Thank you, Caroline. I agree, and as I just responded to Tomas. I think donors will play a key role in helping individual companies / actors take the results and lessons learned from their programs, and amplify those to other beneficiaries that may be outside the scope of say one company’s supply chain. We need to build a publicly accessible learning platform (where data is secured and anonymized) to be able to analyze at scale interventions that work across conditions / scenarios, so that we can then replicate accordingly.
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Yes. Shared value and win-win mantras have their limits and we can’t ride on the back of them to get to the SDGs. Systems change is harder, messier and involves gains and sacrifices - albeit all for a shared future benefit to our societies. Honesty and transparency will be essential.
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Fundamentally, we are talking about need for very disruptive shift to new business models, which has direct bearing on employability, liklihoods and quality of life. Inclusive business model is part of this transofrmation from ‘business as usual’, BUT we need go much further and much faster. Circular Economy ‘community’ is having profound impact and making substantial porgresss. But room to accelerate and expand.
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Agree that the carrot is more effective than the stick, as enforcement of regulation is rarely in place: for instance in mass fortification of staple foods which is theoretically mandatory in many places, in practice only the larger and more exposed producers are compliant, with added costs and less competitive products which end up costing market shares
I really like the Farmers Lab Income report on what works. I think it is an excellent and ambitious approach. We also feel the need and responsibility to expand our reach to help more smallholder farmers to move them out of poverty but we can not do it alone. My questions who take the lead on bringing all the pieces together, supply chain, donors, input providers, government? I know it should be case by case but scalability will only be achieved with more committed partnerts involved
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Couldn’t agree more Paul. We have to go beyond the individual firm and look at system transformation. Firms have a role to play, but we need coordinated action of players from all sectors to achieve the SDGs.
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This is tough, obviously, so we need to find those sweet spots where we can prototype transformation with a small set of actors, ideally as little as 3.
@ Tomas, These are all good questions and questions that we are working through. We are currently only in the second year of the Lab and have established an Advisory Council in which we’ve begun to pull together different actors including corporates, civil society, academia. We hope in 2020 to be able to expand this to bring in suppliers, input providers, agri-finance institutions as well.
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Thank you to our panelists for a great exchange of ideas, insights and examples on this important topic. We have had over 900 people view the discussion today. The live element of the discussion will now end but you can still continue to post.
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Agree completely with the need for systems transformation more than one-off solutions!
Thanks everyone for a great conversation- I’ve been forcing myself to be in listening mode. But lots of great comments and questions.
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We will be combining your inputs today with input generated from companies and experts through interviews and roundtable discussions and will be producing a set of insights and recommendations for DFID to draw on as it considers the development and design of its next generation of programming and partnerships with business. The output report will also be shared externally. You can find more information on the Challenge here: https://businessfightspoverty.org/articles/challenges/what-more-can-international-donors-do-to-increase-business-contribution-to-the-sdgs/
Thanks to all for insights and news and to BfP for hosting
Thank you for hosting and including us in the discussion!
Thanks for the conversation!
Thank you Richard and BFP! I look forward to the report!
https://www.agrilinks.org/ and the https://beamexchange.org/ are great places to post learnings with the broader Agriculture and systems change community.
Hello all - My name is Mario Elias, I am responsible of Shared Value and Community Development at CEMEX.
Public-private collaboration is fundamental to address societal challenges, and the range of posibilites may include from public policy advocacy and making, subsidy, donation and impact investment.
In Mexico, the national government created a public policy on affordable housing that allows local, state and federal government, micro-finance entities, social entrepreneurs and all size companies to partner through to address lack of housing and quality in three different ways: 1) by providing the financial solution in addition to a subsidy from government, 2) by building the homes and 3) by supervising the entire housing project.
At CEMEX, we created an inclusive model that allow us to come to play role within this ecosystem, we call it: Construyo Contigo (“We build together”)
About the public program (Spanish):
https://www.gob.mx/conavi/acciones-y-programas/programa-de-vivienda-social-2019-194345
About Construyo Contigo (English) https://www.businesscalltoaction.org/sites/default/files/resources/bcta_casestudy_cemex_piac_final.pdf
This public program has benefited thousand of families and mobilized million of dollars.
At CEMEX, we have a barrier when international government donors may find opportunities to collaborate:
- Co-investment: In Mexico, for instance, almost 9 million households live need a house or update their current one. And around 83% earn less than 10 dollars a day. Government donors could potentially partner with companies by:
- Providing warranty fund through micro-finance entities to incentivize loan
- Donating a piece of the entire cost of housing
- Supporting capabilities development among ecosystem actors
- Co-invest with companies to expand operations