Empowering Sociobioeconomic Stewardship: Integrating Local Cooperatives Into Global Value Chains For Inclusive Development

The sociobioeconomic framework can be understood as systems that sustainably use, protect, and enhance biologically derived products and processes from ecosystems and cultures in order to promote sustainable development, resilience, inclusivity, biodiversity conservation, and community empowerment. Global value chains (GVCs) present a promising avenue for the integration of various stakeholders, including smallholder farmers, indigenous communities, and local cooperatives, into the global market landscape, but how this impacts traditional cultures and values is less clear. Examining case studies from the Brazilian Amazon underscores the potential of local cooperatives linked to GVCs as agents of sociobioeconomic stewardship. These cooperatives can advance sustainable practices, conservation efforts, responsible natural resource management, knowledge exchange, and community involvement. They can harness traditional knowledge, indigenous practices, and local innovations to develop sustainable solutions. However, integrating into GVCs poses significant challenges for these cooperatives, due to the power asymmetries, which create unequal bargaining conditions, limited access to market information, financial constraints, and skill shortages. Addressing these obstacles necessitates a coordinated governance approach, with lead firms, public actors (e.g. G20, States, municipalities) and civil society, working together to develop interventions that empower local cooperatives to engage in meaningful negotiations with lead firms in GVCs. To this end the GVC interventions should strive to promote inclusive growth, mitigate regional inequalities, foster open innovation, and stimulate private sector investment for long term sociobioeconomic sustainability. Two policy scenarios are developed, the first discusses the impact of financial support mechanisms, while the second discusses the need to incorporate this with a supportive legal framework, capacity-building initiatives, facilitation of market access, and inclusive governance structures. By supporting the comprehensive policy intervention and principles, the G20 can support its Bioeconomy Initiative and Brazil’s presidency goals of inclusive growth, sustainable development, trade and investment, innovation, and food security.