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• We combine GPN theory with a water stewardship approach. • Export-oriented fruit producers in South Africa face a range of water risks. • To ensure their water security, they deploy different mitigating strategies. • These strategies depoliticise post-apartheid water allocation in South Africa. • This has negative impacts for water governance & actors beyond the fruit industry. This paper investigates the strategies export-oriented agricultural firms use to mitigate water risks. By doing so, we respond to a gap in Global Production Network (GPN) scholarship, whereby the relationships between economic production and the natural environment have received insufficient attention. We build on GPN 2.0′s formulation of environmental risk as a causal driver of firms' strategies, combining it with the concept of water stewardship. Empirical evidence is drawn from the export-oriented fruit industry in South Africa's Western Cape. We find that while current water risk mitigating strategies are successful in securing water for fruit producers, these also have negative impacts on the wider South African water governance regime by depoliticising water allocation. In post-apartheid South Africa, this is deeply problematic. Our findings emphasise the imperative for research to consider the wider socio-political and ecological context when evaluating firm strategies to mitigate water and other environmental risks in South Africa and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental upgrading is becoming increasingly important in terms of leveraging sustainability in global value chains (GVCs). Existing research focuses on environmental upgrading as a process, while the drivers and outcomes often remain unclear. We address this limitation through a qualitative case study of the South African fruit industry based on interviews and documents, where we investigate the drivers and outcomes of environmental upgrading strategies with a focus on irrigation water use and sustainability. We share three important findings in our paper, which contribute to the literature. First, we identify environmental risk as an important driver for environmental upgrades that has so far been overlooked. Second, we question the current focus of environmental upgrading strategies on technological interventions. Focusing on technological interventions alone, however, is insufficient to address local and global challenges regarding water resources sustainability. Our third finding emphasises the need to consider the wider environmental and political economic context within which environmental upgrading takes place. This is because environmental upgrading strategies can actively contribute to the development of environmental risks for other actors, within or beyond value chains, and therefore have clear limits in their contribution to increasing sustainability. • Research in South Africa's fruit industry offers insights into processes of environmental upgrading around water management. • Environmental risk is an important driver for environmental upgrades in fruit value chains. • Technological interventions alone are insufficient to address the sustainability of local and global water resources. • Environmental upgrading strategies can actively contribute to the development of environmental risks for other actors. • The GVC approach emphasises how global dynamics touch down locally and interplay with local institutions and governance regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]