← This Week in Global Development
This Week in Global Development
What role can the private sector play at the ‘finance COP’?
00:43:21
For this special episode of our weekly podcast series, Devex EVP and Executive Editor Kate Warren sits down with leaders from Bayer and Mars who discuss the challenges and opportunities for the private sector in addressing climate change.
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- [00:05]
A
Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Global Development. I'm Rajkumar, the President and Editor in Chief here at devex, and you're listening to a special edition of our podcast that we're calling Climate Plus. I'm on the ground in Baku along with my colleagues Jesse Chase Lubitz and Aynat Mursi to bring you behind the scenes coverage of the key issues and debates at this critical climate conference. And you're going to get to listen in as we talk to some of the leaders that are shaping climate finance and its impact on health, food, and much more. If you're in Baku, we hope you'll reach out to us. Listen in as we talk to the leaders that are shaping this space and tell us what you'd like to hear.
- [00:54]
B
Hi, I'm Kate Warren, Executive Vice President and Executive editor at Devex Co. Coming to you from COP 29 in Vacu. Today we're diving into the role of the private sector in addressing climate change with voices from two leading companies. First, Bayer, a global company focused on healthcare and agriculture. Second, Mars Incorporated, the food services company that is the world's leading manufacturer of chocolate. There has been skepticism and debate over how or even if private sector companies should be part of these COP negotiations. Yet leveraging public private partnerships is heard over and over on the stages here at COP and other global convenings as the magic bullet for scaling climate finance and impact. So I spoke with two leaders who are trying to do just that. Matias Berninger, EVP and Head of Public Affairs, Sustainability and Safety at Bayer, and Barry Parkin, Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief Procurement Officer at Mars. They both highlight the role the private sector can play in combating food insecurity and addressing climate change. They discuss what their companies are doing, from deep decarbonizing supply chains to improving agricultural practices to redesigning packaging. Matias and Barry also stressed the importance of private sector participation in COP 29, which they hope can lead to more commitments and collective action from the private sector. First, let's hear from Matias Berninger from Bayer.
- [02:20]
C
Well, I'm here with Matthias Berninger's EDP for Public Affairs Science Sustainability at Bayer. Matthias, thank you so much for joining me.
- [02:30]
D
Yeah, Kate, we live in the same city and now we are pretty far away, about nine hours ahead of Washington dc.
- [02:36]
C
Yes, that's what's funny about these convenings. You travel the other side of the world often to meet with people who live in your same city. So we're definitely doing that today here at COP 29. So, you know, the private sector has a bit of a smaller presence this year and there is some debate about what role the private sector should or can play in these conversations. Maybe can you talk about why Bayer is here and what you hope to contribute to, but also get out of top 20 this year?
- [03:13]
D
We are regular in this process, so we partake in a lot of these global UN negotiations. I, for example, spend quite a bit of time at the biodiversity COP in Cali that was happening earlier in October. One of the reasons why we are here is that we have a huge contribution to make from the innovation that we have in our pipeline to decarbonize agriculture. The nexus of climate on the one side, health on the other side, frozen food on the third is one that is squarely where we do business. We are also here because we are committed to an aggressive climate agenda. As far as Bayer is concerned, we are on course and determined to reduce our emissions in line with what has been agreed in Paris.
- [04:15]
C
So we mentioned we're both based in Washington D.C. where we will have a new administration coming in soon that has been very kind of outspoken against climate action. We recently had an event with one of the members from Heritage foundation who called it the climate agenda and that it's caused more harm than climate change has. So as you're thinking about pushing forward on your sustainability climate goals, how are you thinking about approaching this new administration that maybe is going to be in some cases hostile or at least not as embracing that with climate emissions Globally.
- [04:53]
D
We serve more farmers than any other business in the world. We have very good understanding of how they experience the changing climate and they just can't have a reliable income when weather is unreliable and their experience doesn't matter anymore. So vast majority of farmers tell us that climate change affects their livelihood and that is true for large farms in the United States and for a two acre family farm in Ethiopia.
- [05:29]
C
What is your business case for investing in these issues?
- [05:35]
D
Well, first of all, we have been investing in improving agricultural yields for a very long time. That is also one of the reasons why people who looked at inflation in central banks for the longest time really discounted agriculture. Because somehow since the end of World War II, the agriculture sector grows at a rate of average of 2% every year. So we've been able to reduce the number of people who are facing extreme food insecurity. We have been massively reducing global hunger crisis as a result of our innovation agenda in the agriculture sector. Now what we see is that with the temperature increases that we are seeing now and the rate of temperature increase, which is going up, it's going to be ever more complicated to deliver the kind of productivity improvements the world needs to grow without food inflation being a major headache. And it's not a bit, it's a bit ironic that food inflation is one of the topics that played a significant role during the last election in the United States. I think that food inflation moves from a seasonal problem to a structural problem. And solving for that, having products and services that reduce food insecurity, that reduces food inflation, which faces, which everybody is facing, is of course also a good business.
- [07:14]
C
Yeah, we actually had a conversation last spring in D.C. where you talked about food inflation reframing the conversation around food insecurity to inflation crisis and that putting it in that context, also describes how food also affects health and how food inflation leads less balanced diets. And today is food Day. Tomorrow we have health day here at COP and intersection of all three. So how do you think about your role in. I know, shaping food security, but also nutrition security?
- [07:59]
D
Well, we know a lot about micronutrients for two reasons. One, we are not only a large supplier of corn seeds or of soybean seeds, we also have quite a few of the vegetables that we all eat in our portfolio. So chances are that everybody in the world at one point has eaten a tomato that stems from our seeds. So on the vegetable seed side, we know a lot about micronutrients. We know about the micronutrient content, the fat composition content of major row crops. And with one a day, we are also in the space of micronutrients in the supplement even more so. We are specialized with elevate on some of the micronutrients that are specifically targeted, for example, for women who want to become pregnant, are pregnant, or are with child and lactating. So you have this, you have this huge knowledge in the micronutrient space. And I do agree that food inflation doesn't lead to a major hunger catastrophe yet. But there is a silent problem and that's the lack of micronutrients, which is contributing heavily to stunting and wasting in a generation of baby boomers that is growing up in Africa right now.
- [09:28]
C
So I wanted to talk about your food science and innovation and you've done a lot of innovations in seeds and looking at building drought resistant crops and seeds that obviously help with both mitigation and adaptation goals. But there also is some pushback and controversy around GMOs or other areas of food science. So kind of, what do you think it's missed from that debate and how do you look at those trade offs.
- [10:03]
D
We have around? I want to say five years ago, started to look at our R and D budget through the lens of the many crises that we are facing. One of the things with the climate crisis that is often underestimated is how predictable it is. So we kind of know, for example, soil moisture in certain regions as a function of certain climate models. So what is the soil moisture in the Amazon at a 2 degree scenario, at a 2.5 degree scenario, at a 3 degree scenario that helps us in the development of new crops. One thing that drives my optimism is that at the intersection of biology, chemistry and artificial intelligence, or if you want to put it in another row, AI for A, biology, for B and C for chemistry. So in this ABC interaction, a lot of magical things are happening at the moment. And we've seen that with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year being awarded amongst others to Demis Hassabis, who is the CEO of DeepMind, also the leading AI expert at Google. So Bayer employed chemists since 1863. The periodic system of the element wasn't even existence back then. So we know a thing or two about chemistry and the transformation that we see in that space is huge. The same is true for biology. So that gives me hope that we can come up with innovative solutions that will solve in the adaptation journey for some of the problems and also will help to decarbonize agricultural production. For example, tomatoes today are highly dependent on fossil fuels. When you eat a tomato, you also consume a lot of fossil fuels as a result of it, because of the heating in the greenhouses, because of transportation, but also because of the fertilizer you need. And we need to decarbonize the food sector. Now the debate is a bit an either or debate, either agroecology or this modern biotech stuff that I've been just talking about. And one of the things Both business and NGOs need to do also, as a consequence of the changes in many countries, including the changes in the US government we just touched upon, is we need to replace the word or with the word end. So for me, regenerative agriculture, which would be sort of the offspring of a love affair of biotech, agriculture and agroecology, or organic farming, is a way out of this. We have done research, it took us five years to get the data that indicates that regenerative agriculture practices that take the best out of both worlds have significant benefits for soil health, for biodiversity, and get us higher yields. So it is possible if we move away from the traditional fault lines to kind of make a difference.
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C
So this cop is how the finance. And I think it's been pretty clear from discussion and negotiations so far that you can't rely just on financing from governments. There's just not enough there, not enough political will. So where do you see private sector fitting into that overall climate finance picture? Where do you think you can play a strategic role?
- [13:52]
D
Yeah, so I think when you call something loss and damage, it's pretty clear that it's not going to fly. I think financing climate financing as a transfer from some of the very rich countries, but not China, for example, to the poorest countries in the world is having a difficulty to fly. I think that even under other political circumstances in the U.S. these kind of very macro debates don't get you anywhere. What we need is we need to combine capital, innovation, regulation and participation in a smart way. I do believe, for example, that you can find innovative ways to finance. We are part of a group of businesses that in a coalition with the governments of the US the uk, Norway and Korea have developed a program called Leave like the leaf on a Tree. And that program has mobilized $1.5 billion to protect tropical rainforests. Why does business invest in that? Well, we get a bit of the carbon credits out of protecting a tropical rainforest, but we also, in addition to that, do something to preserve nature. For example, the forests in the home state of Berlin, in Brazil, where the next cop, Cop 30 will take place, have been beneficiaries of that program. So this mobilizes quite a bit of money. And I think if we find creative solutions to mobilize both money and access to innovation, we solve for some of the climate financing challenges that we see. Otherwise we run into difficulties. I'll give you another example. When the Hurricanes hit the U.S. there was an immediate debate about crop insurance and what farmers in the US need to do to kind of get some of their investment in their crops kind of addressed and made whole through crop insurance. When a drought hit the southern part of Africa this year, a most people didn't notice this. But most importantly, the farmers in the southern part of Africa don't have crop insurance. So a very good climate adaptation instrument is to to develop bespoke crop insurance programs for smallholder farmers. So I'd much rather like to talk about these kind of very concrete things than abstract financial transfers that will lead to a lot of debate, but much, much less action.
- [16:45]
C
Yeah, I think that's a good point. And when we talk a lot about public private partnerships, it's often something people talk about on stage as good idea but harder to actually implement. And you, before being a bear and working on the corporate side, were in the German parliament. What do you think? What do you think that the private sector needs to understand more about working with public sector and vice versa to make some of those partnerships actually get off the ground and see impact.
- [17:20]
D
So when we work with international finance institutions, as one example the World bank group or others, we really focus on what are their KPIs. And if you look at the latest scorecard of the World bank, they have very clear KPIs. And then the second question is, can we positively contribute to them? So that's something where I think it's, it's really important for the private sector to understand what are the policy objectives. Now I looking back at the fall meeting that happened earlier in October in Washington D.C. of the world Bank Group and what I found very helpful is President Banger's stronger focus on food and food insecurity. So moving from the abstract poverty to very concrete, that helps us of course to find bespoke programs that help to address that, especially focusing on smallholder farmers and on food systems to reduce for example, one of the biggest travesties, which is like massive food loss. Country like Nigeria spends a lot of money importing food including canned tomatoes, but has like a lot of tomatoes that are rotting on the vine or just after being harvested. It's pretty much mind boggling to see that with your own eyes. And I think these kind of things we can change now on the other side, I think I see a shift in the international finance institutions who no longer look for CSR like programs. So more and more it's very clear that the investment we are making needs to make good sense for us as a business. And I think that's a crucial part of how we need to rethink this. It's also important for NGOs. I haven't met an NGO that basically is critical of, let's say a renewable energy company that invests in wind energy is making money with it. But somehow when you make money investing into smallholder farming communities, that's still problematic. So I think NGOs and also the banks need to be happy with people making money by solving some of our most pressing problems.
- [19:51]
C
So what are you hoping to see happen this week at COP 29?
- [20:01]
D
I think what would be really helpful also for the future of carbon markets, if we were able to land the plane, no pun intended, but it's also relevant for planes when it comes to the fungibility or tradability of carbon removals, I see a huge potential in active activating nature. I think nature is more efficient than most other carbon capture technologies. So I see huge opportunity in mobilizing nature to remove carbon. Of course, when you mobilize nature, this sometimes doesn't happen in the very country you are in, it happens somewhere else. And governments agreeing on these kind of investments being possible through a good mechanism that deals with the challenges, for example, that every country has to reduce their own emissions within their border. And of course if I invest in another country as government xyz, then the reductions are not necessarily happening in my country. So how can I account for those reductions is the big question now. Dicey conversation I think we made at the beginning huge progress in the space because the presidency was able to quickly kind of get a pre decision about it. But I think it's important that we land the plane. This was a debate that started in Paris, should have been solved at a COP in Santiago de Chile. That then didn't happen there, but it happened in Madrid. And ever since it's sort of like a open question that is dangling around. So landing that plane would be really good. That's one example. The other thing, I think it's really important that COPS stays on course of looking at adaptation and mitigation. In your very first introduction you talked about adaptation and mitigation, but that's a new thing at COPS that started in Sharm El Sheikh. Before that we only had mitigation related conversations, but we have no choice but to look at adaptation and mitigation at the same time.
- [22:18]
C
What we see is that the rising global average temperature, but also these more extreme weather patterns, they impact agricultural yields. There's going to be a real need now to optimize what we call climate smart agriculture resilient agricultural practices. How do we make sure these things are feasible, that they're implementable, and that they're giving farmers more access to the tools that they're going to need to adapt and become more climate resilient.
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B
In a special edition of the Devex Climate plus podcast, hear from CropLife International's Emily Reese and Lori Goodwin about how agricultural innovation and science can be key drivers in tackling climate change and building resilience and our food systems. Listen to Climate plus wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's turn to Barry Parkin for Mars, which is in a unique position to take climate action as a family owned business not bound by a traditional shareholder model, meaning they can often take a Longer term view when it comes to their investment and business growth strategy. Strategy. He'll discuss Mars strategy for achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
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C
Well, I'm here with Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer with Mars. Barry, thank you so much for joining me today.
- [23:44]
E
Pleasure.
- [23:45]
C
So we are here on sidelines of COP 29 and Baku, I guess, in an Old Spice merchant building rounded by carpets, really beautiful here. And we actually just had a conversation with one of your colleagues talking about water rights and sustainability and a lot of the work that you at Mars are doing at really embedding sustainability into your business processes and business practices. So maybe just to start off, can you talk about as a company, how do you view sustainability as core to your values and way of operating?
- [24:26]
E
Yeah, happy to do so. Well, Mars is a private family owned business, a global food business. We operate all over the world and our origins go back over a hundred years. And we trace the origins of sustainability back to a letter that Forrest Mars, who was the guy who built the business through the 1940s, 50s, 60s, he wrote a letter to all the associates, the employees of Mars in 1947, so just after the Second World War. And he wrote that the purpose of the company is to create a mutuality of benefits with all stakeholders. So he was writing about stakeholder capitalism in 1947. Imagine that. You know, it's been the topic of the last 10 years. And he had recognized that and he wrote this is the sole purpose of the company. So what he had understood was that the business would only be successful in the long term if everybody we touched was also being successful. Suppliers, customers. He talked about competitors, governments, all as stakeholders that needed to be successful while we were successful. And of course we applied that to the environment and to the world in general. So that's the origin of what we're trying to do. We're trying to grow in harmony with the world.
- [25:48]
C
So you mentioned you're a family owned business. And I think a lot of the challenges for some corporations to invest in sustainability is when you're looking at the next quarter, reporting to shareholders. If it's going to take a while to see return on that investment, it can be harder to make that business case. As a family owned business, you won't necessarily have some of the same dynamics. So how do you see that influencing the way you approach sustainability?
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E
Yeah, we did some work with the owners, the Mars family, a few years back and aligned on a set of goals for the business, which we call the compass and four goal areas. One was about strong financial performance, one about corporate quality growth, about how set up we are to grow, one about trusted partnerships and one about positive societal impact. And the decision the owners made was these four things are equally important and that is a breakthrough moment because they're saying basically that greenhouse gas reduction is as important as earnings and that sets the platform for then doing great things. They also recognized that there would be a trade off and a challenge to do all four things at once. So they set the targets appropriately so that we could achieve all of those. We've now embedded that in all our operating, planning, governance and into remuneration. So, you know, our top thousand executives are remunerated a large part of their long term incentives on greenhouse gas reduction alongside financial performance. And that makes my job incredibly easy because we've said this is as important and frankly I don't think many other companies of our size, I was going.
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C
To say that sounds pretty unique.
- [27:33]
E
I think it is unique for a company of our size and that means that we can invest and get behind this and really make progress.
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C
So at these COP communings, what I think makes these also unique is it brings stakeholders from all different areas and you have civil society, you have government, you have activists here. There can be a sometimes skepticism of private sector and whether private sector should be part of these conversations, a role they can play in these conversations. So how do you view that skepticism and what would you say those skeptics as to why private sector companies like yours should be part of these committees?
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E
Well, the competition, the parties, is fundamentally about the 200 countries trying to raise their ambition together around mitigating climate change. But the reality is that big companies are as big as countries. Our carbon footprint is just under 30 million tonnes. That's the same size as Finland. And we're by no means the largest company in the world. There are hundreds, thousands of companies bigger than us who have footprints the size of means medium sized countries. So companies matter. And you know, if we could get the, you know, biggest thousand companies in the world driving towards net zero, really delivering exit zero, it actually wouldn't matter what countries did. So you've got to get one or the other moving. So we've either got to get countries moving at a faster pace and that's a problem, or we've got to get companies moving at a faster pace. So we do matter. Obviously this meeting is primarily about countries, but we're here to nudge, encourage countries and we're also here to network and work out and find new solutions to move Faster ourselves. So companies really matter.
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C
So you're from the UK originally and your Prime Minister recently just the other day talked about this is the finance cop and all conversations are talking about how we bridge that finance gap. And he mentioned really the role of private sector needing to step up. How are you seeing beyond Mars other private sector colleagues? What was maybe some of the barriers holding them back from engaging more to the level that maybe you are at Mars?
- [29:54]
E
Well, what are we doing? We operate in virtually every country in the world. We buy raw materials from more than 100 countries around the world. So our extended supply chain is truly global. So we're investing in all of those supply chains. So I think we're doing our part and lots of examples we could talk about, about projects that we're doing around the world. Fundamentally there needs to be all of industry moving together on this and everybody's made a net zero commitment. 2040 or 2050, they've made a commitment, but not that many I would suggest are actually on track to get to zero because it's extremely hard. We've been at this for more than 10 years. Our footprint is now minus 16% since our baseline in 2015, while we've grown the top nine, 60%. So you know, we've worked out how to decouple our emissions across our entire scope, 1, 2 and 3 from our growth. And we've set a very ambitious target of minus 50% by 2030. And we're confident we're going to get there. But you have to do hundreds of, and hundreds of activities to do that. You have to change everything. You know, the trick we're trying to pull off is to make a Snickers bar or a pedigree pet food product look, taste the same in 2030, but have half the footprint. And that requires that you change pretty much everything.
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C
You have a very massive supply chain which I'm sure includes smallholder farmers and, and SMEs. So, you know, how are you helping them on this transition?
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E
Yeah, we have about somewhere towards a million farmers in our supply chain and lots of those are smallholder farmers in, in the developing world. And so we've been doing projects with them for years, raising their incomes, improving their resilience. So, you know, projects on vanilla, on rice, on palm, coconut, cocoa, where we're trying to help them increase, support their livelihoods both through increasing productivity and the revenue they get from their primary crop, but also develop alternative businesses. We've done hundreds of thousands of VSLA projects now across the world involving women in building their Own businesses, saving money. Those are extraordinarily successful and not only do they empower women, but they create secondary income for the family. So we've got lots of experience of smallholders and how you do that as well as trying to improve the resilience of the crops they have because there's an inevitability about climate change now. You know, the planet isn't going to not warm and as it does, different parts of the world and different agricultural systems will find this very challenging. So we're trying to build resilience into the planting material that they're now using so they have a better chance of success as the planet warms.
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C
And so doing work in regenerative agriculture and sustainable agriculture. And how are you, what are you doing on the packaging side too in thinking about creating more sustainable packaging and your whole suite of products?
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E
Yeah, and the categories we're in are extremely challenging because we're in small packaged goods which have been packaged in plastic for the last 30, 40 years. And the reality is that most plastic, it doesn't get recycled anywhere in the world. So yeah, the answers are different by geography. You know, in places like Europe it's about redesigning our packaging so that it can be recycled because the systems are quite good. And we're on the path to redesign 10,000 packaging items. We've redesigned 2,000 so far. So this is a monumental task. We're taking something that has been optimized over the last 20, 30 years and changing the packaging materials, changing the packaging design so that it can be recycled. The most challenging are emerging markets where there are very poor systems of collection and virtually no recycling systems. And there we need to look more fundamentally at the format and the type of packaging because the reality is the infrastructure is not likely to appear in the next 10 years. So those are challenging and we don't have all the answers to that. The reality is we don't tend our products, don't actually tend to, we don't tend to sell into the most rural of communities typically we're selling into more city environments. That's where you start to eat chocolate, frankly. And there, there is collection. So our leakage into nature is less than you might expect. But, but it's still extraordinary challenging. We don't have all the answers to that yet.
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C
Yeah, it's I think something maybe easy to criticize from the outside and I'm sure when you're in it there's a lot of trade offs and hard decisions.
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E
Because yeah, the packaging fundamentally preserves the product and allows consumers to enjoy a product that is, that is, you know, safe.
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C
I want to talk a little bit about just ESG and some of the political backlash that's happened in recent years and maybe even in the US we just had an election and expecting an incoming administration that might push even more back on some of these terms. How is that? Does that influence how you think about your work in sustainability or are you focused on what you're doing?
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E
Not really, interestingly. And our sustainability plan which we launched in 2017 is called Sustainable Energy Generation and it was very deliberate because one, we recognized that this would take a generation to solve. Anybody who says they're going to make their business sustainable in five years time probably doesn't understand the challenge because you have to change everything. So sustainable intergeneration means we just take the long term view. And presidents come and go, governments come and go and in 20 years time there'll be a different government in every country in the world. So we have to take a long term view and just keep doing what we think is right.
- [36:54]
C
So there's a lot of conversation around partnership and certainly here at COP, because you have stakeholders from different groups that are looking at ways to partner. Can you talk a little about the role of partnership and your sustainability work? Maybe even share an example or two?
- [37:09]
E
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that we've all learned over the last 10, 15 years is that in general sustainability is pretty competitive and we all get there further faster by working together. So you know, we've been involved in a number of things. So I co chair the Plastic Waste Coalition of Action within the Consumer Goods Forum. So we've got 35 manufacturers and retailers working together there to tackle this challenge. Challenge. We've developed golden design rules. So we're all designing our packs to the same set of rules. We've developed policies and protocols around good EPR extended producer responsibility. And although those have been voluntary, we've now been advocating strongly that they become part of the UN Global Plastics Treaty which is reaching its final negotiations phase in Busan in two weeks time. So you know, industry by first working together and voluntarily is now, you know, putting forward proposals to the UN to make mandatory for global treaty. So that's quite impressive. And if we can, that treaty comes about and this becomes mandatory, then that will drive really increase the pace of change on plastic waste. So I think that's a fantastic example of where the industry coming together can actually drive global change. And then in specific raw materials we're often partnering. So in cocoa, the industry has Been working for years to align on programs and interventions that will tackle some of the challenges. The Cocoa and Forests initiative is a good example of everybody aligning on how to stop deforestation in cocoa and then working together on the human rights challenges. And the child labor monitoring remediation system is another product of industry working together. So you pick a material and we source more than 100 materials we're taking, typically working with our peers on the challenges in those supply chains.
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C
How do you see the role of regulation either helping or hindering some of these efforts?
- [39:35]
E
Usually in most cases we think regulation is a great idea because voluntary action only takes you so far. And you know, for example, on plastic, as I'm saying, you know, you can get the biggest companies starting to work together, but if you want tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of companies working on it, at some point you have to regulate and raise the bar for everybody. So we've advocated strongly on plastic waste, we've advocated strongly on deforestation, that we need legislation on that. So I think, you know, that's actually probably the best examples of where industry plays a role with government. Often it's industry starting first and developing the right answers because they know what works in the real world in these expanded supply chains and then coming to governments and saying this is the sort of legislation you need.
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C
So what are you hoping to see come out of this cop?
- [40:38]
E
Well, I would say I'm ever hopeful the governments will make progress. And this one is about the finance agenda. But I'm not holding my breath to be honest. So primarily what I'm doing here is building partnerships with others around it and seeking new ideas. Sustainability is an incredibly difficult challenge we to need. None of us have all the answers. So it's by coming to events like this that you meet different people in different industries and get new ideas. So I personally I hope to go back home with five new ideas that I can then apply to our supply chain.
- [41:20]
C
Well, I know we're still early days, but is there one at least that you've heard?
- [41:25]
E
There's some cool tech stuff going on and we've got, you know, we've been doing a lot of work on bringing more and more transparency to our supply chains. And actually this is one of the big challenges of the last 10 years. We all have these extended supply chains that go back through multiple layers of suppliers to all over the world. And historically there's been very pure transparency of that and we've reached back and cocoa, now we know the farms that we know know the mapping of the farms. We know the farmers, we know the kids that go to school. But doing that universally across hundreds of supply chains is still a real challenge for everybody. So there's a lot of tech and this is where our AI will play a role because you have to join up disparate systems around the world to be able to build this picture of where is it all coming from and where are the impacts and the challenges. So that's, that's, I'm always searching for new ideas in that space. And you know, a lot of the big tech companies are here and they're working on that.
- [42:29]
C
Well, Barry, thank you. And hopefully by the end of this week you will have some more ideas to bring back home and I'd love to catch up with you later on that too. But thank you for your time today.
- [42:39]
E
Thank you very much.
- [42:45]
A
Thanks for listening to this special episode of this week in Global Development. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it or you can leave us a rating or review. We'd also love to hear from you. If you have any feedback or want to get in touch, you can find me on social media at rogerdevx or send an email to podcastevx.com be sure to sign up for our daily newswire for more of our must read insider coverage of all things global development.