10 May 2021: During the online seminar, Experts from GIZ, Global Nature Fund (GNF) and Union for Ethical Biotrade (UEBT) presented promising instruments that have proven to be easy to use and at the same time successful, namely the Biodiversity Checks, Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPs) and the BAP-Monitor. Afterwards, representatives from Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., Danone, AVT McCormick and ECORED shared their experiences and success stories in implementing these tools into their company activities:
- Hans Sauter, the Senior Vice President of R&D as well as the Chief Sustainability Officer at Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. presented the work of Fresh Del Monte Produce in applying the Biodiversity Check tool in Costa Rican pineapple plantations, where they have conserved more than 6.000 hectares of forests. There they found that the Biodiversity Check tool provided a much-needed structure to prioritize actions and resources to promote farm biodiversity.
- Louise Berrebi, who is a regional fruit buyer at Danone, buying fruits for their business units in Mexico, USA and Canada, shared her lessons learned from the implementation of Biodiversity Action Plans with strawberry producers in Mexico within the Madre Tierra Project. Now, they are sharing the Biodiversity Action Plan methodology internally to leverage knowledge in other Danone projects.
- Ashok Nair, the Head of Sustainable Agricultural Operations at AVT McCormick, shared the experience of AVT McCormick applying the Biodiversity Action Plan and the Monitoring tool (or in short: BAP-Monitor) in a red pepper programme in India. Currently, AVT McCormick is expanding the work on biodiversity management to other spices and regions.
- Ambar Espaillat is the environmental coordinator at ECORED, a non-profit organization that connects the private sector of the Dominican Republic with projects in support of sustainable development. She presented how ECORED is consolidating the use of the Biodiversity Check tool for the private sector in the Dominican Republic. They are currently in their second stage of implementation and are working with the tools together with 8 ECORED member companies.
The session was organized by the Global Partnership for Business and Biodiversity (GPBB) in collaboration with three projects implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH: the Business and Biodiversity in Central America and Dominican Republic program funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as the Mainstreaming Biodiversity into Mexican Agriculture (IKI-IBA) and the Private Business Action for Biodiversity (PBAB) projects, funded by the German Federal Ministry for The Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU) through its International Climate Initiative (IKI).
The recording is now online. Access it
here.