Corporate Social Responsibility

By Søren Jeppesen, CBDS, MSC, CBS and Andries Bezuidenhout, Department of Development Studies, University of Fort Hare, South Africa

The garment industry is often portrayed as an industry that has the potential to bring about large-scale economic and social changes in countries in the Global South. Bangladesh and China are examples of this, where garment manufacturing led to increased levels of employment and further industrial development. However, smaller economies can also benefit from the industry by establishing a significant number of formal jobs in contexts otherwise dominated by informality and subsistence agriculture. Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) in Southern Africa are such examples, where some 45.000 and 22.000 jobs have been created since the late 1990s/early 2000s. The bulk of the garments made in these new factories is exported to the US and to the two countries’ South African neighbours.

However, the garment industry also has a different and somewhat darker side. Significant parts of the industry are characterized by tough working conditions and extremely low wages. This, for obvious reasons, attracts criticism from workers, trade unions, consumer organizations, NGOs, and human rights organizations. Lesotho and Eswatini are no exception to this. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, campaigns about working conditions in these factories undertaken by workers and unions, supported by student movements and unions in the Global North, led to some major retail brands introducing labour codes of conduct to be complied with by their suppliers. These codes, some argue, will ensure proper working conditions and wages not lower than the national minimum level.

Particularly in Lesotho, the implementation of these codes of conduct led to some improvements. To be sure, the country marketed itself as a ‘sweat free’ production destination after these codes had been implemented by major fashion brands. These improvements include better lighting and temperature control in factories. Lesotho, also called the Mountain Kingdom, has extremely cold winters and seething hot summers. However, there is an argument that this focus on ‘outcome rights’ is at the expense of workers themselves voicing their own concerns, also referred to as ‘process rights’ (for more on ‘outcome rights’ and ‘process rights’ see Mick Blowfield’s article published nearly two decades ago in Third World Quarterly *). In addition, while some basic health and safety conditions have improved, wages remain low. The result is that workers and trade unions continue to dispute the sustainability of their working conditions.

The situation in Lesotho and Eswatini points to a number of salient issues regarding options for workers and trade unions in similar contexts, which we outline below. Three issues stand out:

1. Although codes of conduct fulfil some minimum conditions according to national law, these codes do not necessarily ensure ‘good working conditions and proper (living or decent) wages’.
2. Although consumers in the Global North may think that a label in a T-Shirt stating that certain standards have been met and social responsibilities upheld, the groups mainly impacted in the Global South may think differently.
3. While minor improvements in working conditions and (minimum) wages might be celebrated as ‘major achievements’ at one stage, the benefits and experience impact in the Global South can be limited and short-lived. This, in turn, calls for long-term and a more sustained effort internationally and nationally, if the process of outsourced production is to lead to more substantive benefits for workers, and for companies and economies in the Global South.

The entry of the garment industry in Lesotho and Eswatini & the response from workers and unions

Garment manufacturing started in Lesotho and Eswatini in the 1970s and 1980s when South African companies set up production in the two countries. The new employment options were generally welcomed, but as Asian, mainly Taiwanese, companies joined the industry, discontent grew. These manufacturers were under pressure to produce large orders at cut-throat profit margins. Supervisors often did not speak local languages and did not understand local behavioural norms. Workers felt offended by what was considered to be harsh language by foreign supervisors and protests were staged. As the industry rapidly expanded due to additional South African, but in particular Taiwanese investments, additional protests followed. Now issues emerged that also related to long working hours, in warm/humid and poor ventilated factories, and low wages.

Trade unions engaged in collective organizing of workers, though encountering several obstacles in reaching a sufficient level of representation to be granted rights to negotiate with management on behalf of workers. Both Lesotho and Eswatini have labour laws that technically comply with the International Labour Organisation’s core conventions, but the proverbial devil is often in the detail. First of all, in Lesotho, labour laws stipulate that such rights can only be granted when organizing 50% of the workers in a workplace. This threshold for representation is extremely difficult to achieve. In Eswatini, strikes are technically legal, but long ‘cooling-off periods’ stipulated by labour law makes it hard to follow through on industrial action. Secondly, in both countries several unions sprung up, which led to internal competition and union rivalry. In Lesotho, this even further limited the chances of even one union being able to organize 50% of the workers. Thirdly, due to intimidation, extremely low wages (which makes paying union dues difficult), as well as the fear of losing their jobs, workers were reluctant to join unions. So, limited progress materialized.

The picture seemed to change as student organisations and unions in the US became aware of the conditions in Lesotho and to some extent Eswatini. They started to engage the US retailers and brands buying the products from Southern Africa and campaigning in favour of improved conditions in the factories. In Eswatini, where a larger share of the production went to South Africa, the unions started to collaborate with South African counterparts (unions from the Congress of South African Trade Unions, or COSATU). Eventually, the US retailers and brands found the media attention and queries in the US to be too cumbersome. They accepted that some improvements needed to take place and a number of codes of conduct were signed between the US buyers and the mainly Taiwanese garment producers.

These labour codes of conduct led to some improvements in wages, as well as safety and health conditions. An industry initiative in Lesotho attempted to pool resources from different companies to respond to high levels of HIV/AIDS among employees. These initiatives were celebrated in the media in the US, but soon the workers and unions in the two countries realized that the wages continued to be (way) below a living wage. Garment manufacturers expected their orders to increase due to them complying with codes of conduct, but this was not the case. Some union activists felt that the codes made minor improvements in terms of outcomes, but did not significantly address extremely low wages. As a result, protests resumed – and continue to do so as workers fail to see significant improvement.

The challenges encountered

The implementation of codes of conduct indicates some level of attention to the particular economic and social issues in the countries where factories are located. There is certainly some level of social responsibility among both brands and retailers as the industry’s major buyers. But the question remains whether these improvements will spill over into sustained changes and more meaningful improvements. Workers and unions have quite legitimate claims — who in a Danish setting would not acknowledge the right to a living wage? — but industry conditions point in a different direction. These conditions are linked to the competitive nature of the industry, dynamics related to the states where production is located, as well as the limits to consumer activism under such conditions.

From a global perspective, fierce competition between countries to attract garment manufacturers to set up shop means that the typical wage paid is low. Wage increases beyond a certain level can price a country out of the market and producers may move elsewhere (on this, see Pietra Rivoli’s now classic book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy **).

In addition, and also importantly, workers and their unions have little backing from the state in the two countries. As mentioned above, on balance the labour laws are in support of the garment manufacturers and working against the interest of the workers and their unions. More importantly, the governments of the two countries have a clear agenda in support of the garment manufacturers as part of their investment policy. The outcome of this has been a foreign-owned industry with little link to local businesses and markets. There certainly is the potential that the presence of the industry could assist in building locally owned businesses, but little effort to bring this about through industrial policy. Rather, state intervention is directed at tax breaks for investors, the provision of factory shells in industrial parks, as well as the promise of labour at competitive wage rates. Accordingly, the labour side has been met with a narrative of ‘we should make sure not to scare away the investors’ (understood as ‘we should not ask for too high wages’) – or as framed in the Eswatini context: ‘The foreign investors are like birds who can easily fly away’. In both countries, strikes are routinely met with police violence.

Finally, the awareness of the ‘critical consumers’ and to some extent the ‘critical/supportive’ media in the Global North tends to be short-lived. While both groups can be mobilized for a cause for some time, both tend to turn attention elsewhere within a short time. Consumers feel assured that the social responsibilities are actually making a difference and tend not to follow up on their earlier concerns. Media tends to move on to the next ‘hot topic’ and similarly not follow up on earlier inquiries. Hence, the initial gains made based on attention, joint collaboration and pressures in the Global North and in the Global South wane, leaving workers and unions to continue their fight alone (see Gay Seidman’s book Beyond the Boycott: Labour Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism for more on this ***). The bottom-line in Lesotho and Eswatini, unfortunately, is one of limited and insufficient change leaving the workers with non-living wages and a lot to be desired regarding working conditions in general.

Ways ahead

An analysis that only points to the structural constraints to improving the working conditions and lives of workers in these garment factories runs the risk of ignoring their own efforts to bring about change. Despite the constraints on the potential outcome of the years of struggle, workers and unions have made progress and continue to push for decent work and living wages. In Lesotho, unions often strategically use contact with fashion brands to put pressure on local manufacturers and they have also put political pressure on the state to increase the minimum wage. Unions also formed a single union called the Independent Democratic Union of Lesotho (IDUL), although smaller rivals still muddy the waters of solidarity. In Eswatini, rival unions have also come together to form the Amalgamated Trade Unions of Swaziland (ATUSWA) and have used international pressure to force the state to recognise them as legitimate unions when the government refused to register the newly formed union. The history shows that options for positive gains do exist, especially when based on international collaboration and an ability to create international attention to the issues at stake.

Here we could highlight that proper consumer awareness in Denmark and in South Africa can potentially have significant influence on the situation, but this influence also depends on a more careful understanding of power dynamics in the industry. These power dynamics relate to both the cut-throat nature of competition in the industry and local repression by governments. Hence, activism in the Global North also has to be focused on strengthening internal workers’ organisation and not be focused on ‘outcome rights’ at the expense of ‘process rights’. In the end, workers should be able to voice their interests, rather than being the beneficiaries of ‘social responsibility’. In both countries, the unions have been able to overcome former differences and set up common unions – an important step towards securing the rights of their members.

The blog draws on a longer-term collaboration between the authors, which presently is supported by funding from the Danish Free Research Funds (in Danish: Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond – DFF) through its Society and Business arm. The funding is allocated for an ‘International Research Stay’ for Søren Jeppesen at University of Fort Hare, South Africa with a focus on: ‘Understanding the Role of Business in Development: The Garment Industry in Southern Africa and Enclave Development.’ For joint publications, see below.

Søren Jeppesen is an Associate Professor in Business & Development Studies (see: www.cbs.dk/en/staff/sjmsc). His main research areas includes CSR, SMEs and Entrepreneurship in developing countries with an emphasis on Southern and Eastern Africa. He works on issues regarding local factors which influence the development and growth potential of developing country firms (or lack of same). One of his major research activities concerns the importance of Codes of Conduct for working conditions in the textiles and clothing industry in Southern Africa (in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini).Andries Bezuidenhout is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. His main research areas include an interest in precarious labour, labour markets, labour movements and development policy. He is the co-author of Grounding globalization: labour in the age of insecurity (2008, Blackwells) and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Critical engagement with public sociology: Perspectives from the Global South (2022, Bristol University Press).

Joint Publications:

Bezuidenhout, A. and Jeppesen, S. (2011). ‘Between State, Market and Society: Labour Codes of Conduct in the Southern African Garment Industry.’ Development Southern Africa, Vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 653-668.
Jeppesen, S and Bezuidenhout, A. (2019). ‘Swaziland: The Garment Industry in its Economic, Political and Social Context.’ Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School [wp] 2019, 51 p. (CBDS Working Paper Series, No. 4, 2019).
Jeppesen, S. and Bezuidenhout, A. (2019). ‘Lesotho: The Garment Industry in its Economic, Political and Social Context.’ Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School [wp] 2019, 50 p. (CBDS Working Paper Series, No. 3, 2019).

References/Further reading:

*Blowfield M (1999) Ethical trade: A review of developments and issues. Third World Quarterly 20(4): 753-770.
**Rivoli P (2005) The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
***Seidman G (2009) Beyond the Boycott: Labour Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York: Russell Sage.

By Lotte Thomsen (Centre for Business and Development Studies, Copenhagen Business School) and Martin Hess (School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester)

Did you also wonder why coloured gemstones, like rubies and emeralds, are ‘back in the market’? And why they abruptly compete with diamonds, which were otherwise the most valuable and desirable stones since the early 1900s? Our joint effort to provide some answers to these (and other) questions so far led to a newly published paper in Economic Geography, which explores the connections between the rising popularity of coloured gemstones and a corporate re-focusing away from diamonds.

The image and value of diamonds was challenged and problematized since the 1990s when they became connected with a variety of sustainability challenges, not least with conflict in diamond supplier countries. In contrast, the social and environmental problems of the coloured gemstone industry have not yet been the focal point of similar scrutiny and intensive research. Rather, coloured gemstones are often branded as “sustainable”. We show how the rising popularity and value of coloured gemstones is part of a “corporate escape” from known problems in the diamond sector.

Gemstones are highly connected to their “grounded” nature and geographical origination. “Geography” is therefore an essential aspect of gemstone and jewellery valuation, and “provenance” is often utilised as a marketing tool in the industry. However, using “origination” for branding purposes certainly works best when the places in which consumer products origin are perceived as “exotic and adventurous” rather than “problematic and unsustainable” by consumers. Gemstones frequently originate from “dark places”, where sustainability challenges for mining communities, workers, and the environment are severe and manifold. Gemstones are also often unearthed where sourcing is considered unethical or even embargoed. Thus, the geographical origination of gemstones is potentially problematic for retail sales.

Corporations therefore increasingly turn to strategies and practices of “geographical dissociation” of places and matters that are damaging for retail sales and brand reputation. An inherent intransparency of the industry has become key to such processes of dissociation. Gemstone mining, processing, and trading takes place in overly complex and unregulated supply networks which connect with global value chains for gemstone and jewellery. Thus, coloured gemstones that enter into international markets commonly involve informal—and sometimes illicit—mining and trading practices.

You can read much more about the myriad of trading networks and global value chains for coloured gemstone and jewellery, by accessing our full paper:

Lotte Thomsen & Martin Hess (2021) Dialectics of Association and Dissociation: Spaces of Valuation, Trade, and Retail in the Gemstone and Jewelry Sector, Economic Geography. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00130095.2021.1989302?src

References

Channel News Asia. 2018. Why coloured gemstones are so popular right now.

Ibert, O., Hess, M., Kleibert, J., Müller, F., and Power, D. 2019a. Geographies of dissociation: Value creation, ‘dark’ places, and ‘missing’ links. Dialogues in Human Geography 9 (1): 43–63.

Pike, A. 2015. Origination: The geographies of brands and branding. Oxford: Wiley.

Shortell, P., and Irwin, E. 2017. Governing the gemstone sector: Lessons from global experience. Natural Resource Governance Institute, September 19, 2017

Wright, C. 2004. Tackling conflict diamonds: The Kimberley Process certification scheme. International Peacekeeping 11 (4): 697–708.

By Stefano Ponte, Christine Noe, Dan Brockington, Opportuna Kweka, Rasul Ahmed Minja, Robert Katikiro, Faraja Namkesa, Mette Fog Olwig, Pilly Silvano, Ruth John, Kelvin Kamde, Lasse Folke Henriksen and Caleb Gallemore

The issue

New and more complex partnerships are emerging to address the sustainability of natural resource use in the Global South. These partnerships variously link donors, governments, community organizations, NGOs, firms, consultancies, certification agencies and other intermediaries. High expectations and many resources have been invested in these initiatives. Yet, we still do not know whether more sophisticated organizational structures, more stakeholders involved, denser social networks and more advanced participatory processes have delivered better sustainability outcomes, and if so, in what sectors and under what circumstances.

The research project

To fill this knowledge gap, the collective research project New Partnerships for Sustainability (NEPSUS), funded by FFU [1], assembled a multidisciplinary team to analyse sustainability partnerships that seek to combine conservation and development objectives in three key natural resource sectors in southeast Tanzania: wildlife, forestry and coastal resources. Researchers from Copenhagen Business School, the University of Dar es Salaam, the University of Sheffield and Roskilde University undertook five years of research, which involved carrying out a total of 331 key informant interviews, 81 focus group discussions, a survey with 1019 respondents, participant observation, and the collection of secondary documents, statistics, remote sensing and social network data.

In each of these sectors, we assessed whether co-management with local communities and private and civil society actors, and putatively more participatory processes in the governance of natural resources, result in positive environmental outcomes and improved livelihoods. We compared institutionally ‘more complex’ partnerships to relatively ‘simpler’ (more traditional top-down and centralized) management systems – and to ‘control’ locations where there are no partnerships in place.

We also assessed network complexity – as actors can use social networks to share their experiences, values, interests, knowledge and resources, but also to facilitate resource exchange and handle possible tensions. At the same time, networks may survive only when the most powerful and influential members of a partnership keep them alive, thus possibly reinforcing existing power imbalances. Our interest was to assess whether partnership complexity (in its institutional and network aspects) affects the ability to deliver sustainability outcomes.

Main findings

Legitimacy

Despite deliberate, evolving and persuasive efforts to raise awareness on the relevant rules and regulations, sustainability partnerships have struggled to gain and maintain legitimacy. Local communities are yet to perceive these partnerships as responsive, accountable and trustworthy arrangements that strike the requisite balance between community welfare and conservation goals.

Communities living in forestry sites perceived relatively higher levels of socio-economic and environmental outcomes accruing from new partnerships than their counterparts in wildlife and coastal resource sites. Lack of material incentives in wildlife partnerships and coastal partnerships limited their legitimacy in the eyes of local communities. Fishers and consumers of bush meat were affected by access restrictions, and alternative livelihood activities failed – or their benefits went to a small number of wealthy investors.

Complexity

We expected network complexity to correlate positively with institutional complexity, as the latter often entails participation of, and coordination between, a wide set of stakeholders. We found that there is a statistical association between these two dimensions (although it is highly sector-dependent), and that the building of more complex networks tends to predate the joining of more complex institutional governance forms. We interpret this as an indication that network building needs to be part of the initiation process of these partnerships.

Environmental impacts

The analysis of our remote sensing data suggests that there is a positive relationship between a higher degree of both institutional and network complexity and the maintenance of forest cover (in relation to forestry, wildlife habitats, and mangroves). However, we found no consistent relationships between either form of complexity and the perceptions by survey respondents on local environmental change.

These findings indicate that there is some potential for (institutional and network) ‘more complex’ forms of sustainability partnership to support effective natural resource management. But institutional complexity does not simply emerge on its own. It must often be deliberately constructed and maintained and it involves previous work building complex networks.

Impacts on livelihoods

Most people in the study sites we researched are farmers. Their livelihoods will improve to the extent that their farming revenues increase, and this happens mainly in relation to improved transport arrangements and farm-gate prices. New sustainability partnerships need to support farming activities if they are to bring prosperity. New partnerships on sustainability matter. They can make laws more just and fairer. They can introduce new business opportunities. They can safeguard natural resources more effectively. But they are not likely to be engines of large-scale prosperity of agricultural communities.

Cultivating Partnerships

Instead of decentralization, we are witnessing accountability transfers that move obligations to local authorities without sufficient resources allocated to them to carry out their tasks. In the contexts we examined in southeast Tanzania, we observed a multiplication in the number and variety of actors engaged in sustainability partnerships. These actors often represent different interests, express different world views and bring with them specific hopes, expectations and claims. Smaller and weaker actors – especially those who do not have capacity, organizational skills, and resources to participate as equals in partnerships – have been marginalized in decision-making.

We also see that the functional quality of sustainability partnerships in Tanzania depends on how they are embedded in networks of actors and institutions. To some extent, we have shown that social networks can act as potentially positive mediators of collective action coordination and collective learning processes.

Sustainability partnerships have been more inclined towards the provision of training on conservation issues than the development of alternative livelihood activities. As a result, they have had limited effects on socio-economic and livelihood outcomes, especially at the household level. They have thus failed to strike a balance of conservation and socio-economic outcomes, with the partial exception of community-based forest management. This has culminated into significant levels of community dissatisfaction with their performance.

Policy recommendations

1) Local community governance needs to be strengthened to improve a sense of ownership and increase cooperation and trust.

2) The income accruing from sustainabitlity partnership activities need to be distributed evenly and in a transparent manner, no matter how small.

3) Duplication and unclear division of labour among different actors and jurisdictions need to be addressed.

4) Long-term consistent financial support is essential.

5) The government and collaborating actors should provide clear economic incentives and support community-based enterprises.

6) When access to resources is tightened, it is essential that alternative sources of livelihood that make sense to local communities are facilitated.

7) Efforts should be made to facilitate contacts between local communities and other key actors before the establishment of sustainability partnerships and maintained during their operation.

For more information, see www.nepsus.info

Keep an eye open for the forthcoming open-access book: Stefano Ponte, Christine Noe and Dan Brockington (eds) Contested Sustainability: The Political Ecology of Conservation and Development in Tanzania. James Currey.

[1] The Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU) is a programme committee that advises the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark regarding Danida’s support to development research.

By Eirik Veggeberg, Izabela Delabre, and Kristjan Jespersen

The private sector is becoming increasingly vocal in its efforts to reduce deforestation. The last decade has seen a number of major firms making zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs); pledging to eliminate deforestation in their supply chains, including Nestlé, Cargill, Unilever and Mondelez International. The exact contents of ZDCs vary, from strict zero gross deforestation commitments as implemented by Nestlé, to the more flexible zero net deforestation commitments of Unilever. Many corporations further include policies for social sustainability, such as labour standards (Mondelez, Nestlé), land rights (Nestlé, Unilever) and community consultation and inclusion (Cargill, Unilever). Due in part to their recency, our knowledge on the topic of ZDCs is limited, and there is much to learn about their effects on both forests and people.

What do we know about ZDCs?

The private sector deforestation movement started gaining traction following the ‘success story’ of the Brazilian Soy Moratorium, to which significant deforestation reductions were attributed. However, recent developments suggest that the intervention merely displaced the environmental destruction to the Cerrado savanna, with subsequent environmental costs potentially outweighing the conservation value of the initial deforestation reduction. Similar findings elsewhere induce scepticism about the capacity of supply chain initiatives to give rise to positive change. Despite this, ZDCs are perceived favourably by scholars and environmental groups alike – encouraged as being a (small) step in the right direction.

The efficacy of ZDCs in reducing deforestation is widely examined in academic research, however, little is known about the impacts of ZDCs on local income and livelihoods. This is an important gap in our understanding given the prevalence of ZDCs, and the potential challenges and opportunities they foster for more sustainable and equitable environmental governance. Without more scholarship examining the capacity of zero deforestation pledges to drive positive change and mitigate social harm, there is a danger that they may fail to address the complex problem of deforestation, marginalise communities, and delegitimise other forms of governance that could lead to more positive outcomes. This article expresses numerous concerns about the impacts ZDCs may have on local income and livelihoods.

Selection biases

Firstly, there is a risk that the producers participating in ZDCs are the “low-hanging fruit”. This is prevalent in the adoption of certification schemes and sustainability standards, where participation has been found highly biased toward producers who are already compliant, or close to complying due to prior deforestation, as well as those sufficiently wealthy to afford the price of adoption and implementation. Biases in ZDC participation could contribute to worsening existing inequalities, excluding poorer farmers and entrenching the position of wealthier ones.

While ZDC implementation strategies greatly vary, the exclusion of non-compliant actors is not rare – Nestlé openly commits to such practices. This may be perceived as a sign of loyalty to sustainability, however, paired with selection biases found in other sustainability schemes and initiatives, it anchors the fear that the implementation of ZDC could aggravate local income inequalities and harm poorer stakeholders; perversely rewarding farmers who have obtained land through past deforestation, whilst punishing those who have not.

The price of sustainability

Secondly, for the implementation of ZDC to be considered sustainable and equitable, it is imperative that adequate cost-sharing processes are implemented within supply chains. Learning from the oil palm sector, it is likely that farmers will be held disproportionately responsible for ensuring sustainable production. Farmers implementing ZDC risk losing out on income as buyers exhibit little willingness to compensate producers for operating sustainably. This fear was reiterated by interviewees working on ZDC implementation, as the majority felt corporations were unwilling to pay the price of their sustainability initiatives. A consulted economist further suggested that local suppliers may be caught in a poverty trap as a result of ZDCs restricting them from expanding their agricultural frontier. Businesses’ reluctance to pay for the implementation of sustainable practices risks the income and livelihoods of local actors – potentially encouraging the illegal encroachment of forests.

Interviews with sustainability experts shed light on further negative impacts supply chain sustainability initiatives may have on local suppliers. One interviewee spoke of an indigenous community settled in the Peruvian Amazon that had developed good contact with local NGOs as well as international corporations. The interviewee described them as skilled at diversifying their sources of income: cocoa, timber – even starting to venture into tourism. However, when the pandemic hit, the community was one of the first to request emergency food supplies. The indigenous community had been left exposed in times of crisis in part due to specialisation and involvement with the private sector, which eroded their resilience. Such scenarios evince that still very little is known of the wider and longer-term social impacts of private sector sustainability governance through ZDC implementation. Similarly, based on field research from the Peruvian Amazon, one consultant worried that farmers who swap their crop out for the one pushed by initiatives may actually see their income drop, as a lack of experience with the crop leaves them more vulnerable to potential challenges such as pests and growth issues related to poor land suitability.

What to do?

There are numerous ways in which businesses could adapt their initiatives and implementation strategies to minimise the risks discussed above. Firstly, thorough jurisdictional approaches could help avert some of the potential dangers faced by local communities as a result of ZDC implementation. Incorporating regional governments, NGOs as well as local actors and communities could help combat selection biases by providing support and incentives for all local actors and communities to partake and benefit from the initiatives. More cooperation at the local level may also help minimise worries that actors may have about altering their crop to fit the initiatives. Further, it is crucial that initiatives are developed so as to suit local or regional contexts. One interviewee stated that currently this is not the case, and that regional differences and complexities often go overlooked. It is not as simple so as to ‘copy and paste’ approaches between regions with the belief that “if it worked in Costa Rica, surely it will work in Peru”. The implementation of ZDCs must evolve to incorporate and encourage cooperation amongst a broader range of actors, and their contents require a great deal of flexibility to account for local differences and complexities.

Secondly, businesses need to show greater responsibility and willingness to partake in cost sharing decisions. It is currently too easy for firms to push full responsibility onto farmers. As highlighted by a chief sustainability officer, businesses still consider zero-deforestation policies efforts of charity and CSR, with very few integrating sustainability into their business model. Therefore, as long as environmental costs are not integrated into the price of goods, businesses will fail to prioritise sustainability over profits, and will be reluctant to pay for initiatives in an attempt to minimise their costs. Approaches to integrating externalities are heavily researched and must be more closely examined in relation to deforestation and ZDCs.

The aim of this article is not to discredit supply chain sustainability initiatives and ZDCs as legitimate instruments for reducing deforestation, or to expose them as inherently damaging to the incomes and livelihoods of local actors. Rather, it aims to shed light on ignored and potentially damaging unintended consequences ZDCs may have on local actors, with the intention of encouraging scholars and practitioners to explore this matter further. Empirical research on the implementation of ZDCs is needed to establish whether the aforementioned- and/or other effects are observed in practice, and if so, to what extent they can be attributed to existing ZDCs.

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About the Authors

Eirik Ingwardo Veggeberg is a Junior Research Associate and final year Philosophy, Politics and Economics undergraduate at the University of Sussex. His current research project explores the effects supply chain sustainability initiatives have on local income and livelihoods in the Peruvian Amazon. Feel free to connect with Eirik on Linkedin.

Izabela Delabre is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, examining sustainable forest governance, sustainable production and consumption of food, and sustainability transformations. Izabela worked for the Business and Biodiversity Conservation Programme at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) managing ZSL’s global oil palm work. Her PhD (Human Geography) examined the political ecology of participatory impact assessment practices in the context of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Kristjan Jespersen is an Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He studies the growing development and management of Ecosystem Services in developing countries. Within the field, Kristjan focuses his attention on the institutional legitimacy of such initiatives and the overall compensation tools used to ensure compliance.

CBDS Research Briefing by Maha Rafi Atal and Lisa Ann Richey

Maha Rafi Atal is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, where her research focuses on corporate power, corporate social responsibility and corporate influence in the media. She is a co- Investigator on the Commodifying Compassion research project. http://www.maha-rafi-atal.com

Lisa Ann Richey is Professor of Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School. She works in the areas of international aid and humanitarian politics, the aid business and commodification of causes. She is the principal investigator on the Commodifying Compassion research project. https://www.lisaannrichey.com

Executive Summary

As the global Covid-19 pandemic spread through Europe and North America, companies raced to communicate how they were responding to the crisis. Advertising that focuses on a company’s response to humanitarian crises is hardly new. Every holiday season features a parade of brands touting their seasonal partnerships with charitable causes. Yet these exercises in “Covid-branding” struck a particular nerve with both consumers and media commentators because so many of the brands stuck to the same script. Quickly that script even became the subject of satire.

‘The hallmarks of the coronavirus ad are so consistent they could be generated by bots. They begin with eerie drone footage of empty streets, a shot of a child staring plaintively out the window and then — cue the upbeat musical key change — a medical worker peeling off a mask, a guy jamming on a home piano, maybe a deeply pregnant woman rubbing her belly as if summoning a genie from its bottle.’

Amanda Hess, The New York Times, May 22, 2020

These patterns are important. In the uncertain early weeks of the pandemic, as governments were still crafting their responses, the stories brands told played a role in shaping how the public made sense of the crisis. What kind of a crisis was it? What sort of solutions did it need? What role should business play in delivering them? Covid-branding offered answers to those questions.

In this briefing note, we present a preliminary analysis of Covid-branding by companies in Europe and North America during March and April 2020. Our analysis finds that messaging clustered clearly into two ways could engage: ‘Covid-helping’ and ‘Covid-coping.’ These messages of ‘managing the pandemic’ and ‘managing yourself’ frame the consumption of goods and services as a way that consumers can show they care, presenting shopping as a form of everyday heroism. In this way, they make the case that private sector has a role to play in humanitarian response.

Economic Context

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken an extraordinary toll on the global economy. Measures to combat the spread of the virus, including border closures, and national lockdowns affecting one-third of the world’s population, shut down much industrial production and pushed white-collar professionals to remote work. These measures, coupled with a fall in consumers’ own confidence in response to the health crisis, contributed to rising unemployment, falling consumer activity, and the worst global recession since the Great Depression.

This context, with consumer activity declining overall and shifting from closed stores to online retailers, placed pressure on brands to compete for a share of the smaller e-commerce pie. At the same time, the recession placed pressure on marketing professionals to demonstrate their relevance at a time of overall corporate retrenchment.

Marketing Context

We focus our analysis on online communications, especially social media output. Social media marketing is often informal in tone and crafted quickly to respond to real-time events, so that brands can ride the waves of attention paid to viral news stories, from royal babies to sporting events.4 Most research about this practice has suggested brands choose to focus on positive or neutral stories to avoid mistakes, as humorous tweets about a serious event can backfire. That makes Covid-branding in the early weeks of the pandemic, when infection and death rates were rising, unusual.

We also examine promotional emails and newsletters, a form of content marketing. Content marketers have begun to develop more journalistic skills, including as storytellers and explainers of complex phenomena, and indeed many former journalists are employed as content marketers. Covid-branding, in which brands help consumers make sense of the emerging crisis, is an example of this phenomenon.

These online forms have not received much attention from researchers of corporate humanitarianism, which has focused on more traditional forms of print and broadcast advertising. We hope that this brief typology of how marketers used these newer forms in the Covid-19 pandemic encourages further research into these formats.

Covid-branding as Covid-helping

Brands that emphasized their role in helping to manage the pandemic did so in distinct ways. To understand this, we considered two aspects of each marketing message: First, whether companies are making an engaged or disengaged intervention. Companies which are engaged use their own business capacities toward the Covid-19 cause. Second, we consider whether companies are claiming to directly or indirectly impact the Covid-19 crisis itself. We investigate whether the brand claims to address the medical situation (direct) or indirect societal outcomes of the pandemic, including economic impacts.

The four modes of engagement

As a food and drinks business with a national supply chain, Starbucks was able to use its core capacities to address indirect economic impact of pandemic on food supply. Promotional email highlights corporate donations of 700,000 meals to food banks and use of company logistics network to assist foodbanks with transport.

Makes the case that hunger “is part of the crisis” to underscore relevance of this indirect engagement.

Other indirect engagement included Draper James, the American actress Reese Witherspoon’s fashion brand, announced on its Instagram account on April 2, donations of dresses for teachers (deemed essential workers during pandemic); campaign backfired when dress supplies ran out.

Other direct disengaged examples included fashion brand Armedangels making cloth masks while explicitly stating on Facebook that they could not protect the wearer – “we can’t produce medical masks” – but that 2 euro from the sales of each mask would be donated to Doctors Without Borders, or gas company Crusoe Energy Systems announcing that they were donating computing power to Stanford University coronavirus research.

Other indirect disengaged examples included Facebook offering grants for small businesses in the United States and using its network to promote the existing loan program from the US government.

Covid-branding as Covid-coping

Because these “Covid-coping” messages focused on helping individuals, rather than society or the economy, our analysis focused on the demographics of what kind of consumers each type of “coping” message addressed, as well as what the messages said. We identified three coping mechanisms brands sold to consumers in these Covid-coping messages: coping-through-practicality, coping-through-pleasure and coping-through-denial.

Other coping-through-practicality examples included laptop manufacturers advertising tools for working from home; home furnishings brands advertising tools for cooking at home; and phone, internet and electricity providers advertising their services as essential infrastructure for remote working and home-schooling. Marketing of this type emphasizes how brands could help families and businesses carry on “as normal” during a period of crisis.

Other coping-through-pleasure messages included advertisements from fashion brands including Anthropologie and Nicole Miller advertising loungewear as “self-care style” and clothing for “virtual dates or happy hours,” as well as make-up brands offering online tutorials for those with “more time (inside) on our hands.”

These messages present the health crisis as an opportunity for women to take a “break” from work outside the home and relax with home-bound versions of their usual recreational activities. They draw on influencer culture, which depicts recreation as a full-time occupation. Coping-through-pleasure offers the chance to purchase some of the influencer lifestyle, where the pandemic is not a stressor, and one can escape at a moment’s notice to a sunlit pool.

Other coping-through-denial advertisements included Passports, a travel rewards program, contacting members in mid-March, when concerns about virus spread were focused on cruise ships, to advertise “the best pricing and exceptional bonuses” on celebrity cruises, and online retailers of topical and humorous T-shirts advertising limited range clothing with coronavirus-related captions. Notably, these engagements came broadly from the early weeks of our sample, and brands appeared to shy away from explicitly seeking to make light of the crisis or encouraging consumers to travel in spite of it, by the end of March 2020 when more severe lockdown and suppression measures were in place across Europe.

Implications for Brands

The different types of early Covid-branding in our sample, whether they focus on helping or coping with the pandemic, offer some cautionary lessons for brands.

About Commodifying Compassion

‘Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things’ is a research project focused on understanding how ‘helping’ has become a marketable commodity and how this impacts humanitarianism. An international team of researchers funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research (2017-2021), we examine ethical consumption intended to benefit humanitarian causes from the perspectives of consumers, businesses, NGOs and recipients. The research will produce a better understanding by humanitarian organizations and businesses leading to more ethical fundraising, donors weighing consumption-based models as part of more effective aid, and consumers making more informed choices about ‘helping’ by buying brand aid products. To learn more about our work, visit our website at https://www.commodifyingcompassion.com.

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