Earlier this year, I traveled with a team of colleagues from Avery Dennison to the La Mosquitia region of Honduras, a heavily forested, largely roadless area in the country’s northeast corner known as the “Little Amazon.” The reason for our visit? To see how work was progressing under a three year, $600,000 grant that the Avery Dennison Foundation is providing to Rainforest Alliance. The goal is to help stop deforestation and promote businesses related to sustainable forestry.
Flying into one of the more remote areas of La Mosquitia on a small plane was spectacular. The green canopy of the forest rolled out beneath us like a carpet. One could easily see how the rainforest has long been the sustaining force of the area’s indigenous people. But the threats to La Mosquitia were visible too.
We saw the bare, brown patches where the forest had been carelessly cleared for cattle ranching and illegal logging. We saw airstrips cut into the land by drug traffickers. We began to understand how ambitious it is to try to create change in a place with the worst poverty and the greatest biodiversity in Central America.
On the ground, we joined our friends from Rainforest Alliance, as well as officials from local communities and colleagues from Avery Dennison’s operations in Honduras. We spent the next several days visiting the towns of Brus Laguna and La Ceiba, where we met residents and saw how forestry cooperatives, which manage some of the world’s most precious timber stocks, are learning to harvest and process trees more sustainably. We learned that in just under a year, Rainforest Alliance had already turned the funding from the Avery Dennison Foundation into encouraging results: 190 new jobs, $560,000 in sales of sustainably produced wood products and 40,000 hectares of Forest Stewardship Council–certified forest. The project is on track to achieve outcomes several times those by the end of 2017.
We also saw some of the obstacles that the people of La Mosquitia face: a lack of basic infrastructure, like reliable electric power; a shortage of safety expertise and equipment; threats of violence from illegal loggers and gangs; and virtually nonexistent local markets for sustainable wood products. For all the opportunity in La Mosquitia, there was an equal amount of challenge – a jungle-like tangle of social, political and economic factors.
As our group absorbed the complex situation in La Mosquitia, something remarkable happened. We weren’t overwhelmed; we were inspired. And we instinctively began to collaborate. We identified the ways that each of us – business, nonprofit or government entity – could bring our own particular expertise and come together to help the people of La Mosquitia capture opportunities and remove barriers to success.
The energy was contagious. There were no conference rooms, no PowerPoint presentations. Just committed people stepping up, rolling up their sleeves and getting down to the business of solving a common problem. One example: members of Avery Dennison’s retail branding and information solutions team in Honduras volunteered to help a local cooperative operate more safely and productively by providing guidance on electrical work and maintenance for the group’s carpentry workshop.
We didn’t solve all of La Mosquitia’s problems on that trip, of course, but we solved some of them, and we laid the foundation for tackling others, together.
Earth Day is a good reminder that we all have a part to play in protecting our natural resources while ensuring economic opportunity for everyone. All sectors of society must participate: businesses, government, NGOs and individual citizens. Global problems like climate change, deforestation and the scarcity of clean, available fresh water suddenly become far less daunting when we tackle them together. More to the point, it’s only through this kind of collaboration that solutions are possible. The problems are too big, and our world is too interconnected, for it to happen any other way.
We saw that in La Mosquitia. There’s no way we at Avery Dennison can fix the region’s problems alone, with a corporate foundation grant. Rainforest Alliance can’t simply train local workers and hope for the best. Cooperatives can’t operate sustainably without basic resources and knowledge of best practices. Local governments can’t, by themselves, help their people tap into a global economy. But thanks to all of us working together, we’re on the way to accomplishing a great deal.
At Avery Dennison, we’ve made it a priority to build a more sustainable company. This year the company will meet or exceed a number of goals for sourcing paper sustainably, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing landfill waste and more. Soon, we’ll announce new goals that are even more ambitious and far-reaching. By creating innovative, sustainable products and carrying the banner of sustainability in the many industries we serve, we can act as a force for good, encouraging others to reach higher and think bigger in caring for people and the planet. Effecting that kind of change is only possible with the collaboration of partners from every sector.
Later this year, I’ll join many of my peers at COP21 in Paris. While government negotiators hammer out an international agreement on reducing greenhouse gases, corporate leaders will explore how business can better work with governments, NGOs and civil society in tackling what is widely considered the greatest environmental threat of our time. While I’m in the City of Light for what I hope will be a pivotal moment in humanity’s response to climate change, I’ll be thinking of the people of La Mosquitia and the lessons I learned in the rainforest.
I’ll remember that none of us has to solve the Earth’s most pressing problems alone, and that we can do great things when every one of us shows up to help.
Dean Scarborough is the CEO of Avery Dennison. See photos from the Avery Dennison team’s trip to Honduras, and learn more about the company’s commitment to sustainability. Then join the conversation on our blog.
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