CDE researcher Gabi Sonderegger has received the Bernese Award for Environmental Research for her dissertation analysing how voluntary sustainability standards in agriculture address spillover effects beyond their immediate sphere of action. Her research systematically examined 100 major standards and 21 ecological, social, and economic spillover effects, highlighting important gaps—particularly regarding socio-economic impacts such as labour migration. The work contributes to ongoing debates on sustainability governance in globally interconnected agricultural systems and provides insights for policymakers and standard-setting organizations seeking to improve the effectiveness of sustainability instruments.

Interview with CDE scientist Henri Rueff, SFIAR member and coordinating lead author of the seventh edition of the United Nations Environment Programme’s flagship Global Environment Outlook report, GEO-7, the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment to date.

Improving farmer wellbeing is central to sustainable cocoa value chains, yet little is known about the mechanisms through which private sustainability strategies generate such effects. Drawing on justice theory, this study analyses how distributive, procedural, and recognition justice shape farmer wellbeing within cooperatives, corporate sustainability programmes, and social enterprises. Using process tracing and mixed data from three cases in the Peruvian Amazon, the results show that governance practices perceived as fair across these justice dimensions enhance farmers’ wellbeing, satisfaction, and commitment. Distributive justice emerges as particularly important, and farmers tend to hold cooperatives to higher fairness expectations than private companies.