The Quest for Sustainable Development
Have the sustainable development goals led to a more inclusive approach within
development cooperation? Has this had an effect on the environment?
Victor Préaux - 11784814
Class: African Renaissance and Development Master in Political Sciences
Specialization: International relations First Reader: Dr. Michael Onyebuchi Eze Second Reader: Rocco Bellanova
Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understandings of sustainable development as a concept. There is an increasing realization that the correlation between socio-economic practices and the degradation of the environment needs to be tackled urgently. The creation of the SDGs in 2015 was meant to alleviate the dichotomy between the environment and the economy by integrating them into a large framework aimed at tackling the roots of underdevelopment and environmental degradation. An essential component of this framework is to be inclusive of all actors, from local ones to global ones. Yet, scholars argue that economic interests often trump the social and environmental ones. Scholars point out for the need to critically reassess these relations in order to effectively mainstream climate change within society. This thesis applies a mixed- methods approach to a case study, Beyond Chocolate, to identify how sustainable development is conceptualized within Belgium’s project and how the structural power of the cocoa market affects social and environmental issues. This thesis concludes that Beyond Chocolate concentrates the power within current market structures. Consequentially, Beyond Chocolate fails to grasp the extent to which fundamental change is needed within development operations. This thesis seeks to contribute to the debate on the role of the environment and local actors in development cooperation by looking at a specific case study.
Keywords: Structure, Agency, interests, corporations, governments, local actors, environment, sustainable development, sustainability, power relations, Sustainable Development Goals, regime analysis, non-governmental actors
Acknowledgements:
I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Michael Onyebuchi Eze for his guidance and patience throughout this process. Dr. Eze was always available for questions and he consistently allowed this paper to be my own work but steered me in the right direction whenever I needed it.
I also like to thank my friends from this master’s group for sharing their knowledge and thoughts on out weekly Tuesday meetings. I would also like to thank all my friends who studied with me at the library for making this time truly unique. Your friendship and support have made this experience all the more memorable. I would like to specifically thank Max Tetteroo and Caspar Henke for taking their time to help me untangle the web of sustainable development.
I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Rocco Bellanova as the second reader of this thesis, and I am gratefully indebted to his for his very valuable comments on this thesis.
Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them.
Thank you. Victor Préaux
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: ... 4 2. Theoretical Framework: ... 9 2.1. Structure-agency debate: ... 9 2.2. The role of regime analysis: ... 12 2.3. The role of discourse analysis: ... 14 2.4. Concluding remarks on the theoretical framework: ... 15 3. Literature Review: ... 17 3.1. Changing the environmental framework and consciousness: ... 17 3.2. The importance of context-specific development: ... 20 3.3. The Conceptualization of mainstreaming ... 23 3.4. Concluding remarks on the literature review: ... 25 4. Methodology: ... 26 5. Beyond Chocolate: a case of sustainable cocoa? ... 28 5.1. Where does Beyond Chocolate fit within the SDG framework? ... 28 5.2. Beyond Chocolate’s operationalization: ... 30 6. Contextualizing the role of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire: ... 33 6.1. A short overview of Côte d’Ivoire’s historical development: ... 33 6.2. What is the situation of cocoa farmers like today? ... 37 7. The structural arrangements in the international cocoa market: ... 41 7.1. Market Forces in the Cocoa Industry: ... 41 7.2. Belgium’s interests in the cocoa industry: ... 46 7.3. The social and environmental costs of cocoa farming in Côte d’Ivoire: ... 48 7.3.1. The social costs: ... 49 7.3.2. The environmental costs: ... 52 7.3.3. Concluding remarks on the social and environmental costs of cocoa: ... 54 8. How sustainable is certified cocoa? ... 56 9. Conclusion: ... 60 10. Bibliography ... 631. Introduction:
"Despite progress to conserve nature and implement policies, the Report also finds that global goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors"
– United Nations, 2019
Climate change and development cooperation have often been treated as separate entities within politics. The former was a distant, abstract problem often associated with the conservation of specific animal species or to reduce the effects of greenhouse gas emissions (Gupta, 2009, Ayers et al., 2014). Today it is associated with the structural foundations of human society. Similar changes can be found within the field of development cooperation. During the 1950s development was measured purely in economic terms while today the focus lay on humanitarian assistance, capacity building initiatives, economic development, and environmental protection measures. Since the 1980's there is an increasing association between the policy field due to their inherent relation to socio-economic and political structures within society. Our dependence on natural resources fuels the development of societies all the while heating the planet to the point of irreversible consequences. Our societal wellbeing has forever been influenced by our interaction with consistent weather patterns, which have characterized cultures and defined human progress. Climate change thus not only affects the biological state of our natural environment but also the socio-economic course of human societies. These ties are gradually taken into consideration by the international community who attempts to frame climate change in proportion to people's socio-ecological and socio-economic vulnerability.
The interlinkages between both policy fields have been recognized as early as 1972 when the Club of Rome commissioned a study, The Limits of Growth, to assess the consequences of interactions between earth and human systems. The Limits of Growth stated that without changes to the current (in 1972) growth rates, the world would experience a severe decline in populations and industrial capacities by 2072. Yet, the argumentation was heavily influenced by the neoliberal
conceptualization of the environment and argued that economic growth could remedy the trends (Meadows, 1975). In an attempt to define the association between climate change and development, Our Common Future, also known as The Brundtland Report (1987) suggested the term ‘sustainable development'. The Brundtland Report (1987, p. 15) defines it as "the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The definition aspires to look deeper into the guiding structures of society in order to solve environmental issues all the while respecting people's reliance on nature for their socio-economic progress. Since its conceptualization, the term has been used by civil society organizations as well as international organizations such as the United Nations as their guiding principle for long-term development. Our Common Future (1987) engraved the links between development cooperation and the protection of the environment (De Roeck, 2018). Despite such efforts, the integration of climate change policies in development cooperation mechanisms has so far not materialized.
The strong focus on economic measures of development is inherent to the operationalization of development cooperation during the 1990s. Neo-liberal understandings of economic development guided the 1990s into a period of structural reform programs led by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These programs aimed to trim government spending and led to the privatization of national industries. Ultimately, the privatization rounds generally affected the very people in need of social services. However, since the new century, there has been a change in perspective that effectively associates climate change into development cooperation through climate mainstreaming. Gupta (2009 p.207) defines climate mainstreaming as "Mainstreaming of climate change into development as the process by which existing development processes are (re)designed and (re-organized) and evaluated from the perspective of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mainstreaming implies involving all social actors – governments, civil society, industry and local community into the process ". The term has been incorporated into the UN's framework on sustainable development with the aim of placing climate change at the forefront of the fight in development (UN 2015).
Mainstreaming efforts aim to respond to the criticism by organizations such as the IPBES, who argue that without the profound transformation of our societies, we will fail to attain the goals set out by the international community. The policy approach is intended to generate new perspectives of people's relation to nature and ensure people have the capacity to act in a changing
environment. It resulted in new frameworks such as Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are intended to provide a better and more ‘sustainable' future for all (UN, 2015). The UN's SDG website (2019) states that: "The new Goals are unique in that they call for action by all countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. The SDGs recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and addresses a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities while tackling climate change and environmental protection (UN, 2019)". Yet, the subdivision of goals though has severely been criticized for its vagueness and failure to seriously address climate change (Eastertly, 2015). That vagueness emerges out of the ambiguous understanding of the term sustainable as defined by the Brundtland Report. It links climate change to development cooperation under the framework of climate mitigation or sustainable development which involves a share of risks (Redclift, 2005; Gupta, 2009). Redclift (2005) argues that because the environment has so closely been related to human ‘needs' it has shifted the debate from needs to human rights. As such climate change is shaped according to human-based needs and not the planet's needs, expressing a neo-liberal understanding of society’s organization.
Sustainable development is associated with an anthropocentric approach towards climate change based on the neo-liberal assumptions from the 1980s and 1990s. The move towards market economies in the 1990s placed a central focus on the individual's or society's choices and rights. Today's discourse on sustainable development features wider questions of social justice, representation, and equality. When looking at the current framework of the SDGs, critics call out the vagueness of the term because of the wide interpretation of sustainability. More recently, De Roeck (2018) states that sustainable development fails to look at the transformative power of mainstreaming climate change as intended under the SDGs, and climate mitigation more recently. The failure of using the transformative power of the SDG leads to question whether the SDGs truly aim to live by their definition of sustainable development as stated in the Brundtland Report of 1987. Depending on the actor's attention, sustainable development can refer to responsible economic growth, deforestation, gender equality, large scale environmental projects or simply the reconciliatory discourse between economic development and environmental protection.
One is thus confronted with the following questions: what is exactly meant by sustainable development? In how far does it actually focus on the structural realignment of human behavior to
a more environmentally sound world? How far is the environment at the forefront of the development cause? To what extent does the framework take into account local need as Brundtland reported in 1987? It is widely assumed that more concerns for local needs can help the mitigation of climate change (Gupta, 2014; De Roeck, 2018). Similar calls emerge out of the field of development cooperation where scholars such as Rodney (1983) and Collier (2001) argue that there is a need to place development in relation to an individual and a society's progress. However, as a transnational issue, climate change solutions are often framed from a global perspective. Historically, climate affairs have been dominated by international institutions such as the United Nations, international organizations or agencies from the developing countries. As a result, the UN and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have emerged as the main authoritative institutions on matters of climate change. These organizations outlined the conceptualization of climate change as a global problem that necessitates a global action plan.
This global approach to climate change is subject to much criticism, not least because these institutions underestimate the causes of climate change. For years, the actions on climate change evolved around adaptive measures such as dam constructions or irrigation schemes (Klein, Schipper & Dessai, 2003; Ayes et al., 2014). International institutions focused on climate change’s impact on people, resulting in adaptive measures to environmental disaster. This failure results in the tendency to look at the impact of climate change on people instead of the socio-economic foundations that propel it. Multiple scholars advocate for a deeper approach to climate change centered on changes in socio-economic practices for the benefit of the environment (Gupta, 2009; Biermann and Gupta, 2014; De Roeck, 2018). The focus must shift from top-down structures of governance to community-based actions. Agents of development cooperation must look at people’s access to social services, natural resources, political representation and economic opportunities that can directly help people in need. In order for development cooperation to be effective governments and NGOs must mainstream environmental protection efforts within the structures of socio-economic development (Gupta, 2009, De Roeck, 2018). While that is the premise of the mainstreaming argument, Ayers et al. (2014) state that while the theoretical implications of mainstreaming have widely been analyzed but the practical side of it has not.
In 2018 the UN reported that the international community would fail to reach the SDGs and Agenda 2030 without a rapid focus on environmental questions. Governments and
international institutions, therefore, need to realign our measurements to be more inclusive towards environmental concerns. The UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, urged countries to "inject a sense of urgency" in reaching the goals set out. This has also been expressed by economists such as Collier (2001) who argues that we need to reframe economic measurements and place them in a context of the wider society. Development cooperation must focus on the interrelations between all aspects of life and change its framework from pure economics to socio-economic measurements where people’s well-being and the environment are placed at the center.
In order to better grasp the changing environment in which development cooperation operates, this thesis seeks to analyze the extent to which development programs take into account the SDGs, more specifically the extent to which such programs are considerate of the environment. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to shed light on the question of whether the discourse of sustainable development reproduces the fundamentals of the climate mainstreaming discourse. This thesis looks at the practical side of sustainable development by looking at a new development project by the Belgian government, Beyond Chocolate. It is a public-private partnership regrouping the different ministerial departments, businesses and civil society organizations in bringing about change in the chocolate sector. Chocolate is produced through cocoa which is a key economic driver for countries such as Ivory Coast and Ghana but also a reason for continued and unsustainable deforestation and poverty rates in the area. The case is an example of the difficulties to apply the structural changes that sustainable development prescribes. Moreover, it is a case that can bring forward the power relations between the traditional structures of liberal market economies and the required sustainable approach to natural resourcing. Despite the project's attention to various goals set out in Agenda 2030 is remains to be seen what discourse the project will adopt. Not all SDGs have been included and it could thus be argued that Beyond Chocolate fails to address the underlying efforts to mainstream climate efforts.
Additionally, the program states its intention to include local concerns when designing a project. While it aims at tackling the low-income rates of farmers it also seeks to tackle the major issue of deforestation in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The current framework especially stresses the wide participation of Belgian actors and pays little attention to the role of local actors. It leads to the question of whether a more localized approach to climate mainstreaming is actually taking place. Can local concerns really be incorporated when the organizers are accountable to another state? Ultimately, Beyond Chocolate aims to solve another key issue in development cooperation,
namely bridging the gap between what is considered as foreign investments and development cooperation. Scholars have called for stronger integration of both fields and the initiative by the Belgian state might be an example of how this could be done. Therefore, this thesis seeks to look at the question of whether development cooperation programs and Beyond Chocolate more specifically, place the environment and local concerns at the forefront of the project.
2. Theoretical Framework:
This research conducts a mixed methods research based on qualitative analysis of the interrelation between environmental protection and international aid in order to understand the motivations, interests, and processes that guide actors’ actions. Mixed methods are especially useful in studies of complex systems such as climate change regimes because it can grasp a larger picture of the problem by interlinking several important factors. In order to answer the research question, this thesis employs three theories that complement one another. First, it looks at the structure-agency debate as it is inherent to power relations studies in complex policy fields such as climate change or the socio-economic and environmental relations in the cocoa industry. Second, it employs thick constructivism or also known as regime-analysis to understand the processes and guiding actors in the trade of cocoa and chocolate. That enables this thesis to identify the links between the actors and the structure of coca within the economy of Côte d’Ivoire. Ultimately, it is also used to see whether Beyond Chocolate truly provides a new way of doing development cooperation and if so to what way the processes are organized.
2.1. Structure-agency debate:
In order to analyze the research question, this thesis uses the structure-agency debate because it is concerned with questions of power relations between various actors. Two main trends exist within political sciences which allocate the role of agency differently, depending on the context of interrelations between agents, structures and their environment. Both theories assume agents operate in a world of anarchy where actors act according to a principle of self-help. Structures can be understood as the supra-individual phenomena which need to be taken into consideration when analyzing actors’ behavior and their operationalization within society (Walt, 1979; Althusser,
1971). They are more widely defined according to the interaction between political, economic and social motives. The result of these interactions form structures under which actors, agents, behave. Generally, agents are then understood as the puppets of larger systems. Agency will then be defined as a causal power that depends on the distribution of capabilities amongst actors (Walt, 1979; Wendt, 1995; Morgenthau, 1967). Agency underlines the nature of human actions in defining relations whereas structural theories tend to allocate the role of change to structural factors that lie outside an actor’s realm.
Where realists such as Walt (1979) assume that structures define agents’ capacities to act; constructivists attribute the motors of change to agents. Realists allocate agency to the state and interpret agency as the causal power relation defined by the distribution of capabilities (Walt, 1979; Wendt, 1995, Morgenthau, 1967). Agency is based on the notion that people act rationally and that their actions and decision can portray a meaningful choice. The theory is based on the theory of rational choice which depicts people as self-centered individuals (Walt, 1979; 1995, 1983). Realists such as Walt (1979) are often associated with determinism because it assumes that individuals are bearers of self-reproducing systems. Essentially, actors’ choices and behavior are not as important in defining the course of history as the structures that are embedded in the anarchic world (Walt, 1979). History as such can thus be defined as the social relations of ideological, political and production struggles. However, it is these deterministic connotations that constructivists criticize. More specifically, constructivists tackle the realist assumption that people’s preferences can be determined through simple economic measures such as cost-benefit analyses. Wendt (1995) argues that realists’ rational choice assumptions cannot explain social phenomena alone. Economic measures fail to grasp the role of ideas, norms, and interactions in shaping people’s decisions. Constructivists argue that norms and interactions shape actors’ decisions and that they must be taken into consideration when analyzing social change (Wendt 1995). Contrary to his realist counterparts, Wendt (1995) refutes the idea that people’s lives are predetermined, and he argues that structures emerge out of the interaction of actors. At the core of his assumptions is that structures are endogenous to human behavior and are shaped through actors’ identities and their relative power compared to others.
In order to better understand the issues at stake, it is useful to grasp the fundamentals of what structuralism refers to. Structuralism is a way of conceptualizing the world based on the idea that reality is defined by structures and the relation of objects to others (Hawkes, 2005). As such,
objects and events can only be explained through the connection of patterns and people's experiences. Hawkes (2005) associates this with the principle of verum factum. The principle refers to the elements of society that man recognizes as true (verum) and the elements that humans made themselves (factum) (Hawkes, 2005). Structures as such are established through the relationships between agents, and although structures are not an individual's creation, they provide room for maneuver. In such interpretations, Callinicos (2004) calls structures empty spaces that exist over a longer period of time, but which can be transformed through human actions. This transformative power is the ability of actors to take in these empty spaces and define them. In such views, structures constrain agents' behavior as much as agents' themselves enable social relations. Structures as such are a way of conferring power as well as being partially determined by the interest and intentionality of actors (Archer, 1996).
Giddens (2016), and Latour (2009) seek to realign the concept of agency by recognizing people as the initiators of action all the while recognizing that social structures have causal power and can influence human behavior. Giddens (2016) to refer to a theory of structuration as an alternative. It seeks to find a middle ground between the importance of structure and that of agency. Structuration is an approach that explains social action on the basis of enacted conduct. Social systems as such are not the outcome of anarchic mechanisms but rather the result of processes and interactions by active subjects (Giddens, 2016). As such structuration defies the notions of structuralism which claims that situations emerge out of their relation to other elements (Hawkes, 2004). Connor (2011) argues that agency recognizes people's ability to shape history. Moreover, in contrast to the stark notions of rational choice theory, agency should be interpreted not only through agent's motives and interests but also by analyzing the extent to which agency can be a transformative power. Connor (2011) concludes that agency must be detached from its neo-liberal foundations on rational choice theory and look at how agency can influence the developed and construction of communities and structures.
2.2. The role of regime analysis:
Sustainable development is often referred to as a transitory regime towards a more sustainable society. Therefore, I make use of the theory of regime analysis because it can analyze the change in society since the emergence of the SDGs. Regime analysis is often referred to as thick
constructivism as it is based on normative constructions which are set through time and are subject
to gradual change (Haas, 1992). Krasner (1982) defines it as "sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations (p.2)". Regimes differ from arrangements though because they are more permanent and because they tend to facilitate agreements (Keohane, 1977; Krasner, 1982; Haas, 1980). Thick constructivism is grounded in a strong belief in the persuasive power of knowledge, culture and expertise (Haas, 1994;). The theory argues that actors' interests and interactions with one another result in regime interlinkages which lead to the emergence of specific issue-areas of policy-making. As such, regimes are social constructions because of the interactions between actors, structures and the interpretation of human life within nature (Wendt, 1995; Haas; 1994). They establish long-term frameworks to guide policies and provide another way of looking at the role of structure within society.
In that view, climate change can be considered a regime because it is a transnational issue that relates to various topics such as deforestation, transportation or animal welfare. The theory gives great attention to the role of actors in setting regimes. Giddens (2016) suggests actors can ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’ of regimes and that it matters as it will determine how they behave when new centers of power emerge. It also determines whether change comes from top-down approaches, in other words by the insiders or, through bottom-up ones, which are characterized by the participation of outsiders. There is a tendency for the insiders of regimes to oppose the change as their interests and their role within regimes might reduce their power. Scholars such as Wendt (1995) and Bull (1995) have extended the definition suggested by Krasner to include the non-state actors as well as the prescriptive nature of regimes in determining behavior. The concepts thus look more into depth at the interrelations between the emergence of regimes and their application through the implementation of norms, rules and sets of beliefs.
Regime change is thus also subject to the interactions between the old guard and the newcomers in regimes and multiple scholars such as Wendt (1995), Bull (1995) and Ceschin
(2012) have argued that new actors must be involved when looking at regime change. Ceschin (2012) for instance argues that their participation is key in order to successfully foster radical changes. Analyzing their position in regime analysis can help determine the extent of outsiders’ power over change and determine whether the change is the result of regime actors’ or whether it is due to the radical reorientation of societal practices. The change led by actors within the regime tends to result in adaptive measures that support only the gradual reorientation of activities.
Actors have a persuasive power that can influence the framework and the outcome of development projects (Haas, 1994; Dryzek, 2013). Regime analysis helps determine how the project itself is framed and the extent to which that framework is influenced by the persuasive power of local actors and NGO's. That is key to analyze the case study presented in this thesis:
Beyond Chocolate. The case includes the participation of a wide variety of actors ranging from
civil society organizations and farmers to firms and governments. By placing it in the framework of sustainable development, the Belgian government aims to commit the chocolate industry to the SDGs and enlarge the role of actors from just Belgian companies to include the entire supply chain.
Beyond Chocolate is an interesting case study because of its wide range of participants. The case’s
analysis can provide an insight into the extent to which SDGs really lead to a transformation of the industry and the decision-making processes surrounding cocoa and chocolate production. Studies by Wood et al. (2016) show that development projects are often designed by experts and disregard local concerns when designing them. Development programs are also found to be led by international organizations that develop a top-down approach to development cooperation, further reducing the role of local actors. This is especially true for environmental projects because the data used is often provided by expert communities at the IPCC or the UN. These groups of experts are what Haas (1994) identifies as epistemic communities. Epistemic communities consist of a group of professionals from a variety of backgrounds who share a set of normative and principled beliefs. Hence, why these interrelations are of interest to this study because the chocolate industry is generally led by the ‘developed’ world who consumes it without the realization of the industry’s impact on local actors and the environment.
2.3. The role of discourse analysis:
An essential component of the structure-agent debate is the role of actors and their persuasive power. Constructivist theories, especially regime analysis place much importance in power relations and how they result in regimes or even regime change. The SDGs are a framework under which to conduct development cooperation. However, regime analysis fails to grasp the exact meaning actors seek to give to the SDGs. The literature frequently iterates that actors in mainstreaming projects have the power to define the exact meaning of sustainable development because they have control over project designs and the mechanisms developed (De Roeck, 2018; Ayers et al., 2014; Wood et al. 2016). Moreover, the SDGs can be interpreted as transversal and global in their application. Yet, they are often referred to as a compromise for the dichotomy between the need for environmental protection and economic growth. In order to better understand the way in which actors give meaning the sustainable development and determine whether Beyond Chocolate presents a real change in socio-economic practices to protect the environment or whether it remains a project mainly designed on poverty alleviation; this thesis employs discourse analysis.
Hajer (1995) defines discourse as “the ensemble of ideas, concepts, categories through which meaning is given to social and psychological phenomenon and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices (p.44)”. It is Foucault who associated discourse to power relations and actors’ ability to govern. More specifically, and of special interest to this thesis, is Foucault’s focus on the way in which discourses have shaped and influenced the meaning of systems to humans. He argues that systems and identities are social creations that depend on the use of particular discourses that emerge through social and historical interactions. Discourse analysis can then be interpreted as “The examination of argumentative structure in documents and other written or spoken statements as well as the practices through which these utterances are made (Hajer, 2006, p.66).” discourse analysis asks essential questions as to how systems have been defined and shaped by certain discourses and how actors and societies have defined themselves within them. Statements and policy documents generate a certain identity formation and provide the tools with which to analyze the narrative at hand. Foucault denotes discourse as a historically contingent social system that generates knowledge and meaning. Problems must, therefore, be placed within the narrative in which they are discussed. Narratives can shift power balances and
formed through language and can, therefore, be powerful when analyzing socio-historical contexts in which they arose.
Discourses carry from discussions because they produce norms and standards which can lead to a structural discourse. The theory enables this thesis to understand the controversies, not in their rational-analytical argumentation but in the argumentative rationality that is attributed to discussions by people. Discourse analysis has often been interpreted as the study of language in use (Wetherall et al, 2001). It studies the way in which actors use language to define and problematize a subject. Object and discourse are closely related to constructivist notions by Wendt (1995) and Haas (1994) because these authors recognize the existence of multiple, socially constructed realities instead of one guiding structure. What this means for Beyond Chocolate and sustainable development in general. Is that while the SDGs might provide a framework, structure or regime for the application of new forms of development cooperation. Discourse analysis complements this thesis because it is also widely recognized that actors can give meaning to frameworks and reshape them. A key element of regime analysis is the way in which socio-economic power relations change within the interrelations between actors and structures. By applying discourse analysis as well, this thesis can look at the way in which actors shape the narrative of sustainable development. It helps to identify whether it is seen as a transformative power or whether the term is only realigned according to current practices.
2.4. Concluding remarks on the theoretical framework:
The reason for using multiple theories lies in their theoretical assumptions of social constructions. Regime analysis or thick constructivism is used in order to understand to what extent various actors have shaped and influenced the narrative in the project Beyond Chocolate. It helps to identify the actors with the most persuasive power in defining the contours of the project. Ultimately it enables this thesis to look at how the SDGs and Beyond Chocolate came to be. This enables us to define the prevailing actors and the power of local actor participation. Moreover, it enables us to determine whether the framework aims to apply the elements it preaches by. How far is local ownership extended? What organizations are the leading actors? How are they implanting their goals? Which interests have been placed at the forefront?
Discourse analysis is an essential part of this study too as it seeks to understand how actors employ terms and norms to shape them in a certain direction. It is widely recognized throughout
the literature that actors can shape sustainable development according to their interests and preferences. For instance, climate change can be seen as a security issue when looking at conflicts and the emergence of civil war. It can also be contextualized within an economic rationale if the threats to climate change affect agricultural interests or the transportation sector. Yet within these paradigms, the environment can again be understood according to its relation to other variables at stake. Hence, discourse analysis is useful in determining exactly how the actors employ sustainable development, the meaning they give to it and how it relates to the wider economic and socio-historical context. It helps determine how actors employ the term sustainable development and see whether they employ it as a transformative power or whether they are goals to be attained.
Beyond Chocolate and the SDGs more specifically are meant to regroup a wide variety of actors of which four main groups can be identified: the government, NGOs, market forces and local actors. It is the realization that a variety of actors can each bring in their own expertise that promoted the government to support Beyond Chocolate and bring together these four groups of actors. However, it is unclear how the power between them is allocated. The use of these three theories forms a triangular analysis where the environment is at the center. The structure agent debate facilitates the understanding of the power relations within society and the field of sustainable development. Regime analysis is used because the SDGs are often considered a framework or regime under which to operate. However, because the critique has often been that the SDGs can selectively be applied, this thesis also uses regime analysis to define the exact way in which actors employ the term sustainable development and how it relates to the environment.
3. Literature Review:
This literature review provides an overview of main problems within the conceptualization of sustainable development by focusing on the motives to, and the problems of mitigating climate chain. The section proceeds by discussing the changing mentality which brings together the fields of development cooperation and the environment. It then looks at what the role of context-specific development in the new strategies for development cooperation.
3.1. Changing the environmental framework and consciousness:
This literature review presents an overview of the larger debates within the field of climate change and development cooperation. The increasing interaction between the two produces various questions about the fundamental structures of our society and the role of personal well-being and the environment. The literature surrounding climate change and development policies contains strong similarities. For one, they have often been considered as separate entities within their own fields. The debate surrounding climate change has often been connoted with scientific notions of pollution levels and greenhouse gas emissions or the disappearance of an animal type (Gupta, 2009). Only recently has there been a growing recognition that environmental degradation is more widely linked to the development of our societies (Easterly, 2007; Gupta, 2009).
Yet the very definition of sustainable development is disputed because its conceptualization depends on the framework in which it is employed (Dryzek, 2013). The extensive possibilities to define sustainable and development are harmful to the centrality of the environment in the discourse of sustainable development (Redclift, 2005; Gupta, 2009; Easterly, 2015). The efforts to include environmental protection in the core of development policies resulted in various points of contention about the importance of economic development and that of environmental protection (De Roeck, 2018; Gupta, 2009). The rivalry between the two emerged out of an economic hypothesis proposed by Simon Kuznet during the 1950s and 1960s. The hypothesis states that in the first stages of economic development, market forces result in an increase in economic inequality. In later stages, the inequality decreases again as market forces have adapted to the new centers of development. Kuznet's assumptions basically argued that in order to solve inequality one needed more economic growth. Dobson and Ramlogan's (2009) research, however, proves that Kuznet's theory is overestimated. By applying the theory to
inequality and trade liberalization, Dobson and Ramlogan (2009) argue that while in some cases Kuznet's assumptions are true, it fails to take into account regional differences. While some countries had indeed experienced growing inequality, other emerging economies did not. The findings refuted the global assumption of Kuznets’s theory.
Since the 1990s Kuznets’s assumptions have been used in environmental policy (Gupta, 2009). The environmental Kuznets Curve argues that indicators of environmental degradation tend to worsen as economies grow. That trend reverses only after societies reach a certain point of economic development (Nemat, 1994). The theory has been applied to indicators such as air and water pollution levels as well as on matters of deforestation. Forest transition theory, for instance, describes the reversal of land-use practices when countries reach a certain level of income (Meyfroidt and Lambin, 2011). It has led to believe that in order to tackle climate change and deforestation, countries first needed to reach a certain level of economic development (Copeland & Taylor, 2004; Stern, 2004). Yet, these assumptions have also been taken with a grain of salt as studies by Meyfroidt, Rudel and Lambin (2010) found that in some countries, economic liberalization facilitates reforestation because it displaces agricultural demand elsewhere, pressuring forests in other areas of the world.
Several conclusions can be drawn from Kuznets’s assumptions such as the belief that societal development is related to the stage of economic growth, and not to the larger socio-economic, political and cultural context of countries (Redclift, 2005; Collier, 2001). Moreover, Kuznets’s theory proves that solutions to the environmental problem have long been influenced by neo-liberal perspectives which commodify the environment to make it economically interesting. This is related to the last conclusion which is that environmental questions do not respect the traditional boundaries set out by the assumptions of international relations. With growing liberalization policies, the centers of power shift from nationally measured denominations to transnational and localized entities that cannot be accounted for on national levels only. This inherently influences the way in which the environment is treated as a cross border and transnational commodity.
Nevertheless, studies conducted by Caviglia-Harris et al (2009) dispute that notion. They argue that the framework in which development cooperation is conducted must be shifted if we seek to address issues of climate change. Shifting paradigms is an inherent feature of development cooperation. As Gupta (2009) states, the field of development cooperation has shifted from pure
technical assistance in the 1960s to the principles of conditional aid, structural reform and debt relief programs, as well as the greening of aid in the 1980s and the discourse of sustainable development today. Similar calls have emerged from scholars such as Easterly (2015) and Redclift (2005) who have called for new frameworks to guide development and environmental policies. Because social realities have changed since sustainable development was first conceptualized, there is a need to realign the term with the 21st century's requirements and a shift in environmental consciousness (Redlcift, 2005; Gupta, 2009; Easterly, 2015). Such calls are what have led to the SDGs and concepts such as climate mainstreaming. The SDGs are intended to find a middle way between environmental needs and socio-economic development. In order to do so, scholars urge policymakers to mainstream climate change within existing socio-economic structures (Gupta, 2009).
Gupta (2009), Ayers et al. (2014) have been looking more precisely at what mainstreaming effectively means and how it must be incorporated. By disentangling the term, Meadowcroft (2009) points out that mainstreaming is composed of adaptation and mitigation, which can result in different approaches to mainstreaming itself. The former has been defined by the IPCC as "the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities (2012, p.556)". Whereas, the latter is defined by the IPCC as "an anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (2012, p.561)". Depending on whether a programs’ focus is placed on either mitigation or adaptation, development projects may target different audiences. For instance, mitigation efforts more generally target polluters while adaptation affects the wider society (Gupta, 2009). In their study on the application of climate mainstreaming in Bangladesh, Ayers et al (2014) argue that climate mainstreaming in practice still differs from its theoretical perspective due to different interpretations and operationalizations of mainstreaming (Klein, Schipper and Dessai., 2003; Redclift, 2005; Gupta, 2009; Ayers et al, 2014; Gupta, 2015). They confirm earlier findings by Meadowcroft (2009) or Gupta (2009) who already iterated such concerns in their theoretical conceptualization.
3.2. The importance of context-specific development:
Ayers et al (2014) confirm the findings by Dryzek (2013) and Meadowcroft (2009) that sustainable development as a term can be used according to agents' preferences. While the presence of various actors is recognized as beneficial, it gives rise to different mainstreaming contexts (Ayers et al, 2014; Dryzek, 2013). Wood et al.'s (2016) study reveals that stakeholders are still selectively recognized because donor agencies still drive the design process. That matters because as studies by De Roeck's (2018) and Wood et al (2016) have shown the mechanisms to enforce sustainable development are led by top-down structures where agents from the developed world tend to put forward projects which center on their own priorities (Ayers et al, 2014; Dryzek, 2013; Wood et al, 2016; De Roeck, 2018).
In a study on the EU’s climate change approach, De Roeck's (2018) concludes that the EU's considerations of climate change as a transnational issue have led it to adhere to a top-down structure in its own approach towards climate mainstreaming thus neglecting the fundamental element of local actor participation. De Roeck (2018) relates the approach to a Foucauldian concept of governmentality which iterates an unequal relationship between the agents' and recipients of aid (De Roeck, 2018). Various scholars in the field of development and climate change repeatedly state that there must be more considerations for local actors when developing programs (Collier, 2001; Easterly, 2007; Gupta, 2009; Biermann and Gupta, 2011). Ayers et al. (2014), Gupta (2009), De Roeck (2018), Veld (2016) all argue that development must be framed according to people's socio-economic and socio-ecological context by looking at what elements make people vulnerable. When looking at such questions one must look at the role of governance and the way in which it seeks to include local needs and the socio-economic contexts of people. New forms of governance set frameworks and mechanisms which define the way in which development corporation operates.
It is exemplified in Wood et al.'s (2016) study which reveals that local actor participation is heavily constrained by other agents. Yet, human development is defined according to an individual or a group's socio-economic, political and cultural freedom (Wood et al., 2016). They, therefore, advocate for better incorporation of local priorities by improving the participatory assessments and make them more reflexive in order to bring together different views on how development cooperation should be approached. Reflexivity is commonly referred to, in sociology,
as the capacity of agents to recognize forces of socialization and change their position within social structures. The question of reflexivity is also addressed by Veld (2016) who follow Kemp's (2006) reasoning that the reality of modern society is the result of self-reflective processes and that as such there can be two forms of reflexivity. The first-order reflexivity states that reality is the result of self-confrontation. As Voss and Kemp (2006) state: "The first meaning of reflexivity is the dealing of modernity with its own implications and side effects, the mechanisms by which modern societies grow in cycles of producing problems and solutions to these problems which produce new problems" (Voss and Kemp, 2005, p.7).
Second-order reflexivity concerns the "cognitive application of modern rational analysis not only to the self-induced problems but also to its own working, conditions and effects" (Voss & Kemp, 2006, p.6). The attention towards governance mechanisms emerges out of the realization that while frameworks for mitigating climate change have been developed, their implementation on governance structures has not. It is in this context that Veld's (2016) defines sustainable development as "a normative notion presenting the preferred evolution of society (p.1)". His study operates in the concept of knowledge societies and joins the efforts by De Roeck (2018) when referring to the transformative power of sustainable development. Veld (2016) relates the concept to the emergence of knowledge societies which states that the links between economics, politics and science intensify as communities are subject to change. He argues that the universality of sustainable development is disputed because of the changing socio-economic and cultural relations. In order to have effective governance for sustainable development, leaders must address these three specific issues: people, planet and profit (Veld, 2016)
While the SDGs aim to incorporate 'people, profit and planet', Easterly (2015) argues that the wide range of objectives makes the totality of the SDGs irrelevant and ineffective. Veld (2016) also states that cultural diversity is also an incentive to argue against the use of a global governance structure to support the transition towards a more environmentally sound world. Gupta (2009) and De Roeck (2018) have already pointed out that cultural diversity provides a strong argument to differentiate the responsibilities between developed and developing countries. The situation results in a situation where none of the SDGs are prioritized (Easterly, 2015) and where various discourses on the role of the environment emerge (Dryzek, 2013).
De Roeck (2018) similarly states that projects must avoid the trap of epistemological certainties by making more room for local needs. Hence why Veld (2016) calls for more reflexive
responses to diverging cultural spheres where one is more considerate of the local environment and context. In order to be successful, Meadowcroft (2009) argues we must bring about change in people's interests by building more coalitions for change, establish new centers of economic power create new institutional actors, adjust legal rights and responsibilities in order to generate societal majorities to tackle climate mainstreaming. However, the emphasis on national entities is a major point of critique by Gupta (2009), Biermann and Gupta (2011), and Veld (2016) because it disregards the interrelations between the different levels of governance, especially with regards to new patterns of development cooperation such as public-private partnerships, as Beyond Chocolate.
Authors such as Biermann and Gupta (2011) and Kramarz and Park (2016) point out that new forms of development cooperation, such as public-private partnerships, must place considerable focus on mechanisms of accountability when conducting development projects. Kramarz and Park (2016) argue that accountability is useful but in order for it to be effective, accountability must be incorporated at the early stages of designing development projects. It supports the argument by Dryzek (2013) that the early incorporation of accountability will determine the framing of the projects and the alternatives to reaching the goals set out. Therefore, stakeholders in environmental management, often locals, must be included in the discussions before constitutive boundaries have been determined by the public and private stakeholders (Kramarz and Park, 2016). The participation of locals in decision-making processes is also a key argument of mainstreaming (Gupta, 2009).
Ultimately in an analysis of the normative problems in global environmental governance, Gupta (2014) identifies four main gaps in mainstreaming climate change related to the emergence of distinct regimes in different areas. These different regimes result in issue-specific approaches that do not necessarily complement one another. All in all, the specialization of regimes fails to encompass the magnitude of tackling the environment as a global and interrelated issue. Contrary to Redclift (2005) or Meadowcroft (2009), Gupta (2014) believes that some degree of normative coherence can emerge through the adoption of the rule of law on a global level, in effect developing a kind of global constitutionalism. The SDGs are arguably a first step in the direction of a transnational framework for sustainable development.
3.3. The Conceptualization of mainstreaming
Mainstreaming implies the structural transformation of societies where concerns for the environment are placed at the forefront of human development efforts. Similarly, sustainability can be understood as a transition to a long-term framework aimed at a systemic shift to a more environmentally conscious mode of producing and consuming resources. By linking the sustainable development to specific goals, the SDGs aim to steer the international community in one direction of protecting the environment through development (Gupta, 2009). The SDGs provide a normative framework and can form the basis for a global constitutional approach to climate change and development. However, it brings forward several questions such as the morality of installing a global order when regions are so distinct, and the relation of humans and nature is conceptualized differently across the globe.
It is the concern that sustainable development is just an imaginative attempt to resolve the tensions between the economic and environmental values that prompt Gupta (2009) to bring forward arguments against mainstreaming climate change into development mechanisms. She argues that the structural differences between developed and developing countries require different approaches to climate mitigation and climate adaptation. Yet, the magnitude of climate change might make it more difficult for developing countries to incorporate mainstreaming efforts. Moreover, by associating both the environment and development, there is a risk that climate change's importance will not be pronounced as heavily within development projects. That is why Gupta (2009) suggests for developing countries to define sustainable development according to their own priorities and needs. It might be more appropriate for the developing world to define sustainable development according to their own capabilities and technologies. Such suggestions resonate today because the development efforts are mostly led by developed countries' institutions who struggle to define sustainable development for themselves (Wood et al., 2016; De Roeck, 2018). This is closely related to the fear that mainstreaming could move the attention away from development policies to climate change and reduce the effectiveness of the mainstreaming argument.
Currently, the developed world has committed 0.7% of their GNI to development cooperation. However, the inadequacy to fund the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) generates fears that funds for development or climate change will be reduced if both policy areas
are associated. Funds for climate matters might be redirected to development matters and visa-versa. The risks of underfunding climate or development efforts are exacerbated when the efforts to include mitigation efforts within development cooperation are limited because the effectiveness of aid will be nullified. One must, therefore, look at the level of governance at which aid is allocated and where the focus of aid is placed (Michaelowa and Michaelowa, 2008). Climate adaptation will target a wider part of society whereas mitigation efforts will affect the large polluters (Gupta, 2009). Different beneficiaries of aid will be concerned depending on the level of governance at which aid is allocated. Mainstreaming efforts could thus also disproportionately allocate aid depending on the projects’ focus.
The arguments against combining development and climate are exacerbated by the failure to properly fund development cooperation over the last years and the emergence of ‘aid fatigue' (Collier, 2001; Gupta, 2009). This fatigue has widely been studied by authors from the development field, such as Collier (2001) and Easterly (2007) who attribute it to several structural errors within the field of development cooperation itself. Such studies show the difficulty of the sheer scale of mainstreaming efforts. De Roeck (2018) digs deeper into the analysis by pointing out that climate change efforts are selectively integrated into specific sectors such as food production or rural development. The failure to prioritize can be traced back to the lack of human resources and fatigue in attempting to integrate climate change in the complexity of human structures.
As a remedy, Ayers et al (2014) suggest mainstreaming climate change through a four-step framework centered on enhancing the capacity of the stakeholders involved. They advocate for 'integrated planning' which regroups actors on local, sub-national, national and international levels to cooperate on mainstreaming strategies. Meadowcroft (2009) is more direct when stating that climate change policies can only be successful if they are placed in relation to economic and social realities. Meadowcroft's (2009) suggests shifting the framework by building more coalitions for change, establish new centers of economic power, creating new institutional actors and adjusting the legal rights and responsibilities to change the norms and expectations towards climate change. Such concerns are echoed in the conceptualization of the SDGs which states that countries can articulate their commitments on a voluntary basis and make them dependent on the different national realities and levels of development (UN, 2015). This reinforces Dryzek's (2013) point that
depending on the way sustainability is employed, there are different underlying mechanisms of our society that need to be tackled.
Hence, the critique that the SDGs and sustainable development, in general, is vaguely termed and does not address the dichotomy between the environment and the socio-economic foundations which hurt it. Dryzek (2013) therefore coins sustainable development as an imaginative attempt to resolve the tensions between environmental and ecological values. He also states that actors' ability to employ sustainable development according to their interests and preferences, makes it harder to ensure accountability measures. Additionally, sustainable development has been identified as a policy wherein actors can pick and choose their preferred course of action (Easterly, 2015). The SDGs have arguably been transposed into the current socio-economic structures with the aim of transforming the relationship between socio-economics, the environment and social factors. Yet, it remains to be seen to what extent this has been successfully done.
3.4. Concluding remarks on the literature review:
The analysis of the literature reveals a number of interesting questions. Despite the efforts by the Brundtland report to define sustainable development, it appears that the attempts for its application only recently emerged under the form of the SDGs. Which in itself grew out of the early conceptualizations of the climate problem. The failure for sustainable development to sincerely materialize has been associated with the dichotomy between economic growth and environmental consciousness (Redclift, 2005; De Roeck, 2018). Scholars have shown that it leads to serious questions as to what is to be considered sustainable? Is it a long-term economic growth or is it rather the centrality of the environment in all decision-making procedures? The failure to define sustainable development has led scholars to come up with alternative such as climate mainstreaming in order to more clearly define the aspects of life which must be tackled (Gupta, 2009). Yet, the wide variety of application of the term gave way to several discourses which each allocate a different level of importance to the environment. The way in which the environment is conceptualized within society matters for the framework in which solutions will be settled. It thus leads to the question who is considered as legitimate decision-makers in the process? To what extent should different groups have power over the processes? And how can one solve the conflict between the legitimacy and accountability of various actors (Gupta, 2009)?
The creation of the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN is an attempt to include local concerns into the fight for sustainable development (UN, 2015; De Roeck, 2018; Easterly, 2015). Moreover, it aims to better place the environment into relations with socio-economic developments. Now, one may wonder whether there has effectively been a change in the operationalization of development cooperation since their emergence? So far, it appears that the ability to "pick and choose" the SDGs prevents a coherent approach towards climate change mitigation. That is why this thesis looks at the extent to which environmental considerations are taken into account when launching the development programs. More broadly, it seeks to answer the question of whether the SDGs have been successful in being a transformative power to aid. Only then can mitigation be truly effective.
4. Methodology:
This thesis employs a mixed methods approach to the research question because it is a transdisciplinary study that combines a variety of insights from different academic fields. It is based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis which enables researchers to broader their qualitative insights with data sets. Qualitative analysis approaches problems by studying the significance actors give to a social and human problem. Sustainable development is inherently defined according to the meaning given by actors. An actors’ perspective on an issue influences his or her approach to the solution. In order to control the effects of these perspectives, this thesis uses quantitative data to clarify the arguments brought forward. As Greene (2007) states “Mixed Methods research (...) actively invites us to participate in dialogue about multiple ways of seeing and hearing, multiple ways of making sense of the social world, and multiple standpoints on what is important and to be valued and cherished (p.20)”. Given the range of factors that influence sustainable development, transdisciplinary studies can better grasp the extent of each factor’s contribution in shaping the context of sustainable development. As such one can identify the main actors, their goals and approaches as well as the meaning they ascribe to sustainable cocoa. Mixed methods research is about being able to look at problems from different angles and asses the structural power relations within problems.
This thesis makes use of primary and secondary sources such as data provided by the Cocoa Barometer, the World Bank, the IMF, the OEC, the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) and
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (generally referred to as Federal Public Service). These Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides the documents to relate Beyond Chocolate to the national framework for development cooperation. The thesis mainly employs the Law of March 19th, 2013 on
Development Cooperation, the Belgian SDG charter for International Development, the Strategic Note for Agriculture and Food Security, the Belgian Chocolate Code to frame Belgium’s
operations. These are further complemented by reports from NGOs such as True Price and IDH which assess the state of environmental and social consequences of cocoa’s trade in Côte d’Ivoire. The mixed methods approach enables this thesis to identify the most important actors and processes in cocoa’s trade, while also placing the role of farmers within the context of the international cocoa market. Ultimately, as mixed methods analysis prescribes, it enables this thesis to identify the strengths and weaknesses in Beyond Chocolate.
The thesis analyzes the research question through a case study: Beyond Chocolate. This enables this thesis to look at how the SDGs have been applied and to what extent they relate to the structural interests of the actors involved. The case has certain limitations, such as the fact that Beyond Chocolate is a recent project that cannot fully be measured yet. It is also limited in the scope of actors it can analyze because the study does not involve the participation of the Ivorian government, the UN or the EU. The thesis conducts a single case study which means that it provides an in-depth analysis of the power relations between the Belgian government, the companies and social actors. As it is a single case study, Beyond Chocolate can only contribute to the debate by looking at the application of the SDG framework and the relation between environmental, social and economic concerns.
This thesis will proceed as follows: it first contextualizes Beyond Chocolate as a project within the SDGs. Second, it identifies the importance of cocoa for Côte d’Ivoire by placing the crop in a historical context of national development. These enable this thesis to identify the main social and environmental issues associated with the trade of the crop. Secondly, it deciphers the context in which cocoa deals on an international level. It, therefore, looks at the organization of cocoa within the international market and identified the main actors. Thirdly, this thesis identifies the main goals, actors, and tools employed in Beyond Chocolate and discusses whether they mitigate the consequences of international cocoa trade.
5. Beyond Chocolate: a case of sustainable cocoa?
In order to assess how Beyond Chocolate is framed it is necessary to place it within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. This section then proceeds by detailing goals, actors and operationalization of the project.
5.1. Where does Beyond Chocolate fit within the SDG framework?
The literature suggests there has been a major shift towards new mechanisms for development cooperation. There is an increasing understanding that there is a need to tackle major socio-economic policies in order to undertake the complexity of social and environmental problems (Gupta, 2009; Ayer et al, 2014). The creation of the SDGs in 2015 was meant to alleviate the dichotomy between the environment and the economy by integrating them into a large framework aimed at tackling the roots of underdevelopment and environmental degradation. A main element of the framework is the requirement to develop policies that are more considerate of local concerns and the impact on the state of nature. Yet, it also means that it should be more attentive to the role of various actors, ranging from the local to the global level. The new framework also calls for increased cooperation between public and private actors (SDG 17). That is due to the recognition that poverty is a shared responsibility of the private sector, civil society, and public sector and that it is only through multi-stakeholder initiatives, that the fundamental issues of poverty can be alleviated (The Shift, 2016; UN, 2015).
As a fierce advocate of international cooperation, Belgium rapidly embarked on the SDGs and developed a new legislative framework to complement its own legislation (Federal Public Service, 2019). A new law was intended to pass in 2019 which would engrain the SDGS within the national framework. However, due to political uncertainty in early 2019 rendered that impossible. Hence, the law is currently still based on a pre-SDG era. However, it remains relevant because it defines the concepts and principles on which Belgium’s operations rest. Through analyzing the legislation, it is evident that Belgium established a normative commitment to the UN’s Framework. For instance, the law refers to key pieces of international law such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Labor Organization (ILO)
