Analysing systems architecture for effective implementation of trade and deforestation regulations

Dr Anthony Alexander and colleagues from the School of Law, Politics and Sociology have received SSRP funding to scale up their sustainability research by developing bids for bigger platform grants.

Project description

New laws are emerging on due diligence for deforestation-free supply chains: UK Environment Act, EU Deforestation Regulation and US Tropical Rainforest Economic and Environmental Sustainability (TREES) Act. But to be effective, legislation must be enforceable, and the policy details include risks of loopholes (non-compliant actors avoiding enforcement), regulatory misalignment (weak international standardisation) and leakage (deforestation persisting by selling commodities to ‘unregulated markets’ instead).

This prompts the research question: how can the implementation of this legislation be effective, particularly in contributing to SDGs on deforestation, economic development and poverty? To address this, a multi-institution interdisciplinary research network is proposed, combining advanced socio-legal analysis of regulatory effectiveness in law and policy studies with supply chain governance for sustainability in business studies.

Existing contacts leading on these topics will participate in workshops to pump-prime the research topic and establish partnerships for a £500k ESRC Large Grant bid. Besides workshop costs, a research assistant will help scheduling, consolidate data (including a policy index, literature review and workshop findings), and co-writing the bid, plus journal paper.

Initial beneficiaries are scholarly communities in these fields, plus policy-makers and NGOs . Consumer-country policies are the primary focus due to being the drivers of supply chain due diligence regulation. However, links with producer-countries will be developed during the course of the research (e.g. Ghana, Colombia, Uruguay, Tanzania, Gambia, Vietnam) as key stakeholders, and  secondary beneficiaries are the communities and agricultural workers in those countries. Hence, practitioner and policy stakeholders will be engaged, providing a pathway to impact. 

Economic outcomes and impact

The project is intended to enable sustainable economic performance by all participants in global food supply chains. Due to the point of influence of the focus legislation, this is firstly the performance of importers, but aligning due diligence policies with the SDGs means considering the economic performance of suppliers (ultimately, farmers, including small holders in forest frontier areas). The outcomes of this SSRP grant are less than those of a subsequent successful ESRC grant, but will include interim policy briefs, and policy consultation responses for anticipated secondary legislation in the UK, plus an academic paper and related publicity.

Academic outcomes and impact

The academic outputs of the proposed pump-priming will include outputs from each workshop in the form of summary papers (which can be presented as conference papers), and a journal paper based on the findings of all workshops. The area of synthesis between supply chain governance for sustainability, the socio-legal perspective, and inclusive trade policy, will advance a novel area of interdisciplinary research uniquely relevant to the challenge of deforestation, and which Sussex is uniquely placed to lead. Additionally, career development for the research assistant, plus the potential for additional academic journal collaborations with the workshop participants, are outcomes.

  • Sustainable Development Goals

    This project examines the following SDGs:

    SDG 1 - No Poverty

    SDG 2 - Zero Hunger

    SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

    SDG 11 - Sustainable Communities and Cities 

    SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

    SDG 13 - Climate Action

    SDG 15 - Life on Land 

    SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions 

    SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals 

    Find out more about the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

  • The team

    Principal Investigator

    Co-investigators

Timeline 

Start date: September 2024

End date: March 2025