From a sustainability conference to a new trade fair?

Before the beginning of this year’s BioFach, the first “International Conference on Sustainable Production, Trade, Consumption and Lifestyle” took place in the Nuremberg trade fair’s Messezentrum. This event, that was attended by 250 guests and was held over one and a half days, gave around 60 speakers from industry and the organic sector the opportunity to address and discuss the many aspects of sustainability. At the end of the conference, Claus Rättich, a member of the management board of NürnbergMesse, took the public into his confidence: they were contemplating the idea of launching a sustainability fair. To help the management board to take the final decision, the views of everyone taking part in the conference were sought via a questionnaire. (Picture from left to right: Group photo workshop – Robin Goudsblom, Rob Cameron, Hans Reitz, Eileen Kaufman, Stefan Seidl, Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann)
The sustainability conference was initiated by Bernward Geier from the management consultancy Colabora and Udo Censkowsky from the Munich consultancy and organic events agency Organic Services. At the end of the conference on Wednesday evening (18.2.2009) Geier summed up: “This was the first step on a long journey that is still to come.” Maria Beatriz Costa (picture), the managing director of the sustainability fair ExpoSustentat in São Paulo Brazil, called the conference a milestone. At the same time she looked ahead and defined the challenge: “We have to conquer the hearts and minds of the decision-makers with the concept of sustainability.”

Claus Rättich (picture) picked up this theme. He stressed that much still had to be done to reach the critical mass and steer developments in the direction of sustainability. Conferences would have their part to play, but it was trade fairs that appealed to greater numbers of people, produced transparency, stimulated the exchange of ideas and created markets. Rättich drew up a number of questions to put to the public, including whether a sustainability conference with strict admission criteria (along the lines of BioFach) was what people wanted. He announced that, after evaluating the questionnaires distributed to everyone attending the conference, the decision would be taken whether to develop the conference into a sustainability fair. When she addressed the conference, Maria Beatriz Costa from Planeta Organico explained what this kind of fair could look like. ExpoSustentat is held at the same time as BioFach América Latina in São Paulo. Visitors need only one ticket, and the exhibition halls are all adjacent to each other, so access is as easy as at the BioFach and Vivaness double fair in Nuremberg. People are now anxiously awaiting the results of the questionnaires.

Although sustainability is a topic that has been discussed for decades, over the years industry has ignored it. “Only in recent years has sustainability changed from being a factor that just generated extra costs to becoming the indispensable tool of all companies that are looking to the future,” declared management consultant Udo Censkowsky in his capacity as chairman of the discussion with representatives of IFOAM, Tchibo, the Cologne Einzelhandelsinstitut EHI (Retail Trade Institute) and the consultancy KPMG. The President of IFOAM, Katherine DiMatteo (picture) declared that the organic movement was the origin of the sustainability idea. She said that the principles and aims of IFOAM had been dismissed by many people as unattainable but that now they often served as a model to be emulated. “We regard ourselves as a part of a global solution,” DiMatteo asserted.

Professor Dr. Bernd Hallier (picture on right) from the Europäische Handelsinstitut EHI (European Trade Institute) emphasised that the development and implementation of sustainability standards took time and called for patience: “It’s a never-ending development process,” he said. In their talks, Achim Lohrie (picture below on left), from the management of Tchibo and Wim Bartels from KPMG gave practical examples of concrete measures and their experiences in their companies. It was not until 2007 that Tchibo devised a sustainability strategy, but once in place there were real successes that also had a positive financial effect. The company operates with various certification labels ranging from organic to fair trade and FCS (sustainable forestry). However, as Lohrie explained, his company’s aim was to create a high level of confidence in the Tchibo brand that would make all other labels superfluous. In his view, the company’s sales personnel were the most significant factor: “Our employees are the ambassadors of our labels and our ideas vis-à-vis consumers.”

Six parallel workshops addressed the topics fair trade, biodiversity, climate-friendly products, sourcing sustainable goods, communication strategies and financing sustainable business models. In the discussion group dealing with social issues and fair trade with chairman Hans Reitz (Grameen Creative Lab), Eileen Kaufman (managing director of the non-profit organisation SAI), Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann (GTZ), Rob Cameron (FLO), Robin Goudsblom (Lidl) and Stefan Seidl (Puma) presented the strategies of their companies.

Kaufman said that, in the eleven years since the worldwide operating Social Accountability International (SAI) was founded, the SA8000 standards have been implemented in 1,800 companies in more than 60 countries and covering more than 60 branches of industry. These measures benefit a total of approximately one million people. Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann explained that the state-run Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GTZ (German Soceity for Technical Cooperation), that employs around 12,000 people worldwide in development work in a hundred countries, is involved in many ecological and social projects. He said that the key factor in all activities undertaken by GTZ was the improvement of the situation of people in the various countries. To achieve this aim, GTZ collaborates with both NGOs and private companies, including Lidl and Puma.

Rob Cameron from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisatioon (FLO) stated that the aim of fair trade was to conquer poverty. This international umbrella organisation covers more than 20 fair trade initiatives and, with about 1.6 million producers and workers in around 60 countries, it is the biggest organisation of its kind worldwide. The proceeds, amounting to more than 2.3 billion euros (+ 40 % in 2007), benefit about 7.5 million people. Cameron is expecting slower growth of 10 – 25 % in 2009. He explained that market penetration was very good in some areas like coffee and bananas, but overall there was still huge potential in many other areas that had to be advertised more intensively.

Stefan Seidl from Puma presented the S.A.F.E. project that was started at Puma 15 years ago. The aim is to achieve the mission – “sustainable excellence” – by 2010, i.e. international social and environmental standards and a full product life cycle. Steps along this way were joining the Fair Labor Association FLA in 2004, the UN Global Compact in 2006 and the Initiative Cotton made in Africa. 150,000 “fair” footballs have been sold. The path from standards and audits to a sustainable overall philosophy and communicating added values to the consumer – this is the challenge for Mr Seidl. In the same vein was Hans Reiyz’s conclusion: “Never stay on one quality level; there’s always something that can be improved.”
(Group photo top left: Workshop Robin Goudsblom, Rob Cameron, Hans Reitz, Eileen Kaufman, Stefan Seidl, Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann)

In the workshop on communicating sustainability and establishing the effectiveness of sustainability, there was considerable controversy about, among other things, Chiquita and the Rainforest Alliance, that certifies Chiquita bananas. Georg Jaksch, the press officer of the banana multinational, stated that acceptance by the public had improved a lot because of the collaboration of Chiquita with the Rainforest Alliance. However, from the audience came objections about the practices of Chiquita and the acceptance of its methods by the Rainforest Alliance. The fact is that the Rainforest Alliance only requires the observance of the laws in the country of origin, the USA and Europe and a ban on particularly problematic pesticides (PAN dirty dozen). It does not require organic production. To what extent Chiquita operates in an ecologically and socially acceptable way is an open question. More positive were the contributions on Coop Switzerland, that is doing good work with its eight brands for sustainability. The presentation by Herwig Danzer was also well received. He talked about “Die Möbelmacher”, a sustainable, artisan furniture manufacturer near Nuremberg.

Comment: Keep them separate!

At present, and in the years to come, the concept of sustainability belongs to a field of activity of great political significance. For this reason, it is legitimate and makes perfect sense for NürnbergMesse to get involved. As we have seen in the case of various BioFachs abroad, the strategy of developing a fair from a number of conferences has proved its worth. It would, however, be a major error of judgement to combine this kind of fair with BioFach. It would damage both the reputation of BioFach and the reputation of organics. You can’t imagine the damage done by a large-scale Chiquita stand with bananas sprayed with pesticides not ten metres away from a BanaFair stand or another organic banana importer, separated only by a wall with an open door. You can think of an endless list of examples like this. Over the last twenty years, BioFach has established a good name for itself in the field of organic criteria. If it doesn’t want to discredit itself and its achievements, it definitely must not combine a sustainability fair with the biggest organic fair in the world.