Hope Johnson

Consumer Choice as a Pathway to Food Diversity: A Case Study of Açaí Berry Product Labelling

Through labelling and marketing claims, acai berries appear to be a purchase consumers can make to support biological diversity and rural development in the Amazon while uniquely meeting their nutritional needs. Accordingly, acai berries seem ideal for consumers seeking to promote food diversity including biological and dietary diversity. This is supported by the popular notion that consumers can “vote with their forks” for a more sustainable and just food system. Yet the type, accuracy and form of information conveyed, as well as the standards that must be satisfied before such claims can be made, have been pre-determined by regulators and acai companies. Using a “backwards mapping” methodology, this chapter identifies and critiques the common marketing claims on acai products relevant to food diversity. Ultimately, the chapter reveals some of the problems with the notion that consumers can facilitate food diversity using their purchasing power.

Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Tobacco Control: Implications for Non-communicable Diseases Prevention and Consumption-Control Measures

Public health advocates and policy makers have long considered how to translate the successes of tobacco control measures to address alcohol abuse and the excessive consumption of ultra-processed and nutrient-poor foods. Correspondingly, the strategies adopted by tobacco companies to prevent or delay regulation often parallel those adopted by the alcohol and food industries. Philip Morris, a leading tobacco company, has recently used investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms as a new strategy to hinder or prevent tobacco control measures in the form of plain packaging requirements. The cases that followed may have implications for the development of novel consumption-control measures, like plain packaging laws, aimed at preventing non-communicable diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. This paper considers how the challenges to tobacco control measures through ISDS mechanisms could affect the development of consumption-control measures aimed at reducing alcohol abuse and unhealthy food consumption for non-communicable disease prevention. Using the recent ISDS challenges by Philip Morris as case studies, this paper draws out lessons and issues for the future development of consumption-control measures.

Legitimacy and accountability in the global governance of large-scale agricultural land investments

ABSTRACT This article examines the international regulatory framework for large-scale agricultural land investments (‘LSALIs’). Population growth, natural resource scarcity, and the financial and food price crises have made financial actors revise their long-held hesitation towards direct investment in farmland. Although these investments could inject much-needed capital into rural areas, LSALIs have been connected with grievous human rights violations and environmental degradation. This article finds that the instruments designed to promote socially and environmentally responsible LSALIs have increasing levels of legitimacy but lack accountability mechanisms. As a result, the emerging regulatory framework for LSALIs does not create the balance required between protecting investors from host state interference and ensuring socially and environmentally responsible agricultural investments.

Environmental crime, human rights and green criminology

This chapter is concerned with the prospects for a safe and sustainable environment in a fair and just world. At present, these prospects look bleak. However there are a number of legal developments and ethical principles on which to build, including the European Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, notions of environmental, ecological and species justice, and conceptions of human rights. The chapter considers these in five sections: first providing an overview and exploring the links between human rights and environmental issues; then examining examples of environmental crimes / harms and attempts to regulate or criminalise these; before outlining the development of a Green Criminology and proposals for an international law against ecocide as a framework for addressing this range of challenges. Finally, concluding comments draw attention to debates and directions for discussion and research.