April 5 2019 – Through ‘water stewardship’ and SDG 6 and more, UN Global Compact is very active when it comes to ‘water’. Additionally, Heineken, member of UN Global Compact, is too. The vision being to provide clean and accessible water, like mentioned in SDG goal 6. “The world needs to pay more attention to water,” per Jean-François van Boxmeer, CEO of Heineken.
Water is very important for Heineken. Beer exists for 95 out of water. Heineken is working hard to protect water. That is why Heineken has significantly reduced water use over the last decade. Currently they use a third of 5 hectoliter water per hectoliter beer.
Would you like to know more about Heineken’s vision and how they want to achieve their goal? Click here.
Here you will also find more information about the Sustainable Development Goals.
April 15 2019 – Training courses, 3,500 jobs, aid programmes with the prospect of paid employment, starting one’s own business or having access to better living conditions in refugee camps. Fifteen companies committed themselves to this during the Dutch Business Summit on Refugees, which was organised last week at the Rabobank in Utrecht. Global Compact Netwerk Nederland is promoting the Tent Partnership for Refugees, in which the above agreements were made. Companies can join the partnership. Our members Rabobank and Unilever, among others, took the initiative for this meeting in the Netherlands, together with the Tent Partnership. Other companies in our network also committed themselves to concrete commitments: Philips, Randstad, ABN AMRO, Arcadis, ING, Shell and Signify.
Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of the Tent Partnership for Refugees and in daily life CEO of Chobani, the largest producer of Greek yoghurt in the United States, was a keynote speaker. He underlined the enormous importance of the role that the Dutch business community plays in this. Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever and vice president of the global UN Global Compact, stressed that there are now more refugees than ever before. Including refugees in the workforce, also to prevent the loss of a lot of talent, is a good thing to do. It also shows that employees are incredibly enthusiastic and loyal when they work in companies once. According to Wiebe Draijer of the Rabobank, finding enough people is not the problem, but regulations ensure that it takes a long time before refugees are allowed or able to work. The UN sister organisation of our network, the UNHCR, also contributes to attracting positive attention to the refugee issue. Jaime de Bourbon, senior advisor at the UNHCR aimed at promoting partnerships with the private sector, underlines the importance of the efforts of the business community.
Through werkwijzervluchtelingen.nl and various company initiatives, it is promoted that refugees get a job perspective. This initiative of Tent fits in well with this and will hopefully contribute to the goal, namely more refugees who can get to work and more entrepreneurs who take advantage of the opportunities that exist.
April 19 2019 – February 2019 we have started the SDG Pioneer program: a search that aims to acknowledge leaders of the future that – in a remarkable way – use business to advance the SDGs. Last week was the deadline for the young professionals to submit their sustainability story. Now it’s up to our jury to select one of them to be the first Dutch SDG Pioneer!
We are very pleased to announce the wonderful jury that will do the final review of our SDG Pioneer applicants:
Babs Dijkhoorn (GCNL board)
Jan van den Herik (GCNL board)
Hugo van Meijenfeldt (SDG Coördinator, Ministiry of Foreign Affairs)
Eva Rood (Rotterdam School of Management)
Liz de Bruijn (Masterpeace)
On the 31st of May at the latest, we will announce the 2019 SDG Pioneer of The Netherlands. He or she will be formally acknowledged and share his or her story during our event on the 25th of June 2019 from 13:45 till 17:30.
TheResponsible Mining Index 2018 is a fact. That is good news! Minister Kaag launched the ranking list for corporate responsibility regarding mining. A good step forward in regards to ‘human rights’ and the Agenda 2030. Something which Global Compact Network Netherlands spends a lot of attention towards. The Index is based in correlation with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. GCNL previously launched a practical guide about ‘Doing business with respect for human rights’ in collaboration with Shift and Oxfam, which can also be found online under Guide Doing business with respect for human rights. GCNL assembled this guide with the help of ABN AMRO, akzoNobel, KPMG, Philips, Rabobank, Randstad, Shell and Unilever.
The objective index that is currently being presented measures how mining companies perform on six crucial themes, like labor circumstances, environment, economic development and human rights. The index is formatted in rankings in showing to which extent mining companies are corporately responsible. Kaag: ‘Based on this information, those of interest, like labor unions, investors, local residents and governments, can keep track and correct the possible lack of corporate responsibility the mining companies are taking.
The first edition of the ranking lists consists of thirty companies who collectively operate over eight-hundred mines in over forty countries, making their production consist of around a quarter of all worldwide production. Among others, the ten biggest mining companies are addressed in the index. The index is an initiative from the former Nederlands Speciaal Gezant Natuurlijke Hulpbronnen, Jaime de Bourbon de Parme, and is established in collaboration with the Responsible Mining Foundation (RMF). During the launch, Jan-Willem Scheijgrond spoke on behalf of Philips and nonetheless is the chairman of GCNL.
May 17 2019 – Building Change and SDG Charter, together with Global Compact Netwerk Nederland and several other organizations, have organized this event. The event will take place on May 16th in The Hague. During this meeting, the two reports that were launched on 15 May and handed over to the Lower House of Parliament: the ‘Monitor Brede Welvaart en Duurzame Ontwikkelingsdoelen’ of the CBS and PBL and also the third SDG report ‘Nederland Ontwikkelt Duurzaam’, will be discussed.
This launch of the reports will be used to ask ourselves the question: ‘How sustainable is our prosperity? How are the SDGs being implemented in and through the Netherlands and what can we do together for the world we want to see in 2030?
Board member of the steering committee of the SDG Charter Eppy Boschma of the Global Compact Network Netherlands, will give an explanation from an entrepreneurial perspective. She states: ‘The publications we published at the end of 2018, the SDG progress report ‘companies on their way to 2030‘ and, in collaboration with VNO-NCW and MKB-Nederland, ‘Global Challenges, Dutch Solutions‘, form the core of the input from the Dutch business community.
Would you like to be present at this meeting as well? Sign up via this link: https://bit.ly/2WetqMD
