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Water scarcity: How Suntory is optimizing for beverage production
You won't be surprised to hear that companies that make drinks need a lot of water. Suntory, one of the leading beverage producers in the world, is no exception. However, they have come up with an exceptional response to the issue, according to Shigeaki Kazama , Executive Officer and Division Deputy COO of the Sustainability Management Division at Suntory Holdings..
To offset the water Suntory draws from Japan's underground aquifers, they manage a vast system of forest preserves. They help recharge the resource by maintaining a cool, wet environment that allows groundwater to seep back into the earth rather than run off or evaporate.
"We now manage 22 forest areas that total over 12,000 hectares, which recharge twice the amount of groundwater that we take for our production in Japan," he said during a GZERO Live event organized by the Sustainability Leaders Council, a partnership between Eurasia Group, GZERO Media, and Suntory.
Watch the full livestream conversation: The global water crisis and the path to a sustainable future
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Indigenous people: true guardians of land and oceans
If the earth were a company, who'd you pick to run its assets?
For Hindou Ibrahim, co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, it should be Indigenous people, who have been protecting the land and the oceans far longer than governments. That's what makes them the true guardians of ecosystems.
"We cannot sustain and protect this biodiversity if we do not recognize and respect the rights of indigenous peoples to their land tenure" and access to finance, Ibrahim says in a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Corporations have CEOs. The planet, she adds, should appoint Indigenous peoples as "chief ecological officers" so all "the funding can go to us directly. And we can decide it our way."
Watch the full Global Stage livestream conversation "The Road to 2030: Getting Global Goals Back on Track" .
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"We don't have any right to destroy nature" — Suntory CEO Tak Niinami
In biodiversity circles, many are talking up nature-positive as the new net zero. But for some companies, striving for a world where nature is being restored and is regenerating rather than declining is more than a buzzword.
"We don't have any right to destroy nature," Suntory CEO Tak Niinami says during the livestream discussion "Time for nature: Turning biodiversity risk into opportunity," hosted by GZERO in partnership with Suntory.
For Niinami, corporations need to make money, but also contribute to society. And companies have a lot of know-how they can apply to help reverse biodiversity loss in the future.
"Nature positive is not nature-neutral," he says. "Nature-positive is additional value for us to create for the generation to come."
Learn more about this GZERO Media live discussion: https://www.gzeromedia.com/sustainability
Net zero emissions by 2050 "lacks sense of urgency" — Suntory CEO
Like many other big corporations, Japanese brewer and distiller Suntory want to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that's not enough for CEO Tak Niinami. "It's far away and lacks the sense of urgency," he says. Niinami predicts that especially after COP26 people will be wary of greenwashing, so it's essential for corporations to "to be transparent, showing society what we are doing and how much progress we are making" on climate.
Suntory CEO Tak Niinami spoke during the first of a two-part Sustainability Leaders Summit livestream conversation sponsored by Suntory. Watch here.
Making plastic industry sustainable is corporate self-interest
Plastics are essential for Asia, but for Ian Bremmer the way the industry works right now is incompatible with the region's targets to fight climate change. Very soon, though, he predicts there will be "immense gravitational pull" to do things differently. Once the way Asian companies use plastics now becomes outdated, he says, it's only a matter of time before they change out of their own self-interest. Bremmer spoke during the second of a two-part Sustainability Leaders Summit livestream conversation sponsored by Suntory.
"We just don't have time to mess around" on plastics pollution
Plastic pollution has caused a lot of damage to the environment — including a staggering loss of biodiversity that will soon affect humans. For Climate Bonds Initiative CEO Sean Kidney, the critical way to reverse this trend is to switch all production to biodegradable right now. "It's got to be everything, and we've got to do it fast. We just don't have time to mess around. There's been a lot of talk, a lot of talk for 10 years, not enough action. Whew. Time to change."
Refuse single-use plastics — but not the rest: Aloke Lohia
Refusing single-use plastics is okay, but Aloke Lohia, CEO of Indorama Ventures, believes all other plastics should be given "a fair chance" at recycling. Lohia says that some plastics are already 100 percent reusable, while chemical recycling is "just around the corner." Lohia spoke during the second of a two-part Sustainability Leaders Summit livestream conversation sponsored by Suntory.
Asia will lose land as the planet warms, says IPCC's Ko Barrett
Last August, a landmark IPCC report underscored the urgency of the climate crisis — with big implications for Asia, the region most at risk. Ko Barret, vice president at the IPCC, says Asia should especially watch out for a combination of sea level rise above the global average and a lot more rain than usual that'll together result in shorelines receding along the Mekong delta.
Barrett spoke during the first of a two-part Sustainability Leaders Summit livestream conversation sponsored by Suntory. Watch here.