The Union for ethical biotrade biodiversity standard integration in company reporting systems

(1)

(2)

1. Brief Context

1.1 Client Overview

The Union for Ethical BioTrade (henceforth UEBT) was founded in 2007 as a membership-based non-profit organization responsible for stimulating and overseeing sustainable sourcing practices. UEBT is devoted to promoting conservation, sustainability and equitable sharing, and pursues to improve social and environmental conditions essential to prosperity. Currently UEBT works with companies from the cosmetics, food and natural pharma sectors across three different continents. (Appendix 1) Members encompass 29 trading, 13 provisional and 16 affiliate members. Trading members are those who meet the membership conditions and obligations to ensure gradual compliance with the Ethical BioTrade standard, whereas provisional members are those who have successfully passed the UEBT entry audit but are still in the process of developing their work-plan to reach compliance with the standards. Affiliate members are not directly involved in trading but instead are involved in supporting the promotion of UEBT and the principles of Ethical BioTrade. (UEBT, 2013)

In order to become a trading member, companies are required to develop a Biodiversity Management System to promote gradual implementation of the Ethical BioTrade standards throughout their entire supply chains. These standards consist of the following: “conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from the use of biodiversity, socio-economic stability, compliance with national and international legislation, respect for the rights of actors involved in BioTrade activities, and clarity about land tenure”. (UEBT, 2013)

Through its union, UEBT aims to foster the bond that companies have with their sourcing communities, create employment, contribute to local development and help preserve local ecologies.

(4)

1.2 Sustainability Initiatives Overview

Global efforts to promote corporate pro-active solutions regarding sustainable development and biodiversity conservation began to be addressed during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (UNCTAD, 2013) Following this, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was created in 1992 proposing “the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of the components of biological diversity and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources”. (United Nations, 1992) Currently, CBD is the main body responsible to ensure conservation of biodiversity and to promote the principles of Ethical Biotrade. In 1996, UNCTAD created the Biotrade Initiative in order to promote the integration of developing countries and to support sustainable development through trade and investment in biodiversity. The Biotrade activities seek the objectives of the CBD, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the Commission on Sustainable Development. The UNCTAD provides Biotrade guiding principles that are used as a basis for other verification frameworks. (UEBT, 2013)

Following most of these global developments, some organizations were founded in order to provide sustainable reporting guidance at the corporate level. The most known and most widely adopted within corporations is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. (Searcy, 2012) The GRI is a non-profit organization pioneer in developing a sustainability reporting framework. (GRI, 2013) It provides a set of 79 sustainability indicators that helps companies in measuring its sustainable performance. Currently, it is applied over 1,000 companies worldwide in numerous sectors, including food, energy, chemicals, and cosmetics, among others. (Searcy, 2012)

Another important sustainability initiative for business is the United Nations Global Compact created in 2000. It assists the private sector in the development of sustainable business models by providing practical frameworks. Currently it includes more than 7,000 businesses. (UNGC, 2013)

(5)

1.3 Current Client Situation

Biodiversity standard integration in company reporting systems

The UEBT indicators

The UEBT Secretariat developed a set of indicators in order to facilitate the implementation of membership obligation requirements. The indicators are classified into two main categories: implementation and outcomes/outputs indicators. (Appendix 2) These indicators provide both UEBT and member companies with insight into the scope of the application of the UEBT standard, as well as the potential impact on biodiversity in the short-and long-term management.

Currently, member companies are required to report to UEBT on the progress made on the implementation of the Ethical BioTrade standard on an annual basis. Further, an independent audit takes place every three years to track the progress made by member companies in complying with UEBT targets and membership obligations. (UEBT, 2013)

Problem Statement

UEBT trading members are very diverse in terms of size and supply chain complexity. Hence, the process of gathering and reporting information required by UEBT represent different challenges for each company. Although large corporate members like Natura do not encounter any relevant obstacle regarding the reporting process, the majority defines it as complex and time consuming. Furthermore, members express difficulty in understanding the indicators itself and the link between them and other corporate initiatives, since this specific information is not always directly relevant for their day-to-day operations. Consequently, reporting these indicators does not represent a top priority and corporate members perceive it as an additional administrative burden.

Thus, there is a clear need to make the indicators more useful for member companies, so that it becomes an attractive internal resource for management. The ultimate goal of UEBT is that member companies adopt these indicators into their day-to-day practices.

(6)

1.4 The business project challenge

The objective of the business project was to identify a manner in which the information needs of UEBT and the information practices of member companies could be aligned in order to make the indicators a more attractive internal management resource and facilitate their adoption by current and potential members. This would ultimately facilitate companies in consistently adhering to UEBT standards and at the same time support their own operations and decision-making processes.

The most challenging part was to provide practical recommendations aligned with the specific requirements of our client since in our opinion the implementation of a tool, such as the balanced scorecard, could contribute to a greater administrative burden.

(7)

2. Reflection on the Work Done

2.1 Original Approach

The original approach to develop the business project was influenced by the structure suggested in our briefing with Bertjan Bouman, our company coach, and Maria Julia Oliva, Senior Adviser on access and benefit sharing. The research problem specified by them was rather ambiguous and led to some uncertainties in defining the real problem. As it was suggested we should identify the information practices implemented by corporate members in order to align them with the information needs of UEBT. In this initial stage, we assumed that our client expected that we would develop or change the current UEBT indicators and provide a new reporting framework.

Thus, in order to define clearly our research problem, we needed firstly to gain knowledge and insights into the concept of biodiversity and sustainability indicators. Hence, we conducted an academic research in specialized journals and conducted some interviews with field experts, namely with Willen Ferwerda, a leading professional and strategic policy maker in ecosystems and biodiversity issues; Cristiane de Moraes, the UEBT Brazilian representative; and Stéphanie Paquin, UEBT Programme Officer: standards and verification. Throughout this research we conclude that biodiversity is an extreme complex concept and we understood why corporate members “struggle” in gathering this type of information. Furthermore, it became clear that the experts that develop those indicators lack sufficient knowledge and experience in management.

Secondly, it was necessary to obtain proficiency knowledge into performance management systems and more specifically into sustainability management systems; how these systems are designed, implemented and their evolution over time in order to understand the challenges that companies face when using these systems for gathering and communicating sustainability data.

In order to corroborate information obtained from the desk research and have access to a wider range of internal information, our intention was to conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews with all the trading members - in-depth interviews

(8)

addressing companies from all the different sectors in order to include the respective members’ characteristics in our analysis. Our ultimate goal was to understand what were the reporting systems currently used by member companies and the type and frequency of the information gathered. However, as we moved along to later stages in our research it became evident that the lack of information would pose some difficulties to our progress. The only source of information related to the member companies was the one available in their official websites. It is important to mention that most of the members do not dispose reports or other type of documents that could have been relevant to our research. Furthermore, UEBT did not provide us internal documents or audit reports for analysis and it had limited the contact between the team and the relevant sources (i.e. stakeholders in their network). Hence, we could not contact directly the trading members and we only had access to the information available in the Internet. Moreover, the only person we were allowed to contact was Bertjan, who had to forward our emails to the respective personnel, which made the communication process very time consuming.

These factors made our process a bit frustrating, since we could not perform according to what we had defined previously in our research proposal. We all felt that our project was compromised.

2.2 How did it evolve over time? Why?

At the beginning of April, we had our first meeting with Rik Kutsch Lojenga, the UEBT Executive Director. We presented our findings and discussed our concerns regarding the progress of the project. At this later stage, Rik said that they were interested in a more exploratory type of research, largely focused on a review of the literature available. The goal of the project was not to develop or change UEBT indicators or to provide a new performance framework, as we thought in the early stage of our research. Instead, the main goal of this project was to set the stage for further research. Thus, Rik specifically asked us to provide a critical analysis of the theory related with existing tools that might facilitate the integration of sustainability indicators into corporate performance management systems. Additionally, he also asked us to identify the challenges in implementing those tools in SMEs, since the majority of the trading members are representative of this category.

(9)

As we stressed the urgency of gathering information regarding the internal reporting systems of the corporate members, Rik scheduled interviews with ten member companies in ‘The Beauty of Sourcing with Respect’ Conference held in Paris at the end of the month.

Hence, this meeting represented an important step in our research, since it was possible to narrow the scope of our project by re-defining the initial research problem and understand clearly the needs and wants of our client.

Following this, our team assigned different tasks for the different team members. One group was responsible for the academic research and the other to prepare and conduct the interviews.

The theoretical research was conducted through a systematic approach, where publications over the last twelve years were analyzed. Regarding the tools to integrate sustainability indicators into reporting systems, we decided to narrow the research to tools that might be implemented or adapted by trading members, taking into account its characteristics. The identified tools were the balanced scorecard and the Sustainability Evaluation and Reporting System (SERS). Finally, we analyzed the critical elements for the implementation of those tools in the specific case of SMEs. Regarding the empirical research, our main purpose was not only to gain an insight into their current reporting systems but also to understand the difficulties that they encounter in reporting the UEBT indicators as well as understanding their motivations in joining the union and their perceptions of being a member.

Although the content of the interviews was informed beforehand some of the interviewees were not prepared or they were not the ones responsible to deal with those issues within the company. Moreover, the interviews were rather short which affected the depth and comprehensiveness of the answers given. However, the main findings were linked to market reports on management reporting practices and estimate to what extend the needs and obstacles found by UEBT members differ from the business average.

Besides this analysis, we also decided to carry out an analysis of non-member companies in order to understand the practical applicability of the sustainability indices and reporting systems analyzed in the literature. The filter applied to select the

(10)

sample was to choose MNEs and SMEs recognized by the best practices in sustainability reporting systems.

Finally, as a result of the limitations mentioned previously, the project turned out to be of a highly qualitative nature. Although we had some brainstorm sessions at the last stage of our project, we were forced to provide somewhat general recommendations instead of more practical pieces of advice. However, we tried to give some guidance regarding the design and implementation of a sustainability reporting system by taking into account the corporate members’ characteristics.

2.3 What are the main limitations to the approach

used?

Our approach had two main limitations. The first one is related with our empirical research due to the fact that the necessary factual information was not disclosed. The second limitation is related with the fact that our analysis was mainly focused in desk research. Hence, we found unclear linkages and a great generalizability. Moreover, there are no approaches that can be generally applied to UEBT members since they differ in terms of size, organizational structure, industry and stakeholder demands. Although we did an exhaustive desk research and we tried to extrapolate that information by making linkages with the findings with the interviews conducted and the non-member analysis, it was still necessary to have a clear insight into the internal reporting systems of the trading members to be able to provide more concrete recommendations.

2.4 What could have been done differently?

As mentioned previously our research was mainly focused on desk research that led to a more theoretical approach. Basically we adjusted the development of our research to our client’s specific requirements instead of providing additional critical analysis. Nonetheless the client was satisfied with our project, it was clear that there was still space for improvement. When extrapolating the information obtained from empirical research and the meetings with the union, it is clear that there is a demanding need for UEBT in providing fertile ground for corporate learning and global awareness. In this section some recommendations are proposed in order to reinforce UEBT value

(11)

proposition. Herein, they are presented into two sections: a program to enhance and foster corporate learning and some initial practical recommendations to build and implement a marketing strategy. It is highlighted, in particular, the competencies and resources that UEBT can bring to its members, including field expertise, the value that UEBT can add to its members through the legitimacy with civil society players and governments. (Dahan et. al, 2009) I believe that this could be the first step towards their current goal, which is aligning the information needs of UEBT and the information practices of member companies while attracting potential corporate members and expand their actions to an individual level.

Corporate Learning

Corporate learning is an essential tool to empower employees. It creates and delivers value while minimizes costs and risks, especially in developing countries. It creates clarity around competencies and consequently develops motivation and enhances overall performance. (Dahan et. al, 2009) Hence, it allows employees to engage effectively in change management. IT companies, such as Dell, provide training programs of success that is translated in its high retaining rates and employee’s motivation. Dell provides a wide range of technical training programs, fully customized as well as e-learning courses. (Dell, 2013)

Obstacles faced by UEBT trading members

Our empirical research revealed that some members, namely the ones with more complex supply chains find it difficult to measure all the indicators that UEBT requires. The reasons behind were the following: variety in the indicators, level of detail and the difficulty in obtaining the necessary data from all the suppliers. The majority companies explained that the traceability of their products throughout the entire supply chain is a very time consuming and complex process. Furthermore, they mentioned the employees’ knowledge gap regarding not only the indicators itself but also in understanding the benefits of reporting in sustainability, which generates a lack of commitment and lack of motivation and consequently the difficulty to collect information from all the departments due to the resilience showed by the employees towards change.

(12)

Another issue is the lack of information related to membership. It was stated by most of the members that when they try to involve other suppliers or companies, they find difficult to explain what Ethical Biotrade means and what UEBT stands for.

Implementation of a corporate learning program

As mentioned above, the knowledge gap is an evident obstacle to integrate UEBT indicators into internal reporting systems. Hence, it is important that UEBT and its trading members combine and leverage their strengths in order to achieve their organizational goals more fully.

UEBT staff includes highly qualified personnel in areas of economics of development, law, biology, environmental issues and finance. Furthermore, it has “on the ground” facilities with some offices in Brazil, The Netherlands, France and Switzerland. UEBT also counts with the support of the United Nations since it seeks the objectives of CBD.

UEBT has definitely the capacity to develop a program that would empower its corporate members by educating its employees through regular coaching support and interactive workshops, focused mainly on companies that encounter more difficulties in gathering and reporting information.

Program of technical guidance in three main steps:

• Certified training introducing sustainability issues and UEBT indicators. Corporate members lack critical knowledge regarding biodiversity since it is a very complex issue and the terminology used by NGOs is very specific. In this phase UEBT should also emphasize the internal and external benefits for companies in being a member.

• Customized consultancy: Insights on reporting management systems: challenges, opportunities and benefits on reporting. Introduce them to what makes a good performance measurement system and underlining what critical issues should be taken into account as well as the existing tools for integrating sustainability indicators.

• Ongoing coaching support: workshops and e-learning to the employees in the units of the companies.

(13)

Furthermore, remote support should also be provided in order to address specific issues through online conference calls and emails. To measure the impact of the program, UEBT should develop regular interviews and surveys with its members to keep on track of their performance and level of satisfaction. For instance, the ten interviews that were conducted during the business project represented the first direct feedback from the members.

In a first phase, UEBT can provide learning services to its current members since they already face some difficulties as it was mentioned previously. However, UEBT in a later stage should provide this type of services to other companies that deal with natural resources. This is a way of acting more actively in encouraging other companies to engage in UEBT membership, gaining stakeholder confidence and increase its revenues.

Marketing Strategy

Fairtrade certification and ethical consumption overview

Over the last decade, the sales of fair trade goods and market penetration grew significantly by reaching the mainstream developed countries. Another indication of growing consumer engagement is the consumer awareness regarding ethical products and the emergence of “certiﬁed community groups” supporting the model. (Nicholls, 2010) Moreover, Fair trade is extending ethical consumption. Ethical consumption is defined as “an economic space where consumers buy products that have added social or environmental value above other competing purchase options”. (Cho&Krassen, 2013) Reports in the last twelve years mapped substantial growth in ethical consumption. The total market for ethical goods and services continues to grow across all developed countries, in some regions by as much as 20% per annum and the number of consumers that judge themselves as “green” or ethical has grown as well. The exponential growth in sales of Fair Trade products brought new ways of marketing campaigns. (Nicholls, 2010)

(14)

The case of UEBT

Trading members stressed the importance of communicating its corporate social initiatives to all the stakeholders involved, namely suppliers and customers. Furthermore, they also stated the importance of understanding the financial benefit of being an UEBT member. They explicitly mentioned a certification label as a communication tool for their consumers and a way to differentiate themselves from competitors. Also, in our several meetings with UEBT, Rik told us that it was difficult to make corporate members perceive the fact of engaging in sustainability reporting as a financial benefit and as a competitive advantage. Hence, the implementation of a UEBT certification label is crucial.

Social Marketing overview

Social Marketing was originally defined as the “design, implementation and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution, and marketing research.” (Kotler&Zaltman, 1971:5) Although it has its roots on traditional marketing, social marketing has unique features that should be taking into account before developing a social marketing plan. It is necessary to analyze the target and the most relevant media platforms that can be used according to the different needs. The use of marketing tools applied to social causes is important to build a positive image of the organization and to communicate its vision and strategy. Preliminary academic research ﬁndings suggest that consumers are receptive to cause-related marketing, which can contribute to achieve competitive advantage, enhance reputation, while increasing the number of followers to its cause and attract other members. (Trimble&Rifon, 2006)

NGOs and other organizations, such as Amnesty International, CARE, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Save the Children, World Wide Fund for Nature had engineered great and powerful marketing campaigns by using marketing tools such as social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube which made them building a strong position in the global political, social, economic and business environment. (Dahan et. al, 2009)

(15)

Those tools are used as a platform for advertising social campaigns and initiatives, to denounce bad corporate practices and generate global awareness. It is also used as a forum of discussion where people can share their opinions and concerns.

The use of social media would be important for UEBT in order to build a positive image and spread the word amongst both corporations and individuals. It would be a way to increase B2B communication effectiveness while promoting the trading members by emphasizing their compliance with ethical biotrade standards. Furthermore UEBT can create a special page on its website to appreciate the uniqueness of every member in comparison to companies that do not engage in sustainability practices.

(16)

3. Reflection on the Learning

3.1 Previous knowledge

From the courses undertaken during my master studies, the following were the most relevant for the development of the business project:

• Strategic Management Consultancy – Although I did not apply directly concrete frameworks or models due to the nature of my research project, the course content helped me to adopt a structured and pragmatic approach to the definition of the problem while understanding the client’s needs. Moreover, it was also during this course that I learnt how to design a presentation to the client – a skill that it was critical to communicate in an effective way our results to UEBT.

• Corporate Social Responsibility – The content learnt during this course gave

me the first insights into the role of corporations towards social and environmental issues and their reasons to engage in social initiatives.

• Sustainable international business – During this course I learnt about strategic

frameworks for assessing the global corporate impact regarding social and environmental changes. This knowledge was essential for understanding corporate strategies that try to contribute positively and adapt to the opportunities and challenges evolving from a changing market environment.

3.2 New Knowledge

Through the development of the business project I gained proficiency knowledge into biodiversity, corporate social responsibility and sustainability accounting issues. Moreover, I understood not only the importance of measuring the corporate impact and influence of industries that deal with natural products, but also how to measure it and the available tools to integrate sustainability into internal reporting systems, more specifically the balanced scorecard and its different approaches. I also learnt more about SMEs and the challenges and obstacles that they face in emerging countries in such a competitive business environment.

Finally, the opportunity to develop a project for an NGO in opposition to the projects already developed for some companies in the scope of courses during the master,

(17)

gave me an insight into a different reality in terms of organizational structure and the challenges that this type of organizations face.

3.3 Personal Experience

The developed international business project represented a fundamental experience in my formation as an individual, student and future professional. The challenge of working for a “real” business problem with practical applicability with a “real” organization, as well as the opportunity to work in a multicultural team forced myself to think beyond my habitual thinking patterns, which stimulated me to think about new ways of tackling problems. Furthermore, working continuously in a team for a longer period gave us the opportunity to work in new ways and new levels, which helped me to understand the different roles we played within a team.

Individual Role

The business project was definitely a good experience to understand my strengths and my role within a team from a higher-level perspective.

I believe that one of my key strengths is flexibility. Working in a multicultural team is a great opportunity to learn but it can be also challenging. Hence, it is important to manage and be aware of the differences when working in such a different cultural environment and try to adapt to the different ways of working and adjust accordingly. Moreover, I am a very critical person, which can be an advantage and a drawback at the same time. The drawbacks are that it is time consuming and especially stressful for others, who are less accurate in that regard. This was very hurtful in the beginning, where I felt being put under pressure and was afraid of doing mistakes and taking decisions based more on gut feelings than on proven knowledge.

Finally, I always tried to avoid conflict and try to solve problems in the best way. Hence, instead communicating with other team members when I was not satisfied with their performance, or when I felt there was an issue affecting the team effort, I would generally try to forget about it and move on for the sake of the project. However, I did not fully realize that, if not mentioned, this could continue happening in the future, potentially affecting the end results of the entire team. I have now learnt that it is important always to be open about what is going on in a team so that

(18)

3.4 Benefit of hindsight

The consultancy experience

As most consultancy projects, the business project consisted of solving a company-specific problem. However, in many cases, the client does not know very well what the problem is. This is one of the most challenging parts of a consultancy project, actually defining the focus and setting the scope of the research. Further, we faced some constraints with regards to information access since UEBT limit the contact between the team and the relevant sources. Most of the times, all our questions had to be forward to the right person through our company coach, which made the process of gathering information very inefficient. Furthermore we had to wait long periods of time for an answer, since the organizational structure seemed to be very hierarchical. Hence, these factors made our process a bit frustrating, since we could not perform according to what we had defined previously. However, we need to be aware that the ideal project does not exist and it is important to react and try to find pro-active solutions. I believe that the worst thing that happened to our group was the fact that we let those external factors influence our project management.

Team work experience

When the dynamics of a team are negatively affected by some external (mentioned above) and internal factors (clash of personalities, different expectations and prioritizations) it is important to set clear structures in order to resolve conflicts and stimulate development of good relationships between team members through transparent and direct communications that would foster not only the personal relation but the professional relationship as well. Although I can say that many of my expectations have been fulfilled, a few unfulfilled expectations were left. The important question now is what I have learnt from this and what I take with me in my luggage towards new adventurous team works. This I summarized below:

Better prioritization: I learnt that meetings must be more effective. It is important to better prioritize topics for discussion from less important ones. Examples hereon are early discussions in the beginning of the project and discussions during the last two weeks where for instance the streams had to cooperate much more closely.

Social (support) skills: I also learnt that focusing less on me and more on others is very crucial. Being a leader or not a leader does not matter – it is everyone’s

(19)

responsibility to ensure that all group members are committed and if it takes some initiative or effort then this is worth it; it is to the best of the group. However, team compositions are unique and no team is like the other. What therefore works for one group does not necessarily work for another, but a higher sensitivity does improve any situation – regardless of its kind.

Knowing what I learnt casts at the same time light on what I still need to improve and I will shortly mention:

Communication and feedback skills: The right communication must happen much earlier. Instead of keeping the negative feelings inside, I need to confront team members much earlier with my dissatisfaction without being afraid of this having a negative impact on the overall group performance. In the given situation, it did not affect group performance negatively and I will therefore keep this in mind and open up much earlier to prevent the frustration to happen.

(20)

4. References

Cho, S., Krasser, A.H. (2013) What makes us care? The impact of cultural values, individual factors and attention to media contact on motivation for ethical consumerism. International Social Science Review, 86, Nº 1&2, pp. 3-17.

Dahan, N.M., Doh, J.P., Oetzel, J., Yaziji, M. (2009). Corporate NGO Collaboration: Co-creating New Business Models for Developing Markets, Long Range Planning, 43, Elsevier, pp. 326-338.

Kotler, P., Zaltman, G. (1971) Social Marketing: An approach to Planned Social Change. Journal of Marketing, Vol.36, pp. 3-12.

Nicholls, A. (2010) Fair Trade: Towards and Economics of Virtue. Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, pp. 241-251.

Searcy, C. (2012) Corporate sustainability performance measurement systems: a review and research agenda. Journal of Business Ethics, 107, pp. 239-251.

Trimble, C.S., Rifon, N. J. (2006). Consumer Perceptions of Compability in cause-related marketing messages. Int. J. Nonproﬁt Volunt. Sect. Mark, 11, pp. 29-45.

Web References:

Convention Biological Diversity (2013). History. <http://www.cbd.int/history/. Retrieved 13 June 2013> Dell (2013) Training Services

<http://www.dell.com/Learn/us/en/04/by-service-type-training-services?c=us&l=en&s=bsd> Retrieved 15 June 2013

(21)

Global Reporting Index (2013) Reporting principles

<https://www.globalreporting.org/information/about-gri/what-is-GRI/Pages/default.aspx> Retrieved 14 June 2013

United Nations (1992) Convention on Biological Diversity.

<http://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf> Retrieved 14 June 2013.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2013) Brief History.

<http://unctad.org/en/Pages/About%20UNCTAD/A-Brief-History-of-UNCTAD.aspx> Retrieved 14 June 2013

United Nations Global Compact (2013) Overview.

<http://www.unglobalcompact.org/ParticipantsAndStakeholders/index.html> Retrieve d 14 June 2013

The Union for Ethical Biotrade (2013) Membership.

<http://www.ethicalbiotrade.org/membership/index.html> Retrieved 13 June 2013 The Union for Ethical Biotrade (2013) About us.

<http://www.ethicalbiotrade.org/about/index.html> Retrieved 13 June 2013 The Union for Ethical Biotrade (2013) Verification system.

(22)

5. Appendices

Appendix 1

(23)

Appendix 2 UEBT Indicators