Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 77
ECO NO M ICS
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it. And you can go on the beaches
at night with her guides and a red
light and see this incredible creature dig their nests. So she created
something where everybody can
get involved and be as proud of the
turtles as they are of Carnival.
Freudiger: Another point I would
add is the need for traceability. As
a startup, we focused on mapping
the ecosystem around a watch. And
we discovered that we’re touching
so many different industries. So as
entrepreneurs, we want to make
sure that we’re creating a solution that is better than
the status quo. And so we just put out a call for the
watchmaking industry to have less mining extraction.
About 50 percent of the gold mined worldwide is for the
Swiss watchmaking industry. And we’re saying today
you can wear something else on your wrist, something
that is more positive. We need to lead by example. If
Louis Vuitton or Rolex do something, then it will cascade down and influence other industries to act, too.
RE W I L D I NG
we got the French courts to force
the French government to change
the law within months. So even an
unsophisticated video can drive a
lot of change.
The other technology that I find
really promising is satellite data.
We’re working with a group called
Stand.earth. In British Columbia,
it is giving us satellite imagery for
old growth forests to protect the
last remaining forests. So any time
a road gets built or there’s a change
in the nonseasonal vegetation,
alerts go off. Indigenous groups and local community
groups can get those alerts and then report them, and
that helps the indigenous groups who have sovereignty
over those forests protect them. Once you bring visibility to something like the ocean, which can be out
of sight, out of mind, or forests and remote areas, then
things can change for the benefit of biodiversity.
Bebbington: Another technology that can make a difference is AI. The European Union is a huge innovator in terms of corporate responsibility and they have
signed into law the Due Diligence and Supply Chain
Act, which seeks to force companies to do their due diligence around forced labor, for example, but also their
environmental due diligence. And this has prompted
corporations like seafood companies to start tracing
what they are catching, and also, what they are really
buying off other people who are catching fish. They’re
starting to ask, “Where was this caught? And under
what conditions?”
For example, the biggest seafood company in the
world, Maruha, spent two years tracing every piece of
fish protein that they had either brought from a supplier,
bought from a market, or fished themselves so they knew
exactly what they had and where it came from. Then they
went to the Ocean Disclosure Project, which acts like an
informational intermediary. So they can say, for example,
if you have fished a cod, and it came from this part of
the sea, then here are the ecological conditions that it
came from. And AI can help push that kind of traceability further. The technology means we should be able to
know where everything—and particularly, any product
we buy—has come from and under what conditions.
Tell your good
news, and tell
your not-so-good
news, be open and
transparent about
it. And then learn
together.
Are there any specific innovations or technology
that you know of, or approaches organizations have
employed that have proven successful at restoring biodiversity, and particularly, island and shore
environments?
Dasilva: With regards to the oceans, there’s a greater
ability now for anyone to produce and distribute film
or social media videos than ever before. The barrier for
entry has come way down and you can make a lot of
change with one film. We did a short film called Caught,
which is about 10,000 dolphins dying in the French
fishing fleet’s nets. The trawlers come through and just
vacuum everything up off the coast of Frances. That’s
been happening for a decade. And so we did a film
on the Sea Shepherds campaign and we documented
some of the crazy things the campaign did that were so
effective. They brought dead dolphins to the front of
the Eiffel Tower, to the front of the National Assembly,
and really showed the French people what was happening so that they could have fish on their plates. So
with our film, we did a little premiere in Paris and in
Toronto, and together with the Sea Shepherd campaign
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