Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum Daily Wrap: 18 June

(3BL Media) Rio de Janeiro - June 18, 2012 - The following announcements were made today during the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum. 

Sustainable Stock Exchange 2012 Dialogues
9:00 AM – 3:30 PM

• At the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Global Dialogue, regulators, stock exchanges and investors deliberated on the key role of stock exchanges in enhancing corporate sustainability performance and long-term responsible investment. Exchanges highlighted innovations in sustainability indices, reporting requirements, listing criteria and trading platforms for new sustainable financing instruments.

Accelerating Green Growth through Public-Private Partnerships
9:00 AM- 10:30 AM

• Opened by Bob Orr presenting the UN Partnership Facility, and Minister Lidegaard introducing 3GF´s ground breaking tool for strategic development of PPPs, this workshop convened active global Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to explore the role PPPs can play in reducing information, policy or behavioral barriers to the scaling of green growth, and to produce guiding principles for successful PPPs.

Changing the World through Fashion 
9:00 AM- 12:30 PM

• The fashion industry is one of the world’s most polluting industries and exploiting human labour globally. This session explored how to maximize the contribution of the fashion and apparel sector to sustainable development and how consumers play a pivotal role in making the change. Keynotes from Gucci, H&M, Katharine Hamnett, Osklen, Novozymes and more.

From Responsibility to Investment: Accelerating Corporate Social Participation through SocialEnterprise
9:00 AM- 10:30 AM

• This session aims to deepen the discussion on how corporate mechanisms can be applied in tackling societal challenges. Social entrepreneurs and social innovators working across the globe met with representatives of large corporations. Their exchange stimulated thinking on the role of corporations in nurturing ecosystems and building infrastructure for social enterprises. Tereza Campello, Brazil’s Social Development Minister, delivered the welcome speech, and session organizer SK previewed its commitment for creating a global platform to promote social enterprises later that day in the Closing Plenary.

Sustainable Stock Exchanges 2012 Global Dialogue
9:00 AM- 3:30 PM

• At the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Global Dialogue, regulators, stock exchanges and investors deliberated on the key role of stock exchanges in enhancing corporate sustainability performance and long term responsible investment, including sustainability indices, voluntary reporting rules and listing criteria, and trading platforms for new financing instruments. Exchanges present at the session were invited to make a public commitment promoting long term sustainable investment and improved environmental, social and corporate governance performance and disclosure among companies listed on our exchange.

Building the World of Tomorrow
11:00 AM- 12:30 PM

• The new initiative Sustainia unveiled a blueprint for a sustainable future, based on existing solutions and best practices from every corner of the world. On stage, urban planning guru and former Governor Jaime Lerner, Danish Minister of the Environment Ida Auken and world-leading companies joined the founder and director of Sustainia in laying out this new and constructive approach to sustainability. Developed in collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiative Regions20, UN Global Compact and innovative companies including Vestas, DNV, Microsoft and Novo Nordisk, Sustainia is more than a vision. It is a concrete and achievable model of a sustainable society. Simply put, Sustainia is the desirable world we could live in if ready and available solutions were implemented across sectors and regions. 

The Clean Revolution Launch
11:00 AM- 12:30 PM

• The Climate Group and high-profile global figures launched the three-year Clean Revolution campaign, which aims to inspire and enable the world’s powerful business and thought leaders to take transformational action to move to a low-carbon economy.

International Fund for Agricultural Development President, Kanayo F. Nwanze, Press Briefing Guest
12:00 PM – 12:45 PM 

• “The challenge of leveraging private sector engagement has become one of the most pressing priorities for achieving food and nutrition security and overcoming poverty. Today, the private sector increasingly is the engine of growth in rural areas. Smallholder farmers anchor one end of the private sector in rural areas. To achieve global goals for food security and poverty reduction, efforts to engage the private sector need to build on a vision of agriculture that is strongly smallholder-focused. In Africa, small farmers – women and men - are the most important actors and investors in agriculture. To thrive in domestic and regional markets, however, they need forward and backward market linkages that only other private investors – domestic and foreign - can provide. Private investment can truly be the critical ingredient in achieving sustainable agricultural development and food security if it is clearly directed toward enabling farmers to increase their productivity and incomes, be better market integrated, and protect their natural resource base.” – the International Fund for Agricultural Development President, Kanayo F. Nwanze

UN Development Programme

• The UN Development Programme (UNDP) announced today the initiative ‘Building Tomorrow’s Markets’ to sustainably boost small producers’ livelihoods through partnerships between governments and businesses on commodities like coffee and cocoa. This is a partnership between UNDP and the Governments of Denmark, Costa Rica, Ghana and Indonesia with Kraft and IKEA.