Jennifer Clapp
Biographic Data
| ID | 109572 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jennifer Clapp |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jennifer |
| FAMILY NAME | Clapp |
| SIGNATURE | CLAPP J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waterloo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1871-8067 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1036 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Global environmental governance after liberal environmentalism
Global environmental governance has long been predicated on a normative compromise, commonly referred to as ‘liberal environmentalism’, which posits that addressing global environmental challenges requires the promotion and maintenance of a liberal economic order. Today, however, the global economy is fragmenting across its material, ideational, and institutional dimensions due to renewed geopolitical rivalry and the resurgence of state capitalis…
Global Environmental Politics amid Geopolitical Turbulence
Over the past decade, three overlapping trends have fundamentally reshaped and now characterize the global geopolitical order: the rise of emerging powers, increasing military conflicts, and growing international trade tensions. These features of the global order are deeply connected to global environmental politics (GEP) and governance, as a warming world spurs some aspects of geopolitical change, while the geopolitical dynamics themselves have …
Competing axes of power in the global plastics treaty
Headlines in December 2024 proclaimed the “collapse” and “failure” of United Nations plastics treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea. This is, however, an overly simplistic and pessimistic portrayal. Progress on less contentious issues was made, and the meeting was adjourned with a commitment to continue negotiating in 2025 on the basis of the “Chair’s text.” Significantly, at the closing plenary, a majority of states voiced support for a “hig…
Corporate concentration and power matter for agency in food systems
High levels of corporate concentration and power in agrifood supply chains raise important policy concerns because they can affect food systems in adverse ways. In this paper, we argue that increased corporate concentration and power in food systems has the capacity to undermine people’s agency– that is, their capability to make choices and exercise their voice. We explore three dimensions of the relationship between concentrated corporate power …
Multi-scalar policy uptake of the six-dimensional food security framework
Private finance for food system climate adaptation
Surging Biojustice Environmentalism from Below
Global environmental politics is at a critical juncture as the Earth System emergency deepens. The core environmental policies and actions of governments, intergovernmental organizations, corporations, and, to a lesser extent, mainstream nongovernmental organizations are visibly failing to deescalate this emergency. In response to these failures, we argue, dispossessed individuals, Indigenous peoples, grassroots activists, and civil society campa…
Concentration and crises
The world has experienced three global food crises in the past 50 years. While unique triggers sparked each of these crises, they all exposed extreme concentration within the global industrial food system at multiple scales - at the field, country, and global market levels. This multi-level concentration heightens vulnerability to worldwide food crises that have profound consequences for the world's most marginalized populations. With a focus on …
The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system
Explaining Growing Glyphosate Use
Viewpoint
The definition of food security has evolved and changed over the past 50 years, including the introduction of the four commonly cited pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability, which have been important in shaping policy. In this article, we make the case that it is time for a formal update to our definition of food security to include two additional dimensions proposed by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food S…
Precision Technologies for Agriculture
This article analyzes the rise of precision technologies for agriculture—specifically digital farming and plant genome editing—and their implications for the politics of environmental sustainability in the agrifood sector. We map out opposing views in the emerging debate over the environmental aspects of these technologies: while proponents see them as vital tools for environmental sustainability, critics view them as antithetical to their own ag…
Contextualizing corporate control in the agrifood and extractive sectors
Corporations have gained enormous power and influence in recent decades as mergers and acquisitions in just about every sector of the global economy have given rise to mega-sized companies that influence almost every aspect of our lives. In this contribution, we examine the rise of corporate concentration and control in two key sectors – agriculture and extractives – where in recent years consolidation has accelerated due to a combination of tech…
This food crisis is different
Our analysis situates the current COVID-19 induced food crisis within a longer-term historical perspective on policy responses to past food crises. We argue that the legacies left by these past policies created vulnerabilities in the face of the present crisis, which is characterized by three interlocking dynamics: disruptions to global food supply chains, the loss of income and livelihoods due to the global economic recession, and uneven food pr…
The rise of financial investment and common ownership in global agrifood firms
Financial investment in the food and agriculture sector has grown in recent decades, including investment in equity-related funds that invest in or track the performance of a range of publicly traded transnational agrifood companies. At their height in recent years, equity-related investment funds accounted for around one third of financial investment in the sector. Despite their significance, investment in the agrifood sector via these types of …
Speculative Harvests
The Global Environmental Politics of Food
Mega-Mergers on the Menu
The agricultural input industry has become more concentrated in the wake of recently announced corporate mergers in the sector. This article examines the environmental implications of corporate concentration in the agricultural input sector and outlines the challenges of establishing effective international policy and governance on this issue. The article makes two arguments. First, corporate concentration matters for food system sustainability. …
Criteria for effective zero-deforestation commitments
Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effec…
Risky Returns
This article examines the rise of financialization in the agrifood sector and maps out both the way it has unfolded as well as its implications. The article argues that financialization has opened up new arenas for capital accumulation in the agrifood sector; reshaped the agrifood firms in ways that respond to demands of shareholders; and transformed everyday practices of food and social provisioning. The authors make the case that these three br…
The global political economy of climate change, agriculture and food systems
The food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts. This means that much is at stake in what is a complex set of contested political dynamics as new governance agendas are rolled out. On one hand, there is a strong push for 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA) and related initiatives in the area of marine resources such as the idea of the blue economy, as an attempt to bring a…
Concentration and Power in the Food System
How often do we pause to consider the social and environmental costs associated with bagged salad? Philip Howard’s Concentration and Power in the Food System challenges us to think about the broader consequences of corporate control over the food we eat. His excellent and engaging book examines both how the global food system has come to be dominated by a small number of truly giant firms and the wider environmental and social implications of thi…
The trade-ification of the food sustainability agenda
This contribution argues that the food sustainability agenda in global food governance arrangements is becoming 'trade-ified'. It shows that international trade has become normalized in these settings not only as being compatible with, but also as a key delivery mechanism for, food system sustainability. The paper first explains the rationale for this dominant narrative, which revolves around the efficiency gains from trade. Second, it outlines t…
Why equity is fundamental in climate change policy research
Responsibility to the rescue? Governing private financial investment in global agriculture
Financialization, distance and global food politics
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Peasant Studies on 2014-01-15, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03066150.2013.875536
This food crisis is different
Our analysis situates the current COVID-19 induced food crisis within a longer-term historical perspective on policy responses to past food crises. We argue that the legacies left by these past policies created vulnerabilities in the face of the present crisis, which is characterized by three interlocking dynamics: disruptions to global food supply chains, the loss of income and livelihoods due to the global economic recession, and uneven food pr…
Troubled futures? The global food crisis and the politics of agricultural derivatives regulation
The global food crisis of 2007-08 triggered an important US-led initiative to tighten regulations over agricultural derivatives markets. The lead role of the US reflected its structural power in global finance and the influence of societal interests within the US concerned about the rapid growth of financial investment in agricultural derivatives markets over the past decade. Encouraged by market developments and deregulation in the United States…
The global political economy of climate change, agriculture and food systems
The food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts. This means that much is at stake in what is a complex set of contested political dynamics as new governance agendas are rolled out. On one hand, there is a strong push for 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA) and related initiatives in the area of marine resources such as the idea of the blue economy, as an attempt to bring a…
Why equity is fundamental in climate change policy research
Concentration and crises
The world has experienced three global food crises in the past 50 years. While unique triggers sparked each of these crises, they all exposed extreme concentration within the global industrial food system at multiple scales - at the field, country, and global market levels. This multi-level concentration heightens vulnerability to worldwide food crises that have profound consequences for the world's most marginalized populations. With a focus on …
Food self-sufficiency
© 2016 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.12.001
Mega-Mergers on the Menu
The agricultural input industry has become more concentrated in the wake of recently announced corporate mergers in the sector. This article examines the environmental implications of corporate concentration in the agricultural input sector and outlines the challenges of establishing effective international policy and governance on this issue. The article makes two arguments. First, corporate concentration matters for food system sustainability. …
Transforming governance and institutions for global sustainability
Distant agricultural landscapes
This paper examines the relationship between the development of the dominant industrial food system and its associated global economic drivers and the environmental sustainability of agricultural landscapes. It makes the case that the growth of the global industrial food system has encouraged increasingly complex forms of "distance" that separate food both geographically and mentally from the landscapes on which it was produced. This separation b…
The Privatization of Global Environmental Governance
oluntary codes of conduct for firms and private standards-setting bodies are growing in number and are increasingly gaining recog nition and public status by states and intergovernmental organiza tions. This has led to a growth in what some have labeled as mixed regimes of a hybrid nature, whereby both states and private authorities are heavily involved in the creation and maintenance of international princi ples, norms, rules, and decisionmaking…
Criteria for effective zero-deforestation commitments
Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effec…
Viewpoint
The definition of food security has evolved and changed over the past 50 years, including the introduction of the four commonly cited pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability, which have been important in shaping policy. In this article, we make the case that it is time for a formal update to our definition of food security to include two additional dimensions proposed by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food S…
The rise of financial investment and common ownership in global agrifood firms
Financial investment in the food and agriculture sector has grown in recent decades, including investment in equity-related funds that invest in or track the performance of a range of publicly traded transnational agrifood companies. At their height in recent years, equity-related investment funds accounted for around one third of financial investment in the sector. Despite their significance, investment in the agrifood sector via these types of …
Precision Technologies for Agriculture
This article analyzes the rise of precision technologies for agriculture—specifically digital farming and plant genome editing—and their implications for the politics of environmental sustainability in the agrifood sector. We map out opposing views in the emerging debate over the environmental aspects of these technologies: while proponents see them as vital tools for environmental sustainability, critics view them as antithetical to their own ag…
The trade-ification of the food sustainability agenda
This contribution argues that the food sustainability agenda in global food governance arrangements is becoming 'trade-ified'. It shows that international trade has become normalized in these settings not only as being compatible with, but also as a key delivery mechanism for, food system sustainability. The paper first explains the rationale for this dominant narrative, which revolves around the efficiency gains from trade. Second, it outlines t…
Risky Returns
This article examines the rise of financialization in the agrifood sector and maps out both the way it has unfolded as well as its implications. The article argues that financialization has opened up new arenas for capital accumulation in the agrifood sector; reshaped the agrifood firms in ways that respond to demands of shareholders; and transformed everyday practices of food and social provisioning. The authors make the case that these three br…
Researching Global Environmental Politics in the 21st Century
This forum article highlights three major research trends we have observed in the journal Global Environmental Politics since 2000. First, research has increasingly focused on specific and formal mechanisms of global environmental governance, contributing to more elaborate and refined methodologies that span more scales and levels of analysis. Second, research increasingly has concentrated on the rise of market-based governance mechanisms and the…
Finance for Agriculture or Agriculture for Finance
Food studies scholars have paid increasing attention to 'financialization' within the food system as private financial actors have played a growing role in various facets of the sector in recent years. While there has been much attention paid to the implications of the greater role for financial actors in the food system, there has been relatively less attention paid to the ways in which these actors have historically interacted with it; in parti…
Food Price Volatility and Vulnerability in the Global South
Most official analyses of the recent food price crisis have focused on the market fundamentals of supply and demand for food as key explanatory factors. As a result, most of the policy recommendations emanating from the major international institutions include measures to boost supply and temper demand. In this paper I argue that international macroeconomic factors played a key role in fostering both price volatility and vulnerability, and as suc…
Doing away with plastic shopping bags
The rapid and widespread emergence of an anti-plastic shopping bag norm and associated regulatory policies around the world in recent years forces a rethinking of current understandings of norm dynamics and policy implementation. The patterns of this movement are explored and characterised as a South to North, non-networked and multi-scalar series of events that together represent a globally significant emergence of a new environmental norm. It a…
Explaining Growing Glyphosate Use
What the Pollution Havens Debate Overlooks
Whether or not pollution havens exist in poor countries has been the subject of a great deal of debate in recent decades. This concern is warranted, as the intensity of dirty industry is rising in the developing world just as it is falling in the industrialized world. But identifying pollution havens is extremely difficult in practice. Part of the reason for this is that there are important flaws with the methods and measures used in the pollutio…
Corporate concentration and power matter for agency in food systems
High levels of corporate concentration and power in agrifood supply chains raise important policy concerns because they can affect food systems in adverse ways. In this paper, we argue that increased corporate concentration and power in food systems has the capacity to undermine people’s agency– that is, their capability to make choices and exercise their voice. We explore three dimensions of the relationship between concentrated corporate power …
The complex dynamics of agriculture as a financial asset
Interpreting Agricultural Performance in Guinea under Structural Adjustment
La performance du secteur agricole Guinéen depuis l'adoption d'un programme d'ajustement structural de l'économie de marché est mitigée. Ce papier, envisage diverses explications possibles. Il découvre que la perspective des “forces en faveur du marché” qui insiste sur la nécessité de l'effort des fermiers en vue d'améliorer au maximum leurs revenus, ainsi que la perspective des “valeurs paysannes” qui insiste sur la nécessité pour les fermiers d…
The toxic waste trade with less‐industrialised countries
(1994). The toxic waste trade with less‐industrialised countries: Economic linkages and political alliances. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 505-518
Guinea's Economic Performance Under Structural Adjustment
Domestic policy inadequacies have been targeted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the main reason for poor economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa generally.1 The structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) sponsored by these international financial institutions (IFIs) over the past decade have sought to rectify such policies. But many countries following their advice have continued to experience economic decline, albe…
Adjustment and Agriculture in Africa
With the adoption of a World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment programme in the mid-1980s, Guinea underwent a dramatic change in its economic and agricultural policies. The country's experience ove
Trade and Marketing of Agricultural Products
The liberalisation of trade and prices was, in addition to stimulating production, also intended to provide incentives to expand the marketing of local goods, and to make the import and export of goods much simpler. Apart from these measures, however, not much was done to help foster better commercialisation of agricultural products or of agricultural inputs in Guinea. This improvement of trade and marketing was expected to take care of itself, g…
The World Bank and Africa’s Future Prospects
As has been illustrated by the case of Guinea throughout this book, adjustment and its relationship to the agricultural sector are intertwined in a multitude of complexities involving political and economic factors as well as various actors at the local, national, and global levels. Both the structural adjustment and agricultural project strategies advocated by the Bank for Guinea in particular, and for Africa more broadly, encountered serious di…
The Privatization of Global Environmental Governance
oluntary codes of conduct for firms and private standards-setting bodies are growing in number and are increasingly gaining recog nition and public status by states and intergovernmental organiza tions. This has led to a growth in what some have labeled as mixed regimes of a hybrid nature, whereby both states and private authorities are heavily involved in the creation and maintenance of international princi ples, norms, rules, and decisionmaking…
Foreign direct investment in hazardous industries in developing countries
It is often asserted that the debate over industry location and the environment is closed. It is argued MNCs do not invest in highly polluting industries in developing countries in order to take advantage of weaker environmental regulations, as environmental costs are not sufficient to warrant industry relocation. This article argues that this assertion may not always hold for foreign direct investment in the most highly hazardous industries in d…
The Illicit Global Economy and State Power
Chapter 1 Introduction: International Relations and the Illicit Global Economy Chapter 2 Transnational Organized Crime: The New Authoritarianism Chapter 3 State Power and the Regulation of Illicit Activity in Global Finance Chapter 4 The Illicit Trade in Hazardous Waste and CFCs: International Responses to Environmental Bads Chapter 5 When Policies Collide: Market Reform, Market Prohibition, and the Narcotization of the Mexican Economy Chapter 6 …
Development as Freedom
Adjustment and Agriculture in Africa
Adjustment and Agriculture in Africa
What the Pollution Havens Debate Overlooks
Whether or not pollution havens exist in poor countries has been the subject of a great deal of debate in recent decades. This concern is warranted, as the intensity of dirty industry is rising in the developing world just as it is falling in the industrialized world. But identifying pollution havens is extremely difficult in practice. Part of the reason for this is that there are important flaws with the methods and measures used in the pollutio…
Transnational corporate interests and global environmental governance
This essay examines the role of the agricultural input industry in the negotiation of two environmental treaties: the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. It seeks to explain why industry players were willing to accept a phase-out of POPs chemicals but were reluctant to accept strict regulation of the trade in genetically modified organisms. This comparison is an important one to consider,…
Marian A.L. Miller 1950–2003
November 01 2004 Marian A.L. Miller 1950–2003 Jennifer Clapp, Jennifer Clapp Trent University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Peter Dauvergne Peter Dauvergne University of British Columbia Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Jennifer Clapp Trent University Peter Dauvergne University of British Columbia Online Issn: 1536-0091 Print Issn: 1526-3800 © 20…
WTO agricultural trade battles and food aid
Recent agricultural trade battles at the WTO between the US and the EU have important implications for the Global South, in particular with respect to food aid. The current Doha round of trade talks hinges closely on agreement in the area of agriculture, and a key issue of disagreement between the US and the EU is the question of whether the WTO should impose disciplines on food aid and agricultural export credits. The US has also challenged the …
Paths to a Green World
This comprehensive and accessible text fills the need for a political economy view of global environmental politics, focusing on the ways key economic processes affect environmental outcomes. It examines the main actors and forces shaping global environmental management, particularly in the developing world. Moving beyond the usual academic emphasis on international agreements and institutions, it strives to integrate debates within the real worl…
Global Environmental Governance for Corporate Responsibility and Accountability
Recent years have seen a growing movement toward externally imposed regulations directed specifically at improving TNCs' environmental and social performance. This movement draws on a long history, and its most recent incarnation is largely a reaction to disappointment on the part of many with the results of private voluntary initiatives among global firms. A number of international level initiatives have emerged, including the UN's Global Compac…
The Global South and the Environment
August 01 2005 The Global South and the Environment: Essays in Memory of Marian A.L.Miller Jennifer Clapp Jennifer Clapp Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Jennifer Clapp Online ISSN: 1536-0091 Print ISSN: 1526-3800 © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2005 Global Environmental Politics (2005) 5 (3): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/1526380054794862 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share…
The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural Biotechnology
Paths to a Green World
Book note for Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne, Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. $ 25.00 papercover
Wto Agriculture negotiations
The Doha ‘Development’ Round of trade negotiations at the wto has featured agricultural trade liberalisation as one of its key aims. But developing countries were frustrated with both the process and the content of the agricultural agreement negotiations early on in the round. This prompted these countries, through a number of developing country groupings such as the G-20 and others, to call for changes in the talks to ensure that developing coun…
Illegal GMO releases and corporate responsibility
A Global Outlook on Food Studies
(2008). A Global Outlook on Food Studies. Food, Culture & Society: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 281-286
The Global Food Crisis and International Agricultural Policy
World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, World Bank, 2007; online at http://www.siteresources.worldbank.org/ INTWDR2008/Resources/WDR_00_book.pdf. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), Agriculture at a Crossroads, Island Press, 2009 (includes Global Report, Synthesis Report, Global Summary for Decision Makers, and 5 regional reports); summaries online at…
Political science (47 works) · Economics (45 works) · Business (37 works) · Agriculture (33 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (28 works) · Politics (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Food security (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Corporate governance (15 works)