Since 2015, when the United Nations adopted a set of agreed goals and targets for attaining global sustainable development, the development community has been excited, motivated, and sceptical. Countless efforts by businesses to collaborate to address the most complex concerns confronting our planet today, such as climate change, resource depletion, and ecosystem loss, have failed due to competitive self-interest, a lack of a shared goal, and a lack of trust. Yet, cooperation remains vital for sustainability.
During the last couple of years companies have embraced sustainability as a business necessity, and many have ongoing successful programmes in areas they can solve on their own, such as, improving manufacturing processes or decreasing fleet emissions. However, very little progress has been achieved in establishing collaborative solutions to systemic problems. This is mostly due to the challenge of setting a shared vision for the collaboration to which all participating parties are dedicated.
Take tropical woodlands as an example. The forest covers 1.9 billion hectares and offers critical ecosystem services such as climate regulation, nitrogen cycling, water filtering, and so on. They also provide natural resources (Food, raw materials, medicines etc). Its economic value is estimated to be $4 trillion per year, but inadequate management across foresters has resulted in the destruction of half of the forest in recent years. This is due to corporations forsaking system value for profit and for a lack of shared long-term vision. To conserve natural commons and maximise their long-term value, activities such as regenerative farming or forestry among all shareholders can be an effective and sustainable way to ensure food produced and distributed aids the restoration of vegetation and public health. What if we can be purpose driven and sustainably profitable?
As an example, consider labelling. Unilever pledged last year to add emissions information to each of its 400 brands, which reach 2.5 billion people every day. Other businesses have similar objectives. This could result in rival emissions labels, confusing consumers and undermining food producers’ ability to transfer emissions reductions into better sales. A collaborative process that includes the corporate sector, regulators, scientists, and others might result in a uniform, trustworthy label that drives genuine change.
Christiane Lambert, President of the EU Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations (COPA), recently wrote an op-ed about the significance of farmers working with other food chain actors to achieve the Farm to Fork sustainability goals. Interestingly, Lambert states in this post that “what the citizen says it wants, the consumer is not ready to pay.” Improved communication and dialogue, as well as bringing consumers and farmers closer together, could all assist.” The message emphasises the issue of squaring the circle that connects demand and supply, sustainability and affordability, in an environment where various value chain stakeholders aim to maximise value and return on investment.
Collaboration as an essential approach to reducing food loss and waste has gained greater credibility and urgency among stakeholders across the food supply chain. Furthermore, the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration stems from the various roles that food supply chain stakeholders play.
Governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), FUSIONS (Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimizing Waste Prevention Strategies), WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), and the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) focus on research-based and practice-relevant policies, as well as advocacy, to combat food loss and waste. Vertical supply chain players (e.g., farmers, manufacturers/processors, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers) may, consciously or unknowingly, play a role by focusing on value added activities.
By joining the Food System Sustainability Masterclasses and Mastermind sessions, you will be able to achieve the following through collaboration:
(1) Alignment with SDGs: Through collaboration, the private sector, individuals, and businesses can take individual actions which is a potential tool for fostering supply chain-wide normative behaviours that encourage holistic and systemic solutions to sustainability issues in the food sector that works towards meeting the goals. To combat overconsumption, retailers Sainsbury’s and Tesco, for example, synchronised their FLW attitude and partnered with consumers to develop and promote the “Buy One Get One Later” campaign.
(2) Collaboration promotes creation of shared goals, finding common ground or finding compromises between opposing interests towards win-win agreements. It also promotes innovation since knowledge is shared freely.
(3) Accountability: Accountability is required to strengthen shared concepts such as trust, inclusion, transparency, and verification across existing frameworks in the food system.
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Photo by fauxels from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-near-wooden-table-3184418/