Van der Veen et al.: Designing bio-based value chains for social justice: The potential of Capability Sensitive Design | 2024

The research article “Designing bio-based value chains for social justice: The potential of Capability Sensitive Design” by Susan van der Veen, Lotte Asveld and Patricia Osseweijer from TU Delft explores the contribution of Capability Sensitive Design to designing bio-based value chains for social justice. Capability Sensitive Design combines Value Sensitive Design which is an approach that accounts for human values in a design process and the Capability Approach which is a normative framework incorporating multiple dimensions of human well-being.

Through three case studies, the research demonstrates how Capability Sensitive Design can be used in making design choices in the early stages of developing new bio-based value chains from waste biomass. The cases explore olive oil residues in Spain,coffee and cocoa residues in Colombia, and encroacher bush in Namibia. Capability Sensitive Design is a relatively new approach and its contribution to social justice in bio-based value chains remained unexplored. The authors show that Capability Sensitive Design can contribute to distributive, recognition, and procedural justice by allowing the identification of local vulnerable stakeholders and providing tools to connect their needs, knowledge, and capabilities to concrete design choices.

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