If the world wants a climate deal and new development agenda that's good for the economy, for the poor, and for businesses, the path forward needs to include forests.
— Paul Polman
When the climate hurts, people and businesses also feel the pain.
System-wide changes rely on a critical mass of interested parties, all willing to enter into deep partnerships and collaborations, founded on new levels of trust and a commitment to action, not debate.
Taking proactive action on climate change is essential to ensuring that Unilever remains a viable business in the future. We will also reap the benefits in innovation, new product development, and cost efficiencies.
The great challenge of the 21st century is to provide good standards of living for 7 billion people without depleting the earth's resources or running up massive levels of public debt. To achieve this, government and business alike will need to find new models of growth that are in both environmental and economic balance.
If too many people feel excluded from the system and cannot access its benefits, they will ultimately rebel against it.
If we tackle deforestation in the right way, the benefits will be far-reaching - greater food security, improved livelihoods for millions of small farmers and indigenous people, more prosperous rural economies, and above all, a more stable climate.
Looking at the world through a sustainability lens not only helps us 'future proof' our supply chain, it also fuels innovation and drives brand growth.
The world faces enormous human development and environmental challenges, from poverty and disease to food security and climate change.
Leadership is not a contest of likeability. Leadership often boils down to making the tougher choices. You are not in a popularity contest.
P&G started in 1837, Nestle in 1857. These companies have been around for so long because they are in tune with society. They are very responsible companies, despite the challenges that they sometimes deal with, all the criticism they get.
Unilever brings together the resources and experience of a multinational company alongside our deep local roots, which enables us to grow a genuinely African consumer goods business.
Africa is a vibrant, varied continent with a growing consumer base.
Renewable energy could reduce emissions but also create jobs and improve public health.
As a consumer goods company serving billions of consumers every day, Unilever understands the drivers and motivations that create the norms that lie behind people's behaviour.
My own fear, if I have one myself, is a fear of being obsolete. This is a world that changes very fast, and one of the main human desires is to belong to, to be part of, something. It's probably one of our greatest needs next to oxygen.
I think the most important thing is to achieve what you set out to achieve. Just being a CEO in itself is not success. I would not relate success to a title or a position.
To achieve policy stability and certainty, we need to establish a meaningful price on carbon and cut the billions of dollars spent each year on fossil-fuel subsidies, along with well-structured financial tools and rules.
At Unilever, we operate in 190 countries with two billion people using our products daily. We take climate seriously because we know that it impacts those two billion people - and that means it impacts us, too.
The commitment to put an end to illegal deforestation and develop sustainable alternatives for commodities like palm oil and soy, for example, is an inspiring illustration of what can be achieved when governments and industry partners come together determined to bring about transformational market-wide changes.
Our political leaders have great responsibilities, but as with many situations in life, people often rise or fall to meet your expectations. Our responsibility as citizens is to expect our leaders to lead and to give them enough support so that they may do so.
Addressing the weaknesses of capitalism will require us, above all, to do two things: first, to take a long-term perspective, and second, to re-set the priorities of business.
Large-scale deforestation can be prevented while increasing food production through better, smarter agriculture.
The planet's forests are essential for life.
Left unchecked, climate change risks not only making the poorest poorer, but pulling the emerging middle classes back into poverty, too.
I actually am a capitalist, and I believe in shareholders. But I believe in them as a result of what I do, not as a reason for what I'm doing. The same with profits - profits alone cannot be an objective. It has to have a purpose.
At the end of the day, people will follow you or people will be energised by you if they buy into your vision or purpose. So the most important thing is to be true to yourself. That's why I would say to be a great leader - you, first and foremost, have to be a great human being. And sharing that purpose and sharing the values.
I've always been bothered by systems that don't work for everybody. It doesn't mean we're all equal. I am not naive about that. But we should have a more inclusive society.
Africa's vibrancy and entrepreneurial spirit is un-matched. There's huge potential here to grow business, create jobs, and to improve living standards.
It is our responsibility as businesses to deliver ambitious solutions and technologies to bring us low-carbon, inclusive and sustainable growth.
Runaway climate change would condemn millions to a life of poverty and cause us to fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. This is not an acceptable outcome.
The ideal is a world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead, unconstrained by harmful norms and stereotypes.
I work a lot with blind people in my spare time outside of Unilever, and I count my blessings every day.
Companies are the first to see the costs of climate change.
Leading businesses are making large strides in ensuring a sustainable future, but ultimately, they can only do so much.
Practically, systemic thinking can be used to identify problems, analyze their boundaries, design strategies and policy interventions, forecast and measure their expected impacts, implement them, and monitor and evaluate their successes and failures.
Permissible growth in the future has to be based on sustainable and equitable models.
Climate change is sometimes misunderstood as being about changes in the weather. In reality it is about changes in our very way of life.
I believe that the financial crisis of 2008/9 exposed more a lack of ethics and morality - especially by the financial sector - rather than a problem of regulation or criminality. There were, of course, regulatory lessons to be learned, but at heart, there was a collective loss of our moral compass.
Providing financial incentives for both local communities and national governments to conserve and restore forests also makes sense. It will put an economic value on these precious natural resources and drive the right behaviours from both government and business.
We need more food, more forests, better livelihoods for smallholder farmers, and lower emissions. If we want any of them, we must have all of them.
We cannot eliminate poverty without enabling developing countries to engage more people in economic activity that use natural resources, and we cannot resolve runaway climate change without creating wealth in a more equitable and less carbon intensive way.
I wanted to be a priest. I could have done that. I wanted to be a doctor. I could have done that. Circumstances didn't lead me to it, so my fallback option was business. I wasn't really motivated to this.
Unilever has been around for 100-plus years. We want to be around for several hundred more years.
My father worked in a tyre factory. My mother worked as a teacher.
Every region in the world faces challenges - and Africa is hugely diverse, so its own challenges are varied.
Businesses and governments need to work together and make a joint commitment if we want to address climate change effectively and quickly.
When women are provided with training and entrepreneurial opportunities in distribution networks, they become role models in their communities, showing it is possible to challenge limiting norms and stereotypes, and to succeed.
For Unilever, investing in women is an imperative. The business and social cases for doing so are inextricably linked.
My career has been a level of serendipity all along. I've never planned anything out more than a few years. All the places we lived - the 12, 13 countries - and the companies I worked for were a combination of circumstances.
