Stakeholder participation, gender, and codes of conduct in South Africa

Ethical trade is expanding rapidly in the UK. Following the foundation of the Ethical Trading Initiative many companies are adopting codes of conduct to cover employment conditions in their supply chains, based on a process of multi-stakeholder participation. Addressing gender issues in their implementation remains an important challenge for policy makers. This paper considers how gender sensitivity in the monitoring and verification of codes can be enhanced within a multi-stakeholder framework based on evidence from a case study of export horticulture in South Africa. It makes policy recommendations to address the needs of more marginalised workers, many of whom are women. Investments in process-oriented and farmer-participatory research have led to the emergence of sustainable agroforestry solutions to the problems of land degradation, poverty, and food insecurity in rural areas. Thousands of farmers in diverse ecoregions have taken up innovations that demonstrate the potential of agroforestry. This paper highlights the importance of institutional change through illustrating the approach taken by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry to scale up adoption and impact of innovations. Eight focal areas of intervention constitute the key elements of a development strategy aimed at providing 80 million poor people in rural areas with better livelihood options by 2010.