Jana Rülke

This paper explores how geographical knowledge can foster the reconfiguration of global production networks (GPNs), particularly in agri‐food sectors reliant on Global South commodities like cocoa. These networks often reflect colonial‐era patterns, where raw materials are sourced in the Global South, yet value‐added processing occurs in the Global North. For the first time, this study examines Fairafric, a German company financed by crowdfunding, with a chocolate factory in Ghana, as a case of how geographical knowledge can reconfigure production networks. Using the GPN framework and applying a mixed‐methods approach, including qualitative interviews and a farmer survey, the findings indicate that geographical knowledge enhances customer support for products manufactured closer to the source of raw material, catalysing local development and employment in rural Ghana. This shift promotes ethical consumption, investment and value capture in producing regions but also reveals structural and regulatory global production network challenges that could limit wider transformation.

Protecting nature and securing human livelihood needs are very conflicting especially in biodiversity-rich areas of the Global South. The Taita Hills Cloud Forest (THCF) in Kenya remains one of the top biodiversity hotspots worldwide. Environmental data for the area has been studied for decades. Sociodemographic analyses on inequality have been conducted by governmental and non-governmental organizations. Little has been done yet to correlate them to investigate their relationships. A lot of attention has been paid to the connection between agricultural practices and impacts on the environment, but human–environment relationships are much more complex, especially in Kenya’s biodiversity-rich areas. This paper assesses the local population’s perception of its surrounding environment and investigates their understanding of nature conservation. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, 300 survey respondents were classified concerning their nature ethical views (particularly anthropocentrism and ecocentrism). By using grounded theory, data were regularly reviewed during the entire research, to assemble an evaluable and comparable dataset. Our study reveals that gender has a distinct impact on whether the interviewees have an anthropocentric or ecocentric perspective of nature and conservation. Moreover, there is a strong need for an intermediate bridge between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism.