Meet Carolina Moulin, a visiting PhD student from Brazil whose research explores legal aspects of sustainable supply chains in the context of the Amazon rainforest. Specifically, her research focuses on the soy and cattle supply chains.
These supply chains are closely linked to land-use change patterns in the Brazilian Amazon. Whereas the deforestation rate in the biome decreased by 80% from 2004 to 2014, it has been increasing again since 2015. Interestingly, the two supply chains exhibit distinctive degrees of responsiveness to zero-deforestation demands. In the early 2000s, the soy chain voluntarily engaged in the Soy Moratorium, a sectorial pact that substantially decreased the impact of the commodity on Amazon deforestation. The beef chain, differently, only committed to zero-deforestation voluntary agreements from 2010 onwards, after inspection operations conducted by the Brazilian government resulted in the imposition of sanctions on industry players. Although meatpackers have, to some extent, taken efforts to comply with the commitments, traceability of far-reaching upstream suppliers remains a challenge, and beef continues to be the main commodity responsible for driving deforestation in the Amazon rainforest up.
Using documental analysis and semi-structured interviews, Carolina aims to understand what factors explain the difference in responsiveness between the soy and the cattle supply chains. Moreover, she seeks to outline options and strategies that can be employed by actors in the meat industry with a view to strengthen their sustainability governance and minimise deforestation risk in the beef supply chain. One of her conclusions is that the higher degree of internationalisation of the soy supply chain is positively correlated to its greater level of environmental responsiveness.
Click here for a deeper dive into Carolina’s research!