LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

Collisions or Positive Feedbacks? Discussing clustering of market-mechanisms in subnational governments

• In Event: Sustainability transitions in the primary sectors in Latin America and Asia

Abstract

San Martin is a subnational government in the Peruvian Amazonian Basin the size of Costa Rica. Colonized for agriculture during the XX century, it is now the first producer of coffee and cocoa for international markets in Peru. Regarding cocoa, its production grew to the point of counting for 42 % of the national volume (MIDAGRI-SISAGRI, 2021). Since the late '90s, San Martin has been attracting and assembling a bundle of sustainability initiatives focused on agricultural commodities. At its starting point, most initiatives increased commodities' competitiveness, profitability, and sustainability, encouraging smallholders to abandon illegal crops such as coca. Since 2010, new projects and programs aimed at improving environmental and social practices, addressing deforestation, threats to biodiversity, and livelihoods. Deepening this trend, during the last five years, several landscapes and jurisdictional initiatives that include multi-stakeholder participation have emerged. We analyze the evolution and interplay of a number of initiatives that explicitly aim at using the market tools to increase sustainability. We discuss the positive feedbacks and trade-offs that occur when such a will to reform “rural” socio-ecological landscapes coexisting at the subnational level.

Author

• Deborah Delgado, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú