on facilitating diversification and adapting to sub-national contexts is required for improved effectiveness.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.9MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/1747423x.2022.2097455
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Journal:
- Journal of Land Use Science More from this journal
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 407-428
- Publication date:
- 2022-08-24
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-06-30
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1747-4248
- ISSN:
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1747-423X
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1277008
- Local pid:
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pubs:1277008
- Deposit date:
-
2022-09-02
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Thompson et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. 0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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