trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

value given to the other members of their value chains and networks by the corporations of their impacton global water security is still very low.Without defining the water scarcity or stress of exact locations of their operations by taking inaccount both blue and green water use, the corporations lose in reliability of their corporateresponsibility and accountability. They might be among the most efficient water managers in the world,but without the geographic component in their reporting, sustainability of their operations both in localand global scale is impossible to judge definitely.Despite the increasing accommodation of water into their strategies, the ideational power of thelargest agro-food corporations in global water governance networks relies still mostly on resisting andcontesting the emerging discourse coalition around corporations and water security risks. According tothe interviews, especially the privately owned Cargill and Louis Dreyfus ”do not see water to be an issueto them” and the two corporations are accordingly reluctant to engage in global governance activitiesaround water such as sustainability roundtables and voluntary water accountability programmes. Thisdoes not make the corporations inefficient global managers of water as such, but hampers the overallfunctionality of the governance network under increasing pressure for reform. Reluctance of the largesttransnational agro-food corporations to commit to more sustainable framework for value chaingovernance and trade also enables the high water-risk behaviour of the rising state-led enterprises facingeven less stakeholder pressure.4. Discussion and conclusionsThe results of the study have shown that agro-food value chains and networks represent a highly crucialthough a complex structure of global water governance. The major role of the largest agro-foodcorporations and state-led enterprises in global water security builds on their thus far poorly understoodpower in global water governance networks: on their major share in the international virtual water'flows' embedded in agricultural commodities, on their strong bargaining position in the agro-foodsupply chains relying on their global presence and wider influence in the global political economy, andon their partial accommodation and resistance of the global discourses on water.In principle, major decisions regarding the sustainability of water security reaching from local toglobal level are made by farmers managing irrigation efficiency with different techniques and waterendowments, by traders sourcing from farmers in different parts of the world, by processors brandingtheir products, by retailers setting value standards to their brands, and by the consumers buying theproducts. However, the consolidated power of the agro-food transnational corporations and state-ledenterprises in these value chains and in the wider network of the global political economy makes thedecision making setting asymmetric. The power of farmers depends on the agricultural policies of agiven country, but the policy is often dictated by the corporate interests. Even in North America farmerscan be overridden by the standard setting power of traders forming conglomerates with other foodbusinesses (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002). Although the power of the educated consumer in the”North” is well documented (e.g. Friedberg 2004; Hartwick 2000), the consumers in the global ”South”do not possess such an authority over transnational corporations (e.g. World Development Movement2010; Friedberg 2007). Furthermore, as the power balance in the world system is increasingly shiftingtowards Asia, the “East”, it is still the global “South” that remains the underdog in food and water166