Ethical markets for wildflowers in South Africa

Hughes, Alex (2017). Ethical markets for wildflowers in South Africa. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851584

This project aims to develop and promote best practice in sustainable harvesting within the South African wildflower industry - a sector supplying high-value, ethically-sourced bouquets to UK and South African high street retailers and supermarkets - with positive outcomes intended for both environmental and socio-economic aspects of ethical wildflower harvesting. As a Knowledge Exchange project, the work will be conducted in collaboration with the Flower Valley Conservation Trust (FVCT) - a Western Cape NGO at the vanguard of sustainable harvesting. The FVCT has piloted an innovative programme of work, which seeks to achieve conservation goals through the development of market opportunities. The FVCT is located in the Cape Floral Region of the Western Cape of South Africa, which is the smallest and richest of the world's six floral kingdoms. The main vegetation type is known locally as fynbos ('fine leaved bush'), which has been harvested from the wild for many decades because the distinctive appearance of the flowers has proven popular with consumers. Large quantities of fynbos are exported every year from the Western Cape to European markets, with UK high street retailers and supermarket chains being the most significant customers. However, unsustainable harvesting of wildflowers is one of the threats to the biome and the fynbos industry has been loosely organised and weakly regulated. In environmental terms, this has led to excessive pressure being placed upon the resource base, as marketable species have been exploited beyond their capacity to reproduce. Given the UK's commercial influence, stakeholders in this country have a responsibility to co-develop more sustainable harvesting practices. The project sets out to develop the work of the FVCT and to promote the cause of sustainable harvesting in both South Africa and the UK through a set of progressive and applied mechanisms.
Opportunities for devising mechanisms for ensuring the integrity of the sustainable harvesting programme and improving stakeholder outcomes are met through four inter-connected work packages. Work Package 1 develops audit methodologies to enable the effective monitoring of sustainable picking practice and landscape management. Work Package 2 develops training materials and programmes in order to improve the skills, opportunities and socio-economic gains of a culturally-diverse harvesting workforce. Work Package 3 develops a better understanding of how sustainable harvesting in horticulture fits into the wider context of ethical consumerism in South Africa as well as in the UK. Interview-based and focus group methods will trace consumers' ethical values and decision-making in the context of their everyday lives and purchasing practices. This will not only construct useful marketing knowledge for the FCVT and its commercial partner, Fynsa, but will also provide a pilot study of ethical consumption in the global South of interest to transnational corporations, NGOs and labour unions working in this area. Work Package 4 promotes the sustainable harvesting agenda to a wide set of stakeholders through 'Learning Events', including a multi-stakeholder workshop in Cape Town.

Data description (abstract)

Work Package 3 of this ESRC Knowledge Exchange project was the only one of four work packagaes generating new data. This new data was a modest scoping study of ethical markets for wildflowers in the Western cape of South Africa. Further details of the methodology and implications for the data archive are included in one of the documents submitted to ReShare. In summary, Work Package 3 combined interviews with focus groups conducted between September 2013 and March 2014 to understand emerging ethical markets in the region into which ethical wildflower bouquets fit. The Western Cape is an appropriate case study for research into South African ethical consumption for two key reasons. First, Cape Town is home to a large number of NGOs, industry associations and ethical consultancy firms at the leading edge of ethical initiatives, as well as the location of the corporate headquarters of the two South African grocery retail chains most associated with ethical product ranges. Second, the Western Cape is second only to Gauteng in terms of the size of its middle class population—the socio-economic group most targeted by new ethical marketing initiatives.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Hughes Alex	Newcastle University

Contributors:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
McEwan Cheryl	Durham University
Bek David	Newcastle University

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council, Flower Valley Conservation Trust (FVCT)

Grant reference:

ES/K005626/1

Topic classification:

Natural environment
Society and culture

Keywords:

africa south of the sahara, ethics, sustainability, market economy

Project title:

Developing Sustainable Wildflower Harvesting for Global Supply Chains

Grant holders:

Alex Hughes

Project dates:

From	To
31 May 2013	30 May 2014

Date published:

23 Dec 2014 10:14

Last modified:

14 Jul 2017 08:46

Coverage and Methodology

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
31 May 2013	30 May 2014

Geographical area:

Western Cape, South Africa

Country:

South Africa

Data collection method:

Twenty-one interviews were conducted with the key Western Cape institutions playing leading roles in the development of ethical markets and consumption (qualitative, theoretical sampling identified these twenty-one very clearly). Table 1 of the introductory project document in ReShare presents a comprehensive list of the interviewees (using pseudonyms and generic job and organisational descriptors to protect anonymity) and the dates of the interviews. In summary, these included companies (consultancy firms, corporate retailers carrying ethically-labelled product lines, companies pioneering and marketing sustainably produced goods, upmarket restaurants showcasing their novel use of sustainable ingredients and social auditors), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) responsible for ethical initiatives, ethical trade multi-stakeholder organizations and industry associations.
In order to capture the ways in which consumers in the Western Cape understand and respond to ethical consumption initiatives in the context of their everyday lives, we adopted a focus group methodology to complement the suite of interviews. This captures inter-subjective knowledge concerning consumers’ narratives on how they consider ethics in their everyday lives. Ten focus groups were held in the Western Cape. Seven of these covered a wide middle class demographic, including three groups in Cape Town (one in the city centre and two in the suburb of Newlands) and one each in Hermanus, Bredasdorp, Croydon and Cloetesville. Three further groups, one in Cape Town and two in Elim, were conducted with members of working class communities and were included to address other related research questions concerning regional commodity knowledges. Focus groups were recruited via two local fieldworkers and three of the key informants interviewed for the project. The Western Cape is diverse demographically in terms of ethnicity, first language, socio-economic status, urbanization and culture. The focus groups captured insights from across these groups including: lower middle class (urban) ‘coloured’ people from Cloetesville near Stellensbosch; middle class coloured people from Croydon near Somerset West; white middle class people (Afrikaans first language) living in and around the rural town of Hermanus; white middle class rural people (also Afrikaans first language) from around Bredasdorp; professionals in Cape Town from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds; Xhosa people (who are either migrants from the Eastern Cape or are first generation) who work at a Cape Town restaurant; and Coloured rural people from the Mission community of Elim.
The document in ReShare explains in detail that there is permission given by interviewees to archive 15 of the 21 interview transcripts, but that focus group participants have asked that the focus group transcripts be left out of the archive. The document submitted to ReShare explains this in detail.

Observation unit:

Organization

Kind of data:

Text

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

UK Data Service guidelines on the anonymisation of qualitative interview transcripts have been followed in order to appropriately anonymise the 15 transcripts offered for the archive. Pseudonyms have been used for interviewees and organisations have been referred to, for example, as Retailer, A, B etc. And NGO A, B, C etc. Specific job descriptions of interviewees have been replaced with generic terms, e.g. Senior Executive, Manager or Consultant. These descriptors along with the interview numbers are laid out in Table 1 of this document and correspond to information/labels on the 15 transcripts themselves. Reference to Cape Town and the Western Cape of South Africa has been left in the transcripts as this is key to understanding the context and is neither contentious nor revealing of personal and organisational identities. Within the transcripts, if retailers and NGOs are mentioned they are also referred to as Retailer A, Retailer B etc. in order to correspond with the descriptors given to the interviewees (in other words, the names and descriptors are consistent across all transcripts).

Rights owners: