This week: Phil Bloomer, executive director of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, on why companies just can’t afford to have modern slavery in their operations or supply chain, not least because the investment community is now properly addressing human rights risks. And highlights from Innovation Forum’s recent business and materiality webinar featuring Fiat Chrysler’s Bill Hall, Kellogg’s Amy Braun and the Erb Institute’s Terry Nelidov. Plus, $6.4tn worth of asset managers focusing on beef and deforestation, big brands still linked to dirty palm oil according to Greenpeace and how insects are spreading plastic microfibres, in the news roundup. 

Hosted by Ian Welsh

Sustainable rural economies are critical to the sustained success of global agri-businesses. After all, smallholder farming accounts for the largest share of food production worldwide. However, these farmers and their local communities lack opportunities to improve their income, food security and livelihoods. To drive resilience and safeguard supply, business must work to deliver positive social outcomes for rural communities.

Leading this webinar discussion on what business can do to ensure sustainable agricultural communities, focusing in particular on palm oil supply chains, are:

Anita Neville, vice president of corporate communications and sustainability relations, Golden Agri-Resources

Rashyid Anwarudin, principal sustainability officer, Sime Darby

Ruth Thomas, director, strategy and operations, Global Agribusiness Alliance

Introduced and moderated by Ian Welsh, Innovation Forum

Harriet Howey, global sustainability reporting executive at Diageo, explains to Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh how the company measures return on investment on its programmes across water and other resource use, gender empowerment, and its social and environmental impacts in general. Howey outlines how the business develops the right KPIs to ensure value from investment and bottom line financial benefits, and also why it has developed an in-depth social impact assessment framework.

This week: Sara Wingstrand from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on how better plastic product design can help business develop essential more-circular value chains and systems. And Golden Agri-Resources’ Anita Neville on why the palm oil industry should engage stakeholders through better, relatable, story-telling.

Plus the $26tn to be made from sustainable development, a tree-ownership initiative for Ghana cocoa farmers, H+M’s technology that can separate cotton and polyester and better news for human rights in Qatar, in the weekly news roundup.

Hosted by Ian Welsh

Speaking at the recent RSPO meeting in Paris, Mickael Blais from the French Alliance for Forest Preservation and Toby Webb, Innovation Forum, discuss how different commodity supply chains – including palm oil, rubber and soy – can work together to impact deforestation. They debate the challenges around separating the crops-for-food and crops-for-fuel debates given the different pressures on each.

In this webinar, practitioners from Iceland Foods, Surfdome and CupClub take a pragmatic look at what brands are doing to face the challenges around plastics, packaging, and sustainable innovation. They discuss the new approaches they have taken to packaging, including working to eliminate plastic entirely in the case of Iceland, business benefits and how best to engage all stakeholders to drive forward reduction in plastic waste and pollution.

Joining Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh are: Ian Schofield, own label and packaging manager for Iceland Foods; Adam Hall, head of sustainability at Surfdome; and Safia Qureshi, founder and CEO, CupClub.

Valentina Gurney, associate programme director, Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility and Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh discuss trends in how the investment community is dealing with potential forced labour risks in investor portfolios. They debate the pros and cons of soft and hard laws, and how regulatory approaches are moving from reporting to due diligence requirements. Gurney also outlines the differences between a faith-based approach and an ESG approach to investment, and the moves she sees towards the use of the sustainable development goals for investor screening.

This week: some highlights from Innovation Forum’s recent webinar on what business needs to know about forced labour risks at the point of recruitment, and the employer pays principle, featuring Coca-Cola’s Brent Wilton, Walmart’s Doug Nystrom and ETI’s Cindy Berman, introduced by Ian Welsh. And, Mighty Earth’s Glenn Hurowitz speaking with Toby Webb on soy supply chains and deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado grasslands. Plus: drinks brand Lucozade’s trialling of edible sachets, new Californian investor regulation on climate risk, and apparel sector communicating on supply chain sustainability, in the news roundup.

Hosted by Ian Welsh.

Erik Meijard, founder of Borneo Futures, discusses why the palm oil sector has such a bad reputation on biodiversity impacts with Innovation Forum’s Toby Webb. Meijard shares some of the highlights from recent research, and argues there is much the palm oil sector as a whole can learn from the best plantations, which can perform well on biodiversity. And they debate why the palm oil sector is targeted for its impacts while coconut and banana plantations, with similar or worse impact, are not subject to the same level of activist criticism.

This week: Harriet Howey from Diageo talks to Ian Welsh about how the business tracks the impacts of its social and environmental programmes and the return on investment the company achieves. And another chance to hear Toby Webb and Imperial College’s Joss Lyons-White discuss the commitment gaps developing in the palm oil sector. Plus, detail from the latest Global Slavery Index, cities grasping the climate change nettle, deforestation rates in Brazil and the food waste challenge, in the news roundup.

Hosted by Ian Welsh