Accelerating and up-scaling

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 program 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.     

With major stakeholders, IDH is coordinating the development of an ambitious program around sustainable (better) cotton. An important milestone in this process is a meeting initiated by major cotton retailers IKEA, M&S, H&M and Levi's in Colombo (Sri Lanka) early February. They have invited their major supplying manufacturers from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to discuss how to integrate Better Cotton standards into their supply chains. David Rosenberg, Sustainability Advisor of Ecom: ‘This is the right and necessary process to move forward. Other major players in this program are ICCO, WWF, Solidaridad, Rabobank, ECOM and the BCI secretariat.

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.

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.

IDH will partner with the SAI Platform, Sustainable Food Lab and CIAA (confederation of EU food and drink industry) in organizing a Conference on Sustainable Agriculture from 10 to 12 May 2010 in Brussels.

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.