"The horizontal governance of environmental upgrading: Lessons from the Prosecco and Valpolicella wine value chains in Italy"

Literature on environmental sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) focuses on how ‘lead firms’ can improve the environmental conditions of production among their various layers of suppliers.

In this paper, Stefano Ponte (Copenaghen Business School) and our Valentina De Marchi, Marco Bettiol and Eleonora Di Maria, examine environmental upgrading in Italian wine value chains, focusing on the fast-growing but environmentally-contested Prosecco and Valpolicella districts. Their analysis suggests that firms within the same industry may follow different processes of environmental upgrading – through certification, going ‘back to tradition’, technological innovation and/or as an articulation of local politics – also depending on their size. They conclude that horizontal governance is playing a more important role than previously thought in shaping environmental upgrading and provide some suggestions for future research in this realm.

Read their "Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space" article here