Just as Goal 10 of the SDGs is “eradication of inequality”, “widening inequality” has become a major issue in the international community in the 21st century, and one of the causes is “expansion of globalization by capitalist economy” or “expansion of globalization by capitalism”.

We think about the view that there is a “prevalence of market capitalism” is deep-rooted. If the cause of “increasing inequality” lies in the “capitalist economy,” then “correcting” or “substituting” the current state of capitalism as a measure to reduce disparities will be ascended. There have been various efforts since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Practices such as Robert Owen’s “Utopian Socialism” and Marx Engels’ “Communism” are part of this.

Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, attempts to counter market capitalism have continued, being called the “solidarity economy” or the “social economy”. And since the beginning of the 2010s, the United Nations has continued to focus on those activities.

The Institute for Social Development has called for a network of “social and solidarity economies” centered on UN agencies, and it is drawing attention again. In this study group, we will learn various examples of solidarity economy and social economy that are being tackled in the world, give a bird’s-eye view of the practices and theories of these efforts.

Those approach have not always been compared across the board, and poverty in developing countries. We would like to consider whether we can find new possibilities for reduction and reduction of disparities, including in developed countries.

For this reason, this study group focuses on activities to listen to the stories of various researchers and practitioners at the first step and try to study more deeply.

Ethical agri-food systems and rural development Poverty alleviation is placed as the first object in the SDGs as well as in the MDGs. Most impoverished people are peasants in the Global South. Accordingly, the SDGs put a high priority on rural development. However, it is difficult for peasants to get out of poverty under the current global agri-food system. Although Fair Trade (FT) has a potential to solve such difficulty by providing an alternative agri-food system, it has not developed its full potential, so far. One of the reasons for this is the small size of the FT market.

This is because FT products are unlikely to directly improve the utility of consumers. Therefore, we need the ethics (“economy of virtue” by Adam Smith), such as consumers’ awareness on social responsibility and sympathy for poor producers in the Global South. The establishment and expansion of ethical consumption for human rights, the environment, and justice can be seen as an embodiment of such ethics.

This research project aims at clarifying the achievements and challenges of rural development by ethical agri-food systems based on FT and ethical consumption (both of which are considered ethical transactions). In addition, we will adopt the viewpoint of food movements such as “right to food” and “food sovereignty” which are attracting attention in the Global North. This research project will reach three outcomes as follows:

1. Clarifying the problems of the current agri-food systems and conditions for
   the establishment and expansion of the ethical agri-food systems,
2. Identifying a pathway to integrative rural development, including poverty alleviation,
3. Presenting the benefits of ethical agri-food systems, especially for consumers in “developed” countries, and the resulting expansion of the FT market.

The research group aims to analyze the impacts of migration on the economic and human development in their home countries and destinations. Migration, both within and beyond national borders, is a broad concept that encompasses refugees or internally displaced persons of conflicts and natural disasters as well as those who move to seek opportunities of employment, education, or marriage at their own will.

The impacts of migration have been discussed mostly in terms of economic development, particularly its contribution to poverty alleviation through the migrants’ foreign remittance to their home countries. However, the on-going discussion is not sufficient to analyze both the negative and the positive aspects of the migration.

Its negative impacts may include the so-called brain drain, the excessive dependency of households and national economies on the foreign remittance, the disintegration of families, and the underdevelopment of local industries in their home countries. In the present era of global migration, it is no longer realistic or feasible to “develop a community to prevent its members from migration.”

This research group instead starts with accepting migration as an inevitable reality and attempts to seek the potential of migration that contribute to the development of people and societies both in their home countries and destinations.