Centre for Development and Environment (CDE)

Inequalities and just economies

20 August 2024

Rwanda: Coffee – “the cow that never falls”?

Coffee lovers and traders rave about it being one of the best coffees in the world: a specialty coffee consisting of 100 per cent arabica, cultivated and hand-picked by small farmers – and frequently advertised as “made by women!” But what’s really behind this good-sounding story? A CDE research team took a deeper look.

28 April 2022

“It’s not enough to treat justice as a subcategory of ‘social issues’”

“If we fail to address issues of justice there’s a risk that sustainability will remain an empty phrase”: That’s the conclusion that Elena Zepharovich comes to in her CDE doctoral dissertation, for which she received the 2021 Bernese Award for Environmental Research of the University of Bern.

Read the interview

3 February 2022

Black cardamom – a way out of poverty?

Agricultural exports featuring more value added will generate jobs, higher incomes, greater tax revenues. Governments and development practitioners act on it in hopes of fighting poverty in the global South. But is it true? An research team led by CDE has put this idea to the test by analysing Nepal’s cardamom value chain.

“Inequality also harms the environment”

CDE researcher Graziano Ceddia shows that inequality in Latin America promotes deforestation.