Sustainable Business Podcast by Innovation Forum

How transparency has fostered innovation in palm oil supply chains

TFT CEO Bastien Sachet talks with Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh about TFT’s latest report – Palm Oil Transformation – and how, despite all the challenges and problems, there has been a transformation and accelerating improvement in palm oil supply chains since 2010, when Nestlé introduced their responsible sourcing guidelines. They discuss why transparency and trust have been crucial in the moves towards sustainable value chains, and why smallholder farmers need to be a central focus of the evolving solutions. 

Radical transparency and genome editing in agricultural seed development

Hagen Duenbostel, CEO of KWS, a leading agricultural seed company, talks with Innovation Forum's Toby Webb about genome editing, how it’s different from genetic modification, and what radical transparency makes sense for his company as they develop genome editing technology

What are the sustainable agriculture trends that will scale?

We know we need to increase food production rapidly to provide for the world’s growing population. The intensification of agricultural production has been done so on a large-scale, requiring high use of natural resources, including water, energy, land and soil.

The resulting impact on the environment is significant – but for long term food security, we need agricultural production to be sustainable. But how can it be? And how can agriculture’s impact be aligned with the critical 2C 2020 climate goals?

In this webinar, we show how conventional agriculture can be more sustainable.

How innovative sustainable business tools track progress and measure impact

Understanding the optimal investments that accelerate sustainability effectively is crucial for business. But the lack of reliable data often means companies are unable to track progress and measure impact of their sustainability programmes.

Low-cost performance monitoring tools can help companies identify simple data to track progress of critical indicators, allowing them to push their sustainability programmes forward more effectively and better understand how to get a return from the investment in their initiatives.

In this webinar, expert panellists offer different perspectives on how they use tools to manage important data for business benefit. They give their insight on how these innovative tools can better align business priorities with developmental or sustainability priorities in scalable ways.

Panel: 

Molly Laverty, director of sustainability, Farmer Brothers

Townsend Bailey, director supply chain sustainability, McDonald’s USA

Alejandro Escobar, lead investment and operations officer, Inter-American Development Bank

Daniele Giovannucci, president and co-founder, Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA)

Introduced and moderated by Ian Welsh, publishing director, Innovation Forum

2016's rollercoaster impacts on progressive business

Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh and Toby Webb debate how companies have tackled the big sustainable business issues in 2016 and why this will remain the case in the face of the challenges from Brexit and the new US administration. They discsuss trends in the deforestation, palm oil, forced labour and modern slavery debates, and what's likely to come up in 2017. 

How to accelerate implementation of zero deforestation commitments

While there are certainly a lot of commitments around, actual progress towards achieving these goals remains by-and-large slow. Translating commitments into actual practice on the ground – in palm oil, soy, timber and pulp+paper, and cattle products supply chains – is a highly complex matter. Collaboration is increasingly regarded as the only practical route to progress – involving business, the NGO community, financial institutions and government. And everyone can do more to push the pace of commitment implementation.

Debating what companies and their stakeholders can do are:

• Tom Bregman, project manager, Forest 500, Global Canopy Programme 

• Jillian Gladstone, senior manager, forests, CDP
• Sylvain Augoyard, corporate social responsibility, BNP Paribas

• Samuel Mary, senior sustainability research analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux
• Fiona Wheatley, sustainable development manager, Marks and Spencer

 
Introduced and moderated by Ian Welsh, publishing director, Innovation Forum

This webinar is sponsored by Global Canopy Programme.

Sugarcane's development tool potential

Bonsucro CEO Simon Usher and Ian Welsh, Innovation Forum, review the recent sustainable sugarcane supply chain conference in London, and discuss the importance of honest and frank debate, how sugarcane can be a development tool for developing economy farmer communities if the right collaboration models are put in place.

Will EU changes inspire smallholder sugarcane innovation?

Dr Sipho Nkambule, CEO of the Swaziland Cane Growers Association, talks with Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh about potential impacts of the changes in the EU’s sugar beet quotas for cane sugar producers in southern Africa, the challenges that the changes in world market will bring about, the marketing opportunities for smallholders and the innovation that he argues will emerge as famers adapt to attract new potential buyers and revenue sources, and develop niche markets for their cane crop.

Is the new HCS approach a deforestation breakthrough?

The new high carbon stock approach, developed by the HCS Convergence Working Group, promises to end the period of confusion created by the previous HCSA and HCS+ programmes, which had differing definitions of what consitutes high carbon stock. In this webinar, three experts debate what the new approach is designed to do better, and how it has brought together the best of both the previous approaches, how the new approach will help companies deliver on their zero-deforestation commitments and the challenges it will present.

Panel:

Dr Simon Lord, group chief sustainability officer, Sime Darby

Grant Rosoman, forests campaigner in Indonesia, Greenpeace, and chair of the High Carbon Stock Approach steering group

Dr Kuan-Chun Lee, senior scientist, P&G

Introducted and moderated by Ian Welsh, publishing director, Innovation Forum

How supply chain collaboration can deliver for Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer’s sustainable sourcing manager Fiona Wheatley speaks with Ian Welsh from Innovation Forum about how sustainability management can deliver brand trust when companies are prepared to learn and improve their performance and demonstrate that they have an appropriate level of control over their impacts. They discuss how to develop traceability in complicated supply chains, where the critical pinch points are and how to identify realistic pre-competitive collaboration opportunities.