Agroecology Accounting: Biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods from the margins

Seminar abstract

This study provides evidence of the role of government policy and practice in perpetuating the status quo by not promoting either research on agroecology or direct consumer to producer value chains while providing subsidies for inputs of industrial agriculture.

A case study of a Fairtrade and Organic certified co-operatives of Indigenous smallholder coffee farmers in India. using data collected from participant observation, focus groups and unstructured interviews with indigenous smallholder farmers. Combines the science of agroecology with the labour theory of value as a theoretical framework.

This study extends the field of accounting for biodiversity into agriculture using the science of agroecology to explain the role played by biodiversity in increasing the amount of value generated by smallholder farmers.

By utilising the labour theory of value, the authors have introduced the notion of the labour power of nature as represented by the environmental services that nature provides.

This seminar introduces the notion of accounting for sustainable livelihoods to the growing area of accounting for sustainable development especially accounting for the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Booking

This seminar is free to attend with no need to book in advance. We warmly invite you to join and share with friends, colleagues and classmates.

Speaker bios

Professor Steffen Böhm

Steffen Böhm is a Professor in Organisation and Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School.

He was previously a Professor in Management and Sustainability at the University of Essex.

He has also held visiting positions at Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden, as well as at St Andrews University, Scotland.

His research focuses on the political economy and ecology of the sustainability transition.

He has published five books; 

• Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave)
• Against Automobility (Wiley-Blackwell)
• Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets (Mayfly)
• The Atmosphere Business (Mayfly)
• Ecocultures: Blueprints for Sustainable Communities (Routledge)

The book Climate Activism (with Annika Skoglund) is forthcoming with Cambridge. More details can be found on Steffen's Website.

Dr Sanjay V Lanka

Dr Lanka is an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the Department of Accounting, Finance and Control at the Sao Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV-EAESP), Brazil.

He also teaches sustainability management in the SESAMI Master's programme at Kobe University, Japan. He supervises 4 PhD students at the Sheffield University Management School focused on the topic of Accounting for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In context of the SDGs, his research focuses on  

• Carbon Accounting and Finance
• Supply Chain Accounting
• Biodiversity Accounting
• Extinction Accounting
• Accounting for Externalities
• Sustainable Livelihoods

Dr Lanka is the leader of the Sustainable Finance Research Group under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (CNPq) of Brazil.

Dr Sanjay Lanka can be contacted by email.