Stories tagged: Danone

Bernard Giraud: How Big Business Can Step Up to the Sustainable Development Goals

In this guest blog post, Bernard Giraud, President of the Livelihoods Venture & Senior Advisor forSustainability and Shared Value Creation at Danone, outlines the ways the private sector can ensure the Sustainable Development Goals are met. This is part of our ongoing series on the state of the Sustainable Development Goal negotiations.

“Our role is not just to sell a bottle of water or a cup of yoghurt. It’s much more than that. We need to look after our ecosystem, and what is more important in our ecosystem than the farmer selling to us milk, fruits, coffee, chocolate and so forth?”

These words come from Frank Riboud, Chairman, Board of Directors at Danone, and sum up the way big businesses are now looking at their supply chains. We know that smallholders make up over 70 per cent of the world’s production of raw materials – that’s the cocoa, sugar and vanilla that businesses buy in huge quantities to make your favorite foods. They depend on these farmers. Yet millions of them remain impoverished, struggling to produce their crops on degraded lands, with limited access to the tools, technology and skills they need to boost their production, protect the environment and secure their own livelihoods. Continue reading →

Businesses come together to address carbon capture and storage

A unique carbon-offset fund serving rural communities was launched last week by a first group of investors, including Danone, Schneider Electric, Crédit Agricole and Caisse des Dépôts.

Livelihoods is a carbon investment fund that helps poor rural communities by generating financial resources for projects with high social and environmental value.

The project is based on a scheme that Danone has been developing for the past three years. Since 2008, Danone has been developing new approaches to carbon offsets in Africa and Asia, supporting large-scale pilot projects that restore biodiversity, capture carbon and fight poverty.

In one pilot project, the Danone Fund for Nature purchased trucks and helped a local NGO employ the inhabitants of 450 coastal villages to collect and plant mangrove seeds and care for the trees in the long term. This project will capture 900,000 tonnes of carbon over the next 20 years.

Myriam Cohen-Welgryn, Danone’s General Manager Nature, says:

Danone’s food business is closely linked to nature’s cycles. Protecting natural springs and producing milk in sustainable conditions have been key concerns of our business units for years. Livelihoods is a new step forward, with carbon offset projects that associate restoration of natural resources and food security — two concerns at the heart of Danone’s corporate mission.

Now, following the success in Africa and Asia, Danone has invited other business to create the Livelihoods fund. The first to join Danone are Schneider Electric, Crédit Agricole and Caisse des Dépôts. Livelihoods will invest in three main programs: restoration and preservation of natural ecosystems, agroforestry and soil restoration, and rural energy projects that prevent deforestation.

In addition to this new carbon investment fund, a Livelihoods Network has been created by 80 representatives of NGOs, companies and high-level experts from Africa, Asia, Latin America. The Livelihoods Network is a forum where experts can exchange views and pool knowledge on a wide range of issues affecting livelihoods.

a forum where NGOs and experts can exchange views and pool knowledge on a wide
range of issues affecting Livelihoods