Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Keynote address: Role and Potential of Business - Mr. Jason Clay

Published on Nov 18, 2015

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Keynote address: Role and Potential of Business - Mr. Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, Food & Markets, WWF Category People & Blogs License Standard YouTube License SHOW LESS COMMENTS

Transcript English (Automatic Captions) 0:00the next big reason mister Jason clay senior vice president markets and 0:04executive director of the market's institute or duress every breath is one 0:10of the leading environmental NGOs in the word the title of mr. class presentation 0:15is to roll attention potential business 0:18mr Clare florist yours thank you 0:21today I want to speak about the global context of business and biodiversity 0:28aroma of Ethiopia have a saying you can't make a person who's pretending to 0:35sleep 0:36the largest threat to biodiversity yesterday today and most likely tomorrow 0:42is where and how we produce food and fiber the expansion of food production 0:49or as some call extensive occasion of Agriculture and I would say agricultural 0:55sprawl needs to be halted industry frozen in its tracks we can do this 1:02through sustainable intensification but we've also got to link that to 1:07ecological intensification within and around those production areas as the 1:16saying goes the only constant is change and we're in a period with more rapid 1:22change than ever before and there are few key aspects of this change that we 1:28need to keep in mind when we're talking about this topic today we have seven 1:34billion food experts on the planet and they don't agree on anything and they 1:41certainly don't agree on the science as a wise man once said you can have your 1:47own opinion but you can't have your own science we have got to start treating 1:52consensus building common ground in the middle of very contentious issues 1:58extremes are good they inform debates but we've got to begin to figure out how 2:04to solve problems the world is also smaller than ever before because of 2:16communications because of transportation and because of electronics a photo taken 2:22of any supply chain anywhere in the world is on a website in minutes and 2:30linked to every company that uses that raw material not just the ones that 2:34actually bought it this is affecting how we have to think about actions and how 2:41companies I think are beginning to think about actions but here's the context we 2:47have seven billion people today they use about one unit of consumption each which 2:55gives us seven billion units of consumption by 2050 we're going to have 3:01at least nine billion probably closer to 10 and they're going to consume twice as 3:06much per capita as today that's eighteen billion units of consumption today we 3:12live in about 1.5 planets so we're living off the resource base at a pace 3:18faster than it can replace itself can renew itself if we're going to get to 3:252050 we're gonna have to shrink the impacts associated with each unit of 3:32consumption by 62% the land the water the fertilizers or pesticides every 3:39single employee by 62% to stay where we are today at one point by finance if we 3:46want to get to one planet it's gonna have to be 75% or more 3:53that's how we shrink it to get where we need to be 4:02I mentioned the speed of change it took britain hundred and fifty-five years to 4:09double GDP with nine million people that took the USA 53 years to double GDP with 4:14ten million people that took china 12 years to double GDP with a billion India 4:20seventeen years to double GDP with eight hundred and twenty-two million the speed 4:25of life has changed for ever what India did what China is doing is looking 4:33massive numbers of people out of poverty I would argue that they're not yet in 4:38the middle class but they're certainly out of poverty but there's still one 4:42meal away from going back into poverty so we have to be thoughtful about that 4:46this is a fantastic thing this is what every government should try to do but it 4:51also has implications for how much people are consuming and what they're 4:55consuming twelve years after China double GDP the impact of that begin to 5:06hit commodity markets so from 95 to 2006 we started to see price rises and that 5:15led to price spikes India double GDP in 2006 is India's impact on commodity 5:24prices going to be the same in twelve to eighteen years who's thinking about that 5:30who's looking at what companies are actually beginning to look at that 5:33because that's going to affect their business whether there is raw material 5:38available but it costs where it's going to come from who's producing it all of 5:42those things are affected by this increased demand increased demand also 5:48led to price spikes in food which led to deaths in food riots in more than 20 5:53countries in which mark the Arab Spring we are living in a world that's more 5:58fragile more on the edge economically and nutritionally than it's been in the 6:03past sharks have impacts and this is just one of them and you're seeing 6:10this the fallout of this is part of the influx of people into Europe this is one 6:17of the longer-term consequences but here's the challenge and this is why a 6:23group like WTF and other environmental groups are really beginning to think 6:27about food in the next 40 years we have to produce as much food as we have in 6:31the last eight thousand and we've got to do it on this planet 6:35there's not any other available so food production is already the biggest threat 6:42and if you want to think about indicators and what you need to start 6:46managing and what we need business cases for and what we want to measure and 6:50monitor and improve I would say these are a few of the key issues food 6:55production is the largest cause of biodiversity loss and ecosystem service 7:00change user seventy percent of all the water used by people on the planet 7:05uses more chemicals than any other industry activity human activity on the 7:11planet 7:12produces more pollution air and water is one of if not the largest mall in land 7:21use change etc greenhouse gas contributors and has resulted in the 7:27loss of about half of the buyer of the topsoil on the planet in the last 7:32hundred and fifty years with mechanized agriculture so the issue going forward 7:39is not what do you think it's how to think University speaker that I heard a 7:47couple of years ago said to the graduating class eighty percent of what 7:52you've learned is already outdated how to learn will never be outdated so we 8:00have to focus on how to learn rather than the white has to be known 8:09company's focus today focus on what they control unskilled one into issues or is 8:18the bigger focus on scope three or four issues this is an example of Tetra Pak 8:24the greenhouse gases in their supply chains if they want to reduce the 8:29greenhouse gases embedded in their products they were with the suppliers 8:33and they changed the way they design their materials and sell to customers so 8:37that they can be recycled 8:38they also have to work on what they do themselves but that's going to be trying 8:42it's only seven percent of the greenhouse gas emissions and that figure 8:45is actually probably a little bit on the high side of what companies actually 8:51touch in terms of the impact of their value chain whether its biodiversity 8:55water use land use etc 8:59companies are beginning to see that they need to manage not just the raw material 9:07supplies but the risk and the long-term impacts on production and consumption 9:13really of their value chains this is the us-spec bids not dissimilar to other 9:21places to promote political security we have focused on reducing the costs are 9:28keeping the cost of food down through subsidies and other means and yet even 9:36with cheap food almost a billion people go hungry and the numbers of stunted 9:43children are stubbornly high 9:46we're not getting rid of them half of foreign families today don't produce 9:54enough cash in food crops to feed themselves their own families they are 10:02the moment 10:02in fact if you wanted to be cynical about you could say just moved farmers 10:07to cities because he said 10:08far lower rates than rural areas 10:12another thing that I think we have to take seriously and think about where do 10:21we focus in the system 10:23a lot of us NGOs and others governments companies have focused on how do we 10:29reward the better producers that's what certification that's what you labeled 10:34verification production again standards is all about but in fact most of the 10:40better producers that when that recognition are already better producers 10:45and the changes they have to make their probably minimal some bubbly none at all 10:49others a little bit more but if you look at the bottom quarter of these of this 10:55performance curve that bottom 25% produces fifty percent of the impacts 11:01the reason that all of us care about any specific commodity and only ten percent 11:08of the product so if you want to increase productivity overall globally 11:15if you want to reduce environmental impacts you focus on the bottom 11:19focus on the top if you focus on the dark it's to learn how to do things 11:25better document the business case and then work with governments and others to 11:30help move the bottom up shift the whole performance after another thing we have 11:38to start thinking about any companies are certainly beginning to do this as 11:41they're switching where they buy their products and participating with a pink 11:45raw materials are going to be produced in the future climate change will have a 11:50big impact on agriculture this is a map of where koko's produced in codifying 11:57got about seventy percent of the world's production this is today fifteen years 12:03from now this is the map of what's going to be suitable for cocoa production is a 12:09tree crop 12:10it produces on growth so you've got a planetary you gotta let it grow we 12:19haven't got a lot of time in 15 years to find better genetics to adapt to climate 12:24change 12:25diseases they come around about because of stress etcetera in the short-term 12:31climate smart agriculture's about being efficient just doing everything better 12:36trying to tighten it up in the medium term it's either about getting better 12:43genetics better planning materials or changing the proper entirely I don't 12:50know how many of you work with farmers but if you have a farmer that has a 12:54treat from its very hard to get them to rip it out even if it's not producing as 12:59well as it used to 13:01who is going to pay for the two to three years of livelihood they need while that 13:05tree is growing before it starts producing sufficiently wealthier 13:10producers can change crops can buy expertise get access to extension poor 13:16farmers have a much tougher time on that this is a time bomb for small farmers 13:21this is the time bomb for people growing tree crabs we're gonna have to figure 13:25out how to finance this transition I'm gonna have to do it through global 13:31supply chains and certainly at a global level by 2050 we gonna need to double 13:37net food availability doesn't mean double production it means double the 13:43amount of food that's available to consumers and there's no silver bullet 13:50we're going to need to do it through productivity and efficiency and waste 13:54reduction and shifting consumption and we need indicators around each of these 14:01to begin to measure it and we need to begin to manage it and we need to do it 14:06not just company by company that sector by sector 14:13we have to stop trying to maximize one thing whether it's just greenhouse gas 14:19emissions or just water use or just water effluent or just biodiversity 14:25optimizing several we've gotta figure out how to measure and manage these 14:30things together because they are part of the same system one of the things we 14:35need to do is rebuilt soil instead of expanding said of agricultural sprawl 14:39around the world can we intensify the areas that were already using can we get 14:45more out of the soils can we rebuild the source can we use carbon sequestration 14:51soil carbon as the Metric for rebuilding soils we've set a target with the World 14:56Bank of 250 million hectares by 2030 that could produce about 10 percent of 15:01the world's food just on that land we need to figure out how to reduce the 15:07amount of water that used to produce food this is today's rate it comes to 15:12about one liter of water per one calorie can we cut it in half and double the 15:18productivity after leader to calories that's what it's going to take to get to 15:232050 within one planet that kind of efficiency and waste e-waste 15:30one-in-three calories today that's 50% of the new food we need to produce by 15:352050 but given how much water is used for agriculture just the amount that's 15:42wasted is 23% of all the water used by people for any activity and because of a 15:50good relationship to greenhouse gas emissions food waste itself represents 15:55ten percent of global greenhouse gas emissions about 29% all in with land use 16:02change that means 10% is for food that is not fed to people cars or cattle 16:09it's just wasted so on a finite planet with boundaries should consumers have a 16:18choice about sustainable products or should all the products on the shelf 16:22sustainable that's kind of a question and if you think all the products should 16:27be sustainable then it's not so much about certification programs and about 16:32in differentiating products about how to shift the whole sector so that every 16:38product is sustainable and that's where I think some progressive companies then 16:42you'll hear from some of them young case on this panel and others talking about 16:46what individual companies are doing but one by one by one is not fast enough we 16:51have got to start working with platforms of companies all sectors to shift so how 17:00do we shift this kind of sustainability from niche markets to become the norm 17:07and here's what a few companies are doing I'm sure young case will talk 17:12about what unilever is doing themselves as they're probably the most progressive 17:18of any companies doing individually but the consumer goods forum has made a 17:24commitment this is now I think last I heard is 57 58 companies have made 17:29equipment sick deforestation how to supply chains and what they focused on 17:33is for commodities to countries which is half of tropical deforestation the 17:42salmon global salmon initiative seventeen of the world's largest salmon 17:49aquaculture producers seventy percent of the world's market have agreed to share 17:54all their data about impacts about investments to reduce them make it all 17:58public have a third party 18:01reviewed and audited so that they can learn faster and the reason they did 18:07this is that the better 18:08companies realized that the reputation of the entire sector was dependent on 18:14the performance of the worst players and so if they wanted to have license to 18:19operate if they wanted access to markets they drain the entire sector not just 18:24one company and so their first report came out in September about what their 18:31baseline is against him and they have pledged to be certified against credible 18:37global standards by 2020 I just came from Ireland for the last two days where 18:43we'd be in the Irish government have made a commitment that a hundred percent 18:47of food exports from Highland will be third party certified against credible 18:53sustainability standards they're not gonna get there it's by 2016 which is 18:59just next year but they have about eighty percent of producers in the 19:05system giving data to the government about environmental performance and 19:12they're starting to measure their starting to set up databases to share 19:15information this is the first country that has ever made a comment 19:18and it wasn't easy farmers don't like to share data especially with governments 19:23so the issue for all of these come the need for these platforms in these 19:30producers is about risk it's about risk of raw material supply but it's also 19:35about reputation and the two were kind of way in equally and each pushing 19:40forward as they say where I come from if you don't know where you're going any 19:46road will get you there we have to reduce the impacts of production and 19:54consumption there's no silver bullet 19:57we can't focus on everything and we can't afford to focus just on one thing 20:02but the business case for change is going to be cheap and we have to start 20:07documenting that and communicating that we have to focus on the productivity and 20:13efficiency side and also the waste in the consumption so we need to be 20:21defining he's of KPI's about performance key performance indicators and then 20:29measuring and managing them thank you very much