Accelerating and up-scaling

IDH is proud to present the very senior cocoa expert Jonas Mva Mva as it’s new cocoa program manager. Jonas Mva Mva acted until recently as manager of the agricultural development project for the improvement of perennial crops at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Cameroon.

IDH was given the opportunity to present the cornerstones of the new Electronics program at the EICC (Electronics Industry Citizen Coalition) meeting in Shenzhen – China.

After Mars and Nestlé now Chocomel announced to go sustainable. The cocoa sourcing of FrielandCampina will go through UTZ CERTIFIED. Solidaridad will train cocoafarmers in producing countries to compy to UTZ.

Convince just 100 key companies to go sustainable, and WWF's Jason Clay says global markets will shift to protect the planet our consumption has already outgrown. Hear how his extraordinary roundtables are getting big brand rivals to agree on green practices first -- before their products duke it out on store shelves.

After more than five years the job is almost done. The Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue: a 500-person roundtable facilitated by WWF that includes salmon aquaculture industry leaders, scientists and representatives from non-governmental organizations have finalized the draft.

IDH cotton program manager Amanda Stone visited the Pakistani part of Punjab last week to meet up with Pakistani cotton farmers that joined the BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) program. She witnessed the start of the devastating floods. ‘The rain that fell on my first day in Rahim Yhr Khan was the first rain they had had for a year and it was greeted with an explosion of joy that was infectious…’.

IDH had the honour to co organise a side event with the government of the Netherlands during the annual Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) meeting of the UN in New York. The side event adressed the possible role of governments in supporting sustainable consumption and production. Howard Shapiro, Global Director of Plant Science and External Research of Mars, adressed the issue of public-private partnerships. Aida Tunovic, policy advisor of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning an the Environment talked about sustainable procurement. IDH did a presentation on multistakeholder partnerships for sustainability. The side event resulted in a recommendation to the UN to meet anually with front running companies to talk about sustainability. This recommendation is included in the CSD Closing Summary .

On thé spot where every year the most important players in the seafood business present themselves: the European Seafood Exposition in Brussels, ASC has presented itself with a (pro bono) by Ogilvy developped logo and house style. Meetings and talks with hunderds of potential partners in the sector resulted in follow up meetrings and interviews held with numerous journalist led to a lot of media exposure.

On May 1 Ted van der Put starts as Programme Director at IDH. He will be acting as strategic deal-maker to push developments forwards in several IDH sector programmes. Ted van der Put: ‘I think IDH with it’s convening power provides a constructive model to transform markets through demand driven public private partnerships. Multinational organizations with all their reach, management skills, creativity, and technology now can play their part in shifting the paradigm towards sustainability. With my background I hope to be instrumental in helping that shift unfold at a boardroom level.’

On Thursday 2 and Friday 3 December 2010 the International Supply Management Congress 2010 will take place in the RAI in Amsterdam. This new unique knowledge and network event will gather the worlds of purchasing and supply chain management around sustainable and innovative business. Book December 2 and 3 in your agenda!

The SAI Platform, the Sustainable Food Lab and the CIAA are organizing a Conference on Sustainable Agriculture on 11 and 12 May 2010 in Brussels. IDH is partnering in this conference and will organize one of the break-out sessions.

The IDH break-out session is titled 'Farmer Capacity Development' and will focus on how to deliver on the promise and potential of sustainably produced agriculture in the face of obstacles around farmer capacity development.   

In many of our sector programs, a great challenge to sustainability is the lack of financial services available to producers and other upstream chain agents. Often they are considered “unbankable”. This impedes investments and, therefore, sustainability. For this reason we are setting up an inter-sectoral learning trajectory on value chain finance. These are financial services that are designed and delivered on basis of cooperation in the supply chain.

As one of the world’s largest chocolate makers, Mars buys much of its cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire and the West African region. The quantity and quality of this cocoa has steadily diminished. Mars aims to improve not only the yield of cocoa, but also the quality of the lives of men and women who produce cocoa.  With the MoU, Mars makes a promise to the people of Côte d’Ivoire that Mars - along with many others - will commit technology, experience and money to help build a sustainable cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire and beyond.

IDH, IKEA, Levi's, M&S, H&M, ECOM, Rabobank, Solidaridad and WWF start a six year Fast Track programme to transform the cotton market and make sustainable cotton a commercially viable commodity. ‘ We are very excited about this programme’, says Guido Verijke, Deputy Business Area Manager Textiles of IKEA: 'IDH can provide the push and opportunity to make it work at a large scale because of their front runner demand driven programme’.
Out of 30 M tons global production this programme will ensure production of 1 M tons by 2015 reducing significantly the footprint of cotton production and improve the lives of hundred thousands of very poor farmers. Both funders and the private sector will invest at least 20 M euro in the next five years.
Part of the programme is a highly innovative Fast Track Fund established by IDH, ICCO and Rabobank to match private investments in BCI cotton production.

The Amazone Alternative will be officially  launched on 22nd April. This kicks of the certification of 4 million hectares of tropical timber in Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Speakers at the launch: Adjiedj Bakkas (trendwatcher), Maria Truillio (director FSC Peru) and Joost Oorthuizen (director IDH). The launch will take place at the Societeit de Witte in The Hague, from 13.00 untill 17.00 hrs. Participation is free of charge and registration is possible by sending an email to info@fsc.nl.   

IKEA, M&S, H&M and Levi's in Colombo (Sri Lanka) discussed in February with their major suppliers from Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan how to integrate Better Cotton standards into their supply chains. 'This seminar is an important first step in communicating the details of Better Cotton to our South Asian supply chain partners’, says Sean Cady, Director Environmental, Health & Safety, Levi Strauss & Co: We are proud to be among the brands sharing our passion for this project and creating a shared commitment to making cotton agriculture more sustainable.'

IDH co-initiated and financed a RTRS working group to produce a model for cost efficient transport of responsible soy. South American producers and traders and European traders, processors, NGOs and retailers worked out together a solution by combining three existing traceability systems in a cost efficient pragmatic step-wise approach that will stimulate production of responsible soy.
Segregated trade and transport of certified soy is expensive when volumes are relatively low. High prices for responsible soy will not help change the market when costs are mainly absorbed by transport and control. In that case it will not benefit producers of responsible soy. 

Borneo is one of the most important natural areas in the world with lots of tropical rainforest. Borneo is the habitat of the orang-utang, the elephant and lots of other special memals, birds and plants. According to the Postcode Lottery this is the most important reason to support the Borneo Initiative. In the meantime six timber companies have signed a MoU with The Borneo Initiative, that will give them support in their quest to be certified. The Borneo Initiative is part of the Tropical Timber programme of IDH.

In the well attended workshop at the New Years Event Chris Anstey (retailer policy expert) and Roland Waardenburg (Ahold) talked about the future of sustainability labeling. Transparency and open communication are key issues.

A growing number of travel agencies, touroperators, transporters and accomodations are co-operating with NGOs to make tourism more sustainable. At the meeting on sustanibility and tourisme during the 'Vakantiebeurs'  (Holiday Fair) several speakers famed IDH for the 'chain approach'. Researchers from both NBTC-NIPO as ING see a growing interest of consumers for sustainable tourism.     

On January 6, 2010 Royal BAM Group, the largest construction company in the Netherlands  and  Bouwfonds Property Development, one of the leading property developers in Europe have signed a covenant to underline their financial support to The Borneo Initiative. Because of their financial contributions and the financial support of Adessium  the Borneo Initiative can start certifying over  650.000 ha of tropical forest in Borneo.

This year IDH, CSR The Netherlands and the  Ministry of Economic Affairs organize a New Year’s Meeting together. Minister of Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk will hand out the Transparency  Benchmark Price. 

You are cordially invited to attend the Grand Opening of this event starting at 15.30 hrs on the 18th of January at the Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek in Rotterdam. Click here for more information and registration  (in Dutch).

At the opening day of the holiday fair (Vakantiebeurs) in Utrecht in the Netherlands on Wednesday January 13, Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen will start a special meeting ‘Sustainable Tourism put in practice’ organized by the ANVR, Travel Foundation.

After the statements of Mars on complete sustainabel sourcing in 2020 and Cadbury's shift to fairtrade, Kitkat can't stay behind. Nestlé announced that a part of Kitkat will go fairtrade too.

The Public Consultation on the National Interpretations made by the National Technical Groups in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and India has been extended until January 15th. You can find the documents in the website of the RTRS .

On Saturday November 7 2009 the 1st  batch of sustainable UTZ cocoa was welcomed by Dutch Minister of Development Cooperation Bert Koenders. On request of IDH Mars Veghel made the first sustainable Mars with the batch.

With the Aquaculture Dialogue (AD) standard for Tilapia farming finalized and the Pangasius standard in the last round for public comment, two out of twelve Aquaculture Dialogue standards are ready to be handed over to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC). The ASC led by dr. Philip Smith and co-founded by WWF and IDH, will implement the standards and shall ultimately launch a consumers label for farmed fish in mid 2011.

The  IDH, AkzoNobel and NEVI congress ‘Accelerating sustainable trade’ on November 2nd attracted over 600  participants of which a large majority  business representatives. ‘Thinking about sustainability has shifted. It is becoming 100% core business for front running multinationals that have the procurement power to  change the market’, according to Joost Oorthuizen in his closing speech.

On November 26 FSC celebrated it's first ten years aniversary with the launch of two new initiatives: the Borneo Initiative and the Amazon Alternative. On the same day the first newspaper ever on FSC-paper saw the light: The FD (Dutch leading financial newspaper) had the world premiere.