There is a sense that voters are turning to anything that is different, rather than having a clear idea of what they actually want. Some of the more populist parties chosen recently could hardly be said to have a comprehensive manifesto. There is a sense in Europe, following a lurch in the Netherlands to the extreme right, that the EU itself is being questioned by the electorate. And yet that does not seem a credible position for anyone in the Netherlands to take, least of all the leader of a party that garnered the most votes in the national election last week.
The Netherlands has, ever since it was formed as a nation, based its economy on trade. While the country is often quoted as the second largest agricultural economy in the world, that rests largely on the volume of agriculture imports and re-exports. To reconsider the country’s central role in European and global agri commodity trade would seem to be the least logical possible choice a voter could make.
The dismissal by such extreme politicians of fundamentally important foundations of democracy, such as religious freedom, or rights of indigenous people (to take an example from New Zealand’s new governing coalition) or addressing climate change as left wing hobbies is worrying.
But it also begs the question “How relevant are politicians anymore?” Politics appears more and more as a circus, a colourful distraction involving liars and cheats, but not fundamentally shaping the destiny of countries. The general public are swayed into social media murmurations that give an illusion of free choice, but are the fundamentals of how economies work actually in the hands of the politicians?
It is alarming to see how incapable the courts are of reining in the worst excesses of corrupt politicians. While blatant theft (in the case of contracts awarded in the UK during the pandemic) seems to raise little more than a shrug from the voting public.
Ultimately perhaps, the business community will take more responsibility for the future than politicians do. Businesses are answerable to their shareholders, and they are not in office for a strictly limited period. They have to show results year after year, and they have to plan to operate in the world that is shaped by their collective actions today.
To take an example from business, Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever wrote “Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take,” in which he describes how a Net Positive company 1) Improves the lives of everyone it touches 2) takes ownership of all the social and environmental impacts its business model creates and 3) partners with competitors, civil society and governments to drive transformative change that none of them could deliver alone.
Released in the same year as GRSB’s goals, this is clearly the work of a leader who has spent a lot more time thinking about a prosperous future for humanity than the average politician. Many of our members have done the same.
At CoP 27 last year in Egypt I saw more genuine actions being talked about by companies than I saw collective action from the world’s governments.
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This year at CoP, we are hosting two events in the IICA Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas pavilion, as well as an official UNFCCC side event on the 8th December together with Canadian Cattle Association, Beef and Lamb New Zealand and the Global Dairy Platform.
Josefina and I will also be participating in a number of panel discussions arranged by other organisations. Throughout, we will underline the commitment of our organisation and our sector to addressing climate change, and the importance of a holistic view of the role of ruminants in the food system.
Together with our members, we have committed to three goals that we have promised to deliver by 2030. We have spent quite a lot of time talking about next steps for our Climate, Nature Positive and Animal Welfare working groups, and it is sometimes easy to become so preoccupied with the exact nature or order of those next steps that we forget to step back, look at the larger picture and think about where we need to be in those short years between now and 2030. To quote Brenna Grant during GCSB 2022 in Denver, that is now "only 6 calving seasons away."
We need a set of systems that are flexible enough to work for all our members, but that are compatible enough with each other that all of our members can work together.
So to take Nature Positive example, whatever a producer, anywhere, is doing that is contributing to improved biodiversity should be measurable and communicable to anyone who is buying cattle from them.
Or in the case of a climate impact, information on any action that is reducing emissions or is increasing sequestration needs to be available to any buyer reporting on Scope 3 emissions, throughout the chain. Many of our members have made either SBTi or other climate commitments and we need to ensure that the ways in which information is collected can be used for any of those.
We also need to be sure that those protocols are capable of receiving the full range of data that can be generated from our value chains.
We have learned from the Context Network report that our members see GRSB as being in the right position to facilitate such systems, identify gaps and streamline reporting so that it works for all members. Our Roadmap has to deliver the route for us, from where we are now, with numerous companies and disparate standards, to an interoperable system that meets all of their requirements.
