Deforestation and Conversion Free Soy: How to Collaborate Better to Make it Happen
How to scale up, find strategies and better collaborate within the various initiatives and strategies to achieve 100% deforestation and conversion free responsible soy? How to accelerate in the efforts of building more sustainable soy supply chains?
These were the key questions discussed during the webinar session, held on Sep 17th, organized under the umbrella of Collaborative Soy Initiative[1] (convened by RTRS[2] – Round Table on Responsible Soy), which had the pleasure to count on speakers and inputs from:
- RTRS
- ProTerra Foundation[3]
- WWF[4] (World Wide Fund for Nature)
- Ahold Delhaize[5]
- IUCN NL[6] (Dutch National Committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature)
- Donau Soja Organisation[7]
- IDH[8] (Sustainable Trade Initiative)
The session started with the welcome remarks from Marcelo Visconti, RTRS Executive Director, and went on with presentations from Emese Brosz (Managing Director, ProTerra Foundation), Heleen van den Hombergh (Senior advisor agrocommodity governance at IUCN NL) Jean-François Timmers (Global Soy Lead and Global Policy Expert at WWF), Anke Schulmeister (Senior Forest Policy Officer at WWF EPO) and Hugo Byrnes (Vice President Product Integrity atAhold Delhaize). It was concluded by Lieven Callewaert (Chair of the Steering Committee – Collaborative Soy Initiative and RTRS board member).
The actual rates of tropical deforestation and the amount of carbon emissions resulting from those prove the urgency of discussing this subject. A common belief among presenters was that joining forces on common ambitions, co-create meaningful solutions by sharing lessons and expertise, aligning strategies to reach those, could be a significant accelerator in the efforts of building more sustainable soy supply chains and in finding shared solutions.
Presentations can reached at: