The role and capacities of large-scale actor coalitions in shaping sustainability transformations

Several transnational corporations, investors, international organizations and philanthropies have formed coalitions to respond to global social and environmental challenges. Do these coalitions, consisting of large-scale actors, have the capacities to contribute to the transformations that are needed, or do they perpetuate the same system dynamics that created the problem in the first place? We investigate this question by comparing publicly available information for five coalitions working with financial and food systems sustainability. This paper examines whether large-scale actor coalitions (LSACs) may contribute to transformations towards equitable and sustainable futures. We use a ‘rapid assessment’ 20-variable framework to collect and analyze empirical data from five food and finance coalitions to identify their roles and capacities for transformative change. Our results indicate that LSACs implement distinct strategies to reach their goals. More specifically, due to their diverse set-ups, LSACs have the ability to raise awareness of sustainability issues, utilize ties to push forward agendas, experiment with solutions and showcase promising niche initiatives. We examine strategies undertaken by LSACs that can enable other change makers working to transform the food and finance systems, contributing to systems with high and diverse capacities for transformative change. We also identify potential capacity gaps within the studied LSACs, which might hinder the creation of enabling conditions for transformative change within the food and finance sectors.