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Focus on the Field
© Frans Lanting
The global agricultural sector - including both ranching and farming - faces enormous challenges in meeting the 21st century's growing demand for food, fiber and fuel without eroding the natural resources and ecological systems upon which agriculture and humanity depend. Climate change is one of these challenges, as it has the potential to significantly disrupt food production across the globe and undermine small-holder farmer livelihoods.
Agriculture - one of the world's most significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - is also contributing to climate change. Reducing these emissions is particularly challenging because of increasing demand on tropical landscapes for the production of biofuels, animal fodder and food and the dependency of hundreds of millions of the Earth’s poorest on these lands for food production and livelihoods.
Given the scope, scale, and importance of the worldwide agricultural sector, agribusiness companies are critical stakeholders in mitigating the impacts to human well-being from habitat clearing to establish pastures, farms, and infrastructure to support this growth.
Conservation International's Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB) has a proven model of engaging agribusiness corporations for sustainable development with a bottom up - corridors - and top down - markets - approach. This is important to ensure that everyone benefits from conserving Earth’s rich natural heritage.
CELB works with a wide range of partners: producers of food products such as sugar, soya, coffee and oil palm; agribusinesses; governments; retailers; and local conservation groups. We're developing biodiversity conservation corridors that integrate protected areas of natural habitat, agricultural areas, and other land uses at a landscape level.
Together with our partners, we are working towards models for sustainable development that enhances farm productivity, reduces agricultural impacts on water, soils, and biodiversity, concentrates new production on degraded lands, and ensures permanent protection of forests and other natural habitats important for carbon sequestration, freshwater, and other ecosystem services.
CELB is also working to engage corporations so they no longer purchase commodities from uncertified and unsustainable sources, and to make the compelling business case that corporate supply chains should employ practical, proven strategies for sustainable agriculture to ensure a healthy and prosperous world.
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Building a Better Future
© istockphoto
As the world moves toward a new long-term agreement to cap greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to undertake reductions immediately. The United Nations Foundation, a DC public charity that supports the efforts of the United Nations, has created the Building Blocks strategy. Currently being led by Glenn Prickett, Senior Vice President of Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB), the strategy is centered on four building blocks meant to inspire and support the upcoming climate agreements between various world governments and their leaders.
The Building Blocks are:
- Energy efficiency: One of the most immediate and cost-effective ways to reduce climate pollution is to implement energy efficiency in all sectors. Studies have shown that each dollar invested in energy efficiency yields $3 of economic activity.
- Renewable energy: Increasingly cost-competitive, especially for rural and remote areas, renewable energy does not create the air pollution that is beginning to choke economic growth in rapidly industrializing countries.
- Sustainable land use: Land use change contributes 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Programs such as reduced deforestation, sustainable agricultural practices and the restoration of degraded land could reduce the annual rate of tropical deforestation by 50% by 2020.
- Adaptation: Adaptation programs in rural villages can enhance resilience and contribute to sustainable development by supporting access to infrastructure, renewable energy, education, healthcare, and ecosystem conservation.
These building blocks directly support Conservation International’s work with climate change. "CI is concerned with climate change and its impact on the places and people we are working with," notes Prickett. "Sustainable land use is of particular interest to CI because of our work to reduce global emissions by curbing deforestation.
"The building blocks represent a business opportunity for our partners, an opportunity for companies to align themselves with those goals and manage their own operations so that they can help countries meet these climate goals."
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And They're Off!
© Mike Parry/Minden Pictures
Leatherback turtles are the largest turtles on earth, weighing up to 2,000 pounds, but their population has decreased by 90 percent over the past two decades. This past April, CI teamed with National Geographic for the third annual Great Turtle Race. This event raised awareness and support for the research and conservation of this dwindling species.
The race featured eleven adult leatherback turtles all with different sponsors and each turtle was ‘coached’ by Olympic swimmers as they raced from their feeding grounds on the north coast of Canada to their breeding area in the sunny Caribbean. They were tagged with satellite tracking devices that allowed fans to follow the turtles on a corresponding map on the CI and National Geographic websites. The victorious turtle was Backspacer, the 825 pound female leatherback sponsored by the band Pearl Jam. Backspacer was not only the fastest turtle in the race, but she also won Pearl Jam’s audience favorite award.
In an interview with CNN, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard said, "[This race] captures people’s imagination and let’s people visualize exactly what’s going on in the ocean. The ocean can be a sort of black box, but this will hopefully get people thinking about it."
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Partnership News
© B. Drake/PhotoLink
WhiteWave Foods Company announced in early August that it has extended its partnership with CI for an additional three years to enhance the company’s efforts to ensure sustainable sourcing of agricultural products, and to promote improved livelihoods for farmers.
The partnership will include joint project activities to ensure excellence among key commodity sectors of WhiteWave Foods’ supply chain, including dairy, soy and palm oil. This will be accomplished by enhancing procurement guidelines and incentives to help ensure that farming and food production systems contribute to conservation, healthy ecosystems and improved human livelihoods.
The partnership began in 2008 with the development of the Silk® Soybean Sourcing and Production Program and the Horizon Organic® Standards of Care guidelines related to biodiversity conservation, and is now expanding to include the addition of International Delight® products.
CI’s Tonle Sap Lake freshwater project has been selected by The Walt Disney Company as a recipient of funding through Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green.
© CI/Photo by Sterling Zumbrunn
From August 24th to September 11th, kids can vote on the Friends for Change website to help Disney decide how the second installment of its $1 million in donations will be distributed among the five "water" programs. Our project will receive at least $25,000 but the amount depends on the percentage of votes earned - first place gets $100,000 - so tell the kids in your life to get involved and vote today at Disney.com/projectgreen!
Bank of America hosted the eleventh meeting of CI’s Business Council in May in the Bank of America Tower in New York City, the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification. The meeting focused on climate change and the positive role that the private sector can play in shaping climate policy and carbon markets. The meeting was held in concurrence with CI’s New York Dinner, where Council members learned more about the exciting work being done by other parts of CI.
Volkswagen Group of America agreed to host the next meeting in November 2009 at their headquarters in Virginia, which will coincide with the upcoming Washington, DC Dinner.
In honor of Earth Day 2009, several companies selected CI as the recipient of their philanthropic efforts.
The Warner Bros Impact program is an employee giving program that encourages their employees to give to select charities, and matches those donations 1-for-1. For the month of April, Warner Bros profiled CI on a special website that included information and videos highlighting CI’s work as well as links to CI’s website.
For each of the first 10,000 transactions made on its PlayStation Networks on Earth Day, Sony Computer Entertainment America made a donation to CI. This promotion supports a larger partnership framework with Sony, and highlighted CI’s work to thousands of PlayStations users.
In April 2009, CI also worked with Cloud B, the maker and manufacturer of children’s sleep aids. The products, which feature CI’s logo and website on the packaging, are designed to use sound and light effects to help children achieve a healthy and safe night’s sleep. CI will be featured on a range of products highlighting various animal species, including the Twilight Sea Turtle, Dozy Dolphin, Gentle Giraffe and the Polar Cuddle Cub. Cloud B is donating 50 cents for each of these products sold to support CI’s work, up to $30,000.
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