The role of business at environmental summits: COP15 and beyond

The Green Alliance Podcast

Green Alliance

Environment, Uk, Farming, Green Alliance, News, Sustainability, Society & Culture, Government

4.9 • 34 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is the role of business in halting and reversing the decline of nature? At COP15 and COP27 this year, the interests of the private sector at these summits came under some scrutiny. There are concerns about large corporations having an outsize influence on international environmental agreements. To better understand the intention of businesses at summits like COP15, Jim Elliott speaks to Melissa Miners, global sustainability senior manager at Unilever. Ahead of travelling to Montreal to attend COP15, Melissa talked to us about what Unilever was hoping for out of the summit, the purpose of businesses being there and whether the outcomes of COP15 will lead to material changes in Unilever’s environmental impact.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.
0:10.5	We're the charity and think tank that's all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.
0:15.1	I'm Jim Elliott, Senior Policy Advisor at Green Alliance.
0:18.8	On this episode, I was joined by Melissa Miners, Global Sustainability Senior Manager at the
0:23.9	Multinational Consumer Goods Company Unilever, to talk about the COP15 Biodiversity Summit in Montreal
0:29.3	and the role of businesses in halting and reversing the decline of nature.
0:33.4	Well, first of all, our involvement is critical.
0:35.4	You could have the previous IHE targets that have no kind of business integration or business relevance,
0:41.7	and they won't succeed because a lot of this work is happening on the ground with partners.
0:46.2	So we work with subnational governments, governments, NGO partners on the ground, on impact programs.
0:52.6	And, you know, if we're not kind of singing off the same
0:56.0	hymn sheet, there's not going to be any success. We caught up ahead of the summit about what
1:01.6	businesses like Unilever hope will be agreed by the world's governments and reasons to be hopeful that
1:06.6	this summit will achieve more than previous ones. Melissa, welcome. Hi. Earlier this week, it was
1:13.6	reported in the news. A group of leading scientists said that the COP 15 Biodiversity Summit is
1:18.4	vastly more important, that's their words, than the COP 27 climate summit and that it will
1:24.2	determine the fate of the entire living world. These are really big and
1:28.8	quite concerning things to be hearing. So with this background, what does Unilever hope will be
1:35.7	achieved at the summit and what are you calling for? Well, just to give you a bit of background
1:40.7	in Unilever's involvement in advocating for COP15 and a global biodiversity framework.
1:47.1	In 2019, when the Ibbis report came out showing the drastic loss of nature, Unilever started to
1:55.2	look at this from a policy point of view and knowing that COP15 and the global biodiversity framework was coming up in
	...

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