Private sector’s involvement in the global governance of Food and Nutrition Security: accountability issues and transformative potential

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the involvement of 15 transnational corporations in three multistakeholder platforms dedicated to food security (Grow Africa, GAIN, SUN). It aims at bringing new empirical data to feed in theoretical reflections on the influence of the private sector on global governance. drawing on two types of material: (i) in depth interviews carried out with both senior officers of these corporations and representatives of the four forum considered and (ii) secondary data related to the economic organization of the analyzed corporations, the paper yields three main results. First, we show that the growing implication of the private sector in food security governance comes from two main factors. The pressure exercised by civil society organizations and consumers have first pushed these companies to get involved in these initiatives to raise their corporate sustainability profile, and transparency on how they operate. The change in the perception of the private sector and the role it can play on food security and nutrition issues in developing countries has secondly had strong implications on the openness in international organizations and platforms towards this group. Second, the transformative potential of multi-stakeholder platforms appears quite weak for two reasons: (i) companies join platforms that share the same values and approaches to sustainable agriculture and food security and won’t join platforms that would imply a change of direction in their operations, or business strategy; and (ii) platforms need the participation of major leading companies to gain legitimacy, as well as discursive and financial power: businesses are an essential actor to financially support both the platform, and the projects to implement. In addition, platforms need leading TNCs to generate a “pull-in effect” that can attract other actors to join. Third, we shed light on two patterns of collaborations / coalitions between private companies. First, in platforms where the outcome are guidelines and standards and the role of the private sector is more about policy positioning, companies can collaborate with competitors easily because it’s a pre-competitive space and competitors are affected by the same issues and that unites them. This is evident in trade associations and in multi-stakeholder platforms such as the CFS. On the contrary, in platforms where the outcome is a set of concrete projects on the ground, companies tend not to ally with their competitors, instead, they ally with those that operate on their same value chain, particularly their suppliers and customers.