In Brazil, an increasingly hybrid form of sustainability governance is emerging as a way of addressing the environmental impacts of agri-food production, trade and consumption. Through a critical engagement with Global Value Chain and Transnational Environmental Governance literatures, the authors assess how this mode of governance is evolving in the Brazilian soy-animal protein chain.
Brazil's soy sector is an integral part of the country's animal protein industry.
Photo: Lucas Ninno / Getty Images
The authors analysed the current literature to better understand how global value chains’ stakeholders and operations evolve and are influenced by sustainability pressures. The latter have resulted in multiple and diverse regulatory measures, such as eco-labelling or major multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the Soy-Amazon moratorium.
They found that many agri-food commodities have gradually become regulated by mechanisms stemming from environmental non-governmental organizations, national governments, private companies, and trading partners’ demands. The cumulative interactions of these actors ultimately frame sustainability, but can also inadvertently reinforce existing power inequalities in governance structures.
The authors then applied the results of this analysis to investigate the dynamics of sustainability governance in the EU-UK-Brazilian soy-animal protein value chain. The analysis revealed that a hybrid sustainability governance model has emerged over the past two decades. Further research must examine this hybrid system’s successes and challenges so that the actors both within and outside of the primary networks of soy production and trade can make the necessary environmental improvements to the sector.
An open access version of the paper is available on the University of York’s Research Database.
Go to the menu on the right-hand side and click the link titled “RIPE_2025_Flores-Martinez et al_Power and sustainability governance soy” to download.
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