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Food Supply Sector and Biodiversity Conservation Best Practice Benchmarking

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Food Supply Sector and Biodiversity Conservation Best Practice Benchmarking Food Supply Sector and Biodiversity Conservation Best Practice Benchmarking Outcome of a workshop by the European Union Business and Biodiversity Platform September 2010 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ..............................................................................................................................3 1.1. Background to the document – why a guidance document?............................................3 1.2. Purpose, scope and target of the document ....................................................................3 1.3. Nature and structure of the document ..............................................................................4 2. Food supply sector and biodiversity ........................................................................................4 2.1. Definition of the scope and interdependencies with other sectors ...................................4 2.2. Food supply links to biodiversity .......................................................................................4 2.2.1. Impacts and dependency ..........................................................................................4 2.2.2. Benefits .....................................................................................................................5 2.3. Policy and legislative context relevant to the food supply sector and biodiversity and standards ......................................................................................................................................6 2.3.1. Global context regarding business and biodiversity policy .......................................6 2.3.2. European biodiversity policy .....................................................................................6 2.3.3. Other international convention and initiatives ........................................................ 10 2.3.4. Local biodiversity action plan ................................................................................. 12 2.4. Main stakeholders .......................................................................................................... 12 3. Classification and evaluation of available best practices ...................................................... 18 3.1. Common approach and key steps of biodiversity integration in business ..................... 18 3.1.1. The business case for biodiversity and ecosystems ............................................. 18 3.1.2. The key action points for business ........................................................................ 19 3.2. Sector specific approach to implement Business & Biodiversity actions (adaptation of 3.1 to sector specificities) .......................................................................................................... 20 3.3. Classification and analysis of existing best practices .................................................... 20 3.3.1. Introduction to the analysis grid ............................................................................. 20 3.3.2. Selected best practices .......................................................................................... 21 3.3.3. Global best practices analysis ............................................................................... 22 4. Case studies of the participants ............................................................................................ 25 4.1. Unilever case study ....................................................................................................... 25 4.2. Findus case study .......................................................................................................... 26 4.3. Carrefour case study ..................................................................................................... 27 4.4. Amorim case study ........................................................................................................ 28 5. Gaps and needs: Best practices analysis ............................................................................. 29 6. Conclusions........................................................................................................................... 30 2 1. Introduction 1.1. Background to the document – why a guidance document? The global loss of biodiversity has become one of the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. Biodiversity is defined as the variability among living organisms within species, between species, and between ecosystems. The concern for biodiversity is integral to sustainable development, competitiveness, economic growth and employment, and improved livelihoods. Many of the services that biodiversity and ecosystems provide are currently threatened. These are timber production, water supply, waste treatment, natural hazard protection, regulation of air quality, regulation of regional and local climate, regulation of erosion, etc. In the long run, the loss of ecosystem services threatens business opportunities as well. Companies have been getting more and more involved in dialogues with governments and conservation organizations. In 2007, The High Level European Conference on Business and Biodiversity in Lisbon called on businesses, governments, the EU and NGOs to: • Continue raising awareness of the strong competitive advantage to be gained by conserving biodiversity. • Promote the use of a wide range of market mechanisms, corporate responsibility and regulatory schemes to conserve biodiversity. • Support large and small businesses with operational tools for conservation of biodiversity and measuring their performance in meaningful ways. • Encourage new incentives to develop and strengthen partnerships between companies, governments at all levels, NGOs and universities/the scientific world. Within this context, this guidance document aims at helping businesses find solutions to biodiversity challenges related to their activities ensuring a fair income and sustainable growth, while providing benefits for biodiversity and ecosystems. 1.2. Purpose, scope and target of the document This document is not meant to develop new methods. It provides companies with the information needed to act towards biodiversity conservation. The main available publication and case studies related to business and biodiversity are presented and analyzed through a business perspective. Indeed, many best practices, guidance principles and initiatives on biodiversity conservation have been published over the last years and months. While many of them give general recommendations mainly useful only at corporate level, others are more relevant to local level operations or for a specific product or service. Selecting the right method or guide as well as the right support from stakeholders may be a difficult task. Therefore, the final objective of this document is to guide companies toward the most appropriate tools and methods for integrating biodiversity conservation into business activities, taking into account economic constraints and environmental benefits. Moreover, this document has been designed to be a useful guide for large companies as well as SME’s. In addition, this guide aims at addressing the specificity and needs of the sector. The food supply sector has the particularity of being a complex collective of diverse businesses (see section 2.1). This document targets several activities included within this sector: the food processing industry, the packaging industry and food retail industry. Moreover, the food supply sector is characterized by few publications specific to the sector and its whole value chain and their relationships with biodiversity. The actions implemented to integrate 3 biodiversity into food supply activities are more product-specific and no global guidelines dedicated to the sector have been published yet. 1.3. Nature and structure of the document Part 2 is a general overview of information necessary to a good understanding of the food supply specific issues regarding biodiversity. Part 3 presents all relevant studies and methods specific to the food supply sector. An analysis grid has been included to offer the reader, “at a glance”, a good overview of each method’s content. The reader should be able to choose the most convenient support (publication, method, tool) addressing its needs. The final part of this chapter presents an analysis of relevant case studies developed by companies participating in the B@B Platform. 2. Food supply sector and biodiversity 2.1. Definition of the scope and interdependencies with other sectors The food supply chain encompasses the full range of activities and services required to bring a food product from its conception to its end use. The chain includes suppliers to agriculture, farmers and fishermen, processors, packaging industries, wholesalers, retailers and buyers; a range of technical, business and financial service providers; and the final markets into which the food product is sold, whether local, national, regional or global. The entities participating in the food supply chain definition of the B@B platform are mainly the food processing industry, the packaging industry, the retailers and the consumers. Although farmers are not considered within the scope of this sector but within the agriculture sector, the food supply industry has a high dependency on agricultural and fishery supply chains. More so, this industry is directly dependent on the services delivered by ecosystems, ranging from water cycling and purification, to climate regulation and soil formation.
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