Restoring the ecosystem has become an important issue that we can no longer ignore like in the past. This is one of the goals of creating sustainability to pass on to our children in the future.
June is a meaningful month for environmental workers. In addition to June 5 being World Environment Day, June 8 is also World Oceans Day. This year, World Environment Day focuses on Ecosystem Restoration. Admin had the opportunity to talk to 3 people who work in the environment.
- Mr. Somjetana Phaskanon, Director of Sustainability Development, Office of Sustainability Management, Governance and Corporate Communications, Charoen Pokphand Group Co., Ltd.
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Natsuda Phumijamnong, Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies, Mahidol University
- Mr. Romtham Khamnuarak, co-founder of Environman page
All three of them are working to drive the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG 15: Life on land) , which is in line with the key issues of this year’s World Environment Day. After reading, we guarantee that you will not miss important global trends.
Maintain ECOSYTEM, take care of BIODIVERSITY
First, let’s understand the concept of “ecosystem.” Dr. Natsuda explains that an ecosystem consists of living things and non-living things that interact and support each other. The easiest way to think of it is clean air, green forests, the sea, waterfalls, and living things, which are humans and animals. You can see that humans are just one component of an ecosystem.
Importantly, we must rely on ecosystems or nature that work together as a system, such as terrestrial ecosystems and others, which have biodiversity. Therefore, conserving natural diversity means conserving the ecosystem as best as possible.
Somjet added that the private sector is now placing more importance on biodiversity due to the worsening environmental situation and the importance of sustainability organizations such as the UN, which is developing a framework called the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will lead to various practices that may affect business operations.
In addition, the well-known sustainability indicator Dow Jones Sustainability Index has also included biodiversity as one of its sustainability criteria for organizations in agribusiness, food, retail and 16 other industries, indicating that this issue is becoming increasingly important.
Somjana also added that the World Economic Forum once studied and estimated that the world’s GDP of approximately 44 trillion US dollars comes from businesses that rely on nature. If there is a loss of natural resources, it will be a business risk. But on the positive side, if natural resources can be properly used, there is a chance that the global business sector will be able to increase income and create more than 400 million jobs in the next ten years.
When the new generation looks at environmental challenges
Mr. Romtham of Environman, an environmental startup, is a representative of the new generation who has risen up to push for environmental issues through online communication. He sees the challenge in this matter as the use of our own resources that is like slowly committing suicide, whether it is destroying natural areas that are animal habitats, which reduces the area that absorbs carbon dioxide, reduces oxygen production, and cuts off clean water sources, or hunting animals, which causes some animals that are important to the ecosystem to start disappearing, including creating pollution, waste, garbage, and toxins.
Ultimately, the problem of climate change from increased greenhouse gases has led to more extreme hot and dry weather, to the point that some say the world is now entering its sixth mass extinction. The Sustainable Development Goals on protecting ecosystems and biodiversity are therefore very important in order for us to move away from resource-intensive systems and turn to helping protect humans and all living things so that they can survive.
Integrating nature protection into business processes
When this issue becomes an urgent issue, the private sector that moves forward first will be the leader. Mr. Somjetana revealed that this is an important sustainability issue for Charoen Pokphand Group in the group’s sustainability strategy.
This has been and will continue to be an important issue in the next 10 years, demonstrating the continuity of this work, which most people may not have been aware of before because the Group works from within the organization to the outside. It started by raising awareness among executives, led by Mr. Suphachai Chearavanont, Chairman of the Executive Committee of CP Group, as the main leader and conveying this idea to employees in the organization. Importantly, it has integrated the protection and care of nature into the business process, with the goal that the main agricultural raw materials of Charoen Pokphand Group must be 100% traceable, not coming from sources that destroy resources on land or in the sea. It has used various technologies to enable traceability and annual monitoring and measurement, as well as planning how much progress each year must make. The Group has already achieved this goal.
“Sobkhun Model” revives forests, develops sustainable quality of life for farmers
Mr. Somjet also shared his past work experience that the private sector with potential can promote and create impact in this matter and can also respond to both ecosystem restoration, ecosystem maintenance, biodiversity increase and poverty problems at the same time.
For example,
the Sobkhun Model Project in Tha Wang Pha District, Nan Province, where Charoen Pokphand Group has solved the problem of barren mountain areas by having villagers change their farming to grow coffee, a high-value cash crop, along with mixed planting of local economic trees instead of growing corn for animal feed. The project adopted the royal initiative of King Rama IX as the basis for creating forests to generate income and also linked it to the development of water systems. The Group supported knowledge, product development, and distribution channels until the villagers now have coffee bean processing factories in the form of community enterprises to sell their products to the market. This project has measured the results every year, including income, the number of trees that have increased, and the forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
The Sobkhun Model Project is a model that
Charoen Pokphand Group will expand to other areas in the future.
Environmental knowledge must keep pace with the changing world.
In terms of academics, Dr. Natsuda pointed out that educational institutions are trying to follow up on cooperation at both the national and international levels. Previously, there was the Millennium Goals, which included biodiversity and the benefits from natural resources. But now we may hear a new term called ecological services, which invites us to consider how we benefit from ecosystem services, both directly and indirectly.
Since educational institutions have a duty to provide knowledge that is up to date with changes, they have tried to integrate academic work on biodiversity and climate change into various curricula, which were previously absent, and emphasized implementation in areas, communities, and parks, as well as integrating opinions from agencies operating in the area with theory. Educational institutions also play a role in organizing short-term training or providing knowledge to sub-district administrative organizations in the network or cooperating with CSR projects of private organizations, considering that learning about the environment is considered a promotion of lifelong learning.
And when talking about ecosystems or biodiversity, we have to look at it as an area. So if there is a One Map database that is Big Data so that all agencies can use the same information, it should be possible to achieve the goal correctly. At present, it is seen that the situation of SDG 15 in our country in the government sector has not clearly increased or decreased. Part of the reason may be because there are many agencies that are working as hosts on this matter.
Accelerate communication with the new generation, bring nature to social media.
The new generation like Mr. Romtham sees that in this era where social media is involved in daily life, it is an opportunity to communicate with people widely. However, because the platform forces it to be fast, easy, and concise, Environman tries to communicate about the environment in an easy-to-understand way to make people see what the problems are and how to solve them. Or how important is our consumption behavior or lifestyle?
For example, providing information to reduce waste, separating waste, and donating leftover items at home for reuse, which is a way to circulate resources, as well as driving practical actions, such as pushing through the change.org channel to make the stone-climbing bird, an endangered species, a protected animal, going out to collect waste from various environmental sources to prevent it from remaining and harming the ecosystem, organizing Friday for Future to campaign on global warming, with various sectors coming to discuss the problems and solutions that each sector is already doing, and coming to seek cooperation in working together, with a good trend seen that the new generation is becoming more interested in this issue, but may not yet know how to do it.
Charoen Pokphand Group sets vision of Living in Harmony with Nature by 2050
When talking about the future direction of ecosystem care and biodiversity, Mr. Somjetana said that Charoen Pokphand Group sees this as related to other issues, namely climate resilience , or adaptation to climate change, which has a goal of Net Zero , or being an organization with net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.
Linked to the Circular Economy , which has 3 sub-goals: Zero food waste , reducing the loss of agricultural and food products from the source to the consumer to zero; Zero waste to landfill , making food waste go to landfill zero; and Sustainable Packaging, making plastic packaging used for food preservation reusable, recyclable, compostable, or bio-degradable.
In addition, there is another interconnected goal: reduce water usage from various sources by 20% from the base year of 2020 in the next 10 years, and there is a project to promote community access to water in conjunction with various resource conservation projects. All of this will be expanded throughout the supply chain of Charoen Pokphand Group. Importantly, within the next 10 years, Charoen Pokphand Group will focus on working with various sectors in the form of partnerships, whether it is the private sector, the government sector, civil society sector, and educational institutions, because having friends who share the same ideology and goals will be a factor in success in helping drive this issue forward.
Do it now, get immediate results because everything is connected.
Khun Romtham reflected that what he learned was important: the massive use of resources in the past was not the answer to survival in the future. There are studies that predict that the future will be much worse if there are no changes in the present. Therefore, we should be mindful of every action, whether it is consumption or production, and question the source of the product to see if it is damaging to nature, creating waste, or if it is recyclable. Asking how everything we use in our daily lives affects the environment is the first thing that everyone can do immediately. In the future, I personally want to create more action by cooperating with various sectors to create real action.
Dr. Natsuda said that if we want to work on this issue at the root cause, we must give importance to environmental education, which must start from the young children level, in order to create an understanding of how everything is connected and interrelated. If something is lost, what impact will it have? Today, technology is fast, the population is increasing, and natural resources are decreasing. We must come together to manage it, using technology to be more beneficial, just like Charoen Pokphand Group is doing. She concluded that it is impossible for us to develop without looking at the ecosystem, because the ecosystem and biodiversity are a great treasure trove that benefits the world.
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“We Shift…World Change” program
Chapter “Biodiversity and Sustainable Terrestrial Ecosystems”
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