MODERATOR: Welcome to you, pleasure to have you here. Our conversation is about biodiversity. It is about how we sustain our businesses going into the future. I’ll lead off with Yvonne. Your work has seen your work across Africa, across Asia in this particular field and what are the recent trends you’re seeing in terms of biodiversity – are people understanding it as a concept – is it becoming a bigger part of the sustainability effort – how are things going in the region and across the world?
MODERATOR: Yes, it is an exciting time. It’s a curse: is it a Chinese curse may you live on or middle eastern curse may you live in interesting times, Vinod you’ve been part of the business and you are Chairman now of the Hirdaramani group and sustainability has been a buzzword since perhaps the late ’90s and now we’re catching up to it. Everybody’ is on board, everybody has got their sustainability departments, their sustainability reports – how difficult was that to engage in in the beginning and where do you feel it has come to now?
VINODH HIRDRAMANI: Firstly, you know when Dilhan called me and said you’ve got to come and have a chat about biodiversity on a stage with 140 people, I was a bit intimidated, but it’s really amazing to see what the organization does and I am going to share our journey. It was a very simple and long journey but I hope it resonates with all of you. I’ve been in the business for 33 years and when I joined the business it was actually the time that we had a lot of the factories near Columbo and when I joined it was the time that we set up these factories outside Columbo, so actually when I was thinking about this, this was actually a sustainable solution. If I look at places like Dhaka and Jakarta, they didn’t have that and we still see a lot of the factories in the city so that scheme 33 years ago was a kind of Journey – it was our beginning and journey on the path to sustainability. As time went on, the business grew in Sri Lanka and my uncle and a late colleague of mine were looking to build a new factory and my uncle said, how can we be different – a lot of people look at our industry as a polluting kind of dirty industry and he said, no I want to do something completely different. At that time, it was like 2005-2006 and he had just watched the Al Gore movie – The Inconvenient Truth – and that really stuck with him, and so we started on this journey and the end product was a factory called Mihila which a lot of you may know. It is in Kalutara and it was the first lead certified factory in the country and probably in the region and from then on, the journey started. We realized by doing good it was a good business and from then on, we have gone onto many things and I can talk about looking at the stuff that you do – we are involved behind the scenes for example, we invested in Eco-spindles which is now the leading buyer of recycled plastic bottles in the country. We are involved in that – converting those plastic bottles into pellets, into yarn, into apparel so behind the scenes a lot of stuff is happening that you don’t know about – that we are involved in the buzz word and apparel circularity. I will talk about that a little later but as I said I think to your point Shanaka our industry is evolving and Sri Lanka is a gem in terms of being able to show all the new ideas and sustainability.
MODERATOR: Thanks very much Vinod – yes, it’s been an interesting journey so far. Dilhan, you inherited personally as well as from a country’s point of view an industry where it was Sri Lanka’s leading monoculture in a way, and we relied on tea to make our name in the world. We relied on tea for our foreign revenue, but I don’t think it would be unfair to say that it is one of the things that hindered our biodiversity, the worst at that time. I mean you look at Sri Lanka’s elephant population in the early 1800s to what it is now, but since you’ve had to take that on how did you first view this conceptually as an issue that needed to be addressed and do you think you .are happy with the process that has been taken towards bridging those gaps?
DILHAN FERNANDO: I think the first step would be to understand and accept the reality, because the thing with history is it is what it is, there’s no point complaining about colonialism and all the unfairness of it. We need to get on with it – but then the second thing is when you really look to the challenges we have and the solutions set out initially in 2005 by Lord Stern, and even more recently, I was talking at the BSL technical sessions about something I was researching just a few days ago from a Fijian University – how they improved the quality of tea in the worst most degraded fields by using a combination of micro-organisms and natural materials and enriching the biodiversity of the soil. Here was a practical cost-effective way of enhancing yield, enhancing quality, addressing a problem that we have. My reality is that in nature we have a solution to most of the problems we have. We have some areas where you have declining profitability of tea. Those areas are also biodiversity rich I was on an estate visit last Friday. When you look around you see the most incredible biodiversity – you see waterfalls, you see point endemic species, you see flora and fauna that is unprecedented – so there is an opportunity. I mean there and of course in some of the work that Talawakelle Tea Estates does – that Roshan is leading you get incredible opportunities for ecotourism. But there’s opportunity also in research tourism which we are doing for example, with some of the mangrove in a project in Kalpitiya, a Dilmah Conservation project inviting people to come to study. We have on Queensbury estate a Climate Change Research and Adaptation Center, which is a collaboration amongst nine universities around the world. It is an opportunity for researchers to come and study. There’s the University of Edinburgh coming and looking at ammonia-nitrogen, different elements so collaboration could build a science-based response, because whether it is soils or the situation we have with soils, whether it is the evolution of different types, different cultivar or whether it is the management and in fact even when it concerns labor issues, there are clear science-based responses that are a new economy. I am talking about the distinction between the old economy being reliant on fossil fuels and the new being much more efficient technology and sustainability lead – it’s absolutely a no-brainer and I can’t imagine in this poly crisis of health and social economic issues that we are facing, how anyone would do anything other than partner with biodiversity to find the solutions. It is there for quality, it’s there for productivity, it’s there for tourism and it’s there in a multitude of ways. We just need to adjust our mindset to find a solution rather than to complain about what we are losing. Adjusting mindsets has been a fairly common theme on social media recently in Sri Lanka but across the world I have found that traditional business models are changing their mindsets. Is it that biodiversity is an investment that people are looking at in the same way they would make a traditional investment? It’s a bit difficult to say what is a traditional investment in this climate, because we have traditional industries that are radically changing. We see the rise of how social media connects the small holder farmers straight to consumers and the advancement in logistics – the rise of immobility and also payment systems allowing this intermediation to supply chains – so traditional Industries are getting a massive boost in their potential to reach marketplaces, thanks to technology and also collaboration of many sectors. Traditional investment in the past is very much about stability. We don’t have stability anywhere right now in the world. We wish we do but I think we have to get used to a much more unpredictable world because of climate change, because of economic cycles – what goes up must come down and it will go back up again – so when we talk about a lot of the investment into sustainability into business models if there is a potential for longevity in a business then there is investment value in there because it is potentially addressing an evolving need.
MODERATOR: Sustainability cannot supplant the business strategy of any types of vendors so when we see business models evolve even in traditional Industries, sustainability adds value it does not become the standalone pillar that can garnish any dish, so I would say that it’s very exciting to see the unlikeliest corner of the industry starting to transform. However, we cannot see sustainability just as something that you compensate for, budgeted for reporting only and you only talk about it. I’ll stay with you Yvonne in the sense that when you say compensate can you just elaborate a little bit more about what you mean compensate for?
YVONNE ZHANG: Sustainability this is probably a little bit of a jogger right because industry experts like to throw up barriers by using a lot of jargon, so in sustainability approaches at the strategic level we have the compensatory approach which is about paying your due because you have to, so paying your due when you have to is in the form of paying taxes, doing the mandatory reporting or fulfilling your legal obligations If you don’t there will be some penalty so that’s compensation for things that you should have done or to compensate for things that are pegged as your liability. So mandatory carbon offsets and also mandatory disclosure comes into that category. Compensation is not an investment, so the other end and the other side of the spectrum is the investment approach where investment is a risk adjusted return decision. So, when you look at sustainability from an investment approach it becomes something where calibrated risk taking comes into place, going beyond just doing what you are supposed to and doing things not from the motivation of avoiding penalty but to look at what kind of risks do I take, on who do I take on the risk with, how do I frontload invest, and how long can I expect to wear the investment until it comes into fruition
MODERATOR: So, it’s a much more complex decision-making process. Did you find that that decision- making process was difficult in the boardroom when it first came about because obviously sustainability brought with it a set of expenses and a set of resources that you need to get on board – a set of resources that you need to deploy. All of that comes at a fair significant cost for businesses. So, what was that conversation like when it first happened in your company Vinod?
MODERATOR: You have the benefit – I don’t know whether it’s a benefit or whether it’s a disadvantage of being the head of a family company – how do you push that across to a varied set of shareholders a varied bunch of Directors who have different shareholders’ interests to think of. I would assume that as a family company you’re aligned in your thinking on that front but what happens when you’re dealing with an entire diverse set of interests?
DILHAN FERNANDO: BSL and our impact depends on collaboration. We have to do it together. For the first 5 years Shiranee will tell you, we had to make a round of calls before the AGM and tell people that we were serving hoppers – because that’s the only way we could get anyone to come – for the food, but latterly I must say it’s been fantastic and by the way we have hoppers today – so we are continuing the trend. Latterly, what has happened is a lot of people have realized that what we were saying from the beginning wasn’t just a bunch of tree huggers coming along and trying to green the world for the sake of it. Seeing the relentless push back from consumers and the fact that more and more failing to be sustainable pushes you into a cycle of price competition, seeing that many people decided to come and ask us for support and the reason why BSL has relevance here is that we don’t just say look if you want to plant a million trees, we’ll plant a million trees with you. We look for the science-based approach we look for baseline, we look for how we can help to monetize that, how we can assist in securing whether it is eligible for climate finance. Shiranee talked about biodiversity credits in the report – whether it’s carbon credits or whichever there’s always a solution and it’s always a sustainable solution – it’s just a question of looking beyond the outdated business model to say look how do I make it happen and you know if you look around there is over $4 trillion climate finance that hasn’t found much of a home. Of course, much of it has but much of it hasn’t and wherever you pitch a good project that is science-based you’re pretty likely to get some sort of support – so that’s an opportunity not only in the plantation sector but also if you look beyond, if you look at the last 2020 Nature Report, I think it was in the world economic Forum that they analyzed 163 Industries finding that over 50% of them were highly vulnerable or significantly vulnerable in terms of biodiversity loss. Look at some of the realities that we are seeing. The Amazon used to sequester carbon to an extent of something like 5% but no longer – why because of the extent of deforestation happening. So understanding some of these macro statistics and understanding that this influences consumer behavior particularly the Gen Z which is incredibly vociferous – I can tell you that 10 years ago people used to write and ask us about this tea what about that tea – today only 50% of our community around the world ask us about tea, the rest asks us what are you doing for sustainability, what are you doing for the environment, what are you doing for soils, They are asking us details of what we do to align with their emphasis on environmental sustainability. So I think what we do at Biodiversity Sri Lanka is that we provide the science, we have an incredible body of knowledge in Professor Devaka Weerakoon or Dr Rohan Pethiyagoda – a whole load of scientists and we can provide that bridge but in order to deliver impact, to move the needle at a national level to be able to advocate effectively, we need the strength of our members. We are a member-driven organization. It’s not IUCN and the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and Dilmah – it’s the members collectively who through our actions will do something significant. Kanneliya is a fantastic example it started with 10 members including the Government of Sri Lanka and that was groundbreaking. It’s the first time that we were able to build the trust between the private sector and the state sector to steward even if it was a degraded ecosystem. It built trust and that’s a template on which we can do great things and that I think the uniqueness of Biodiversity Sri Lanka.
MODERATOR: You spoke about price competition Dilhan and that’s a cannibalistic world to be in and in order to avoid that do you find that consumers nowadays are maybe willing to spend a little bit more money to make to sure, that the ethics of their consumer products are at Top Notch?
MODERATOR: Vinod you are in a unique position as an apparel manufacturer in the sense that you have to comply with a lot of the US and the EU regulations but at the same time you also have to source from people in Asia people, who are going through the same problems that we might be going through as a nation in Sri Lanka. Do you find that the richer countries the global North if I could use that word are willing to also fund the kind of compliance requirements the stringent compliance requirements that they are putting on you or are you having to expend on this because you’re the middle of that sandwich?
VINODH HIRDRAMANI: That’s a big topic at the moment. The EU is coming up with these new regulations for transparency. For example, we are the manufacturer and then they’re asking us to go back two or three more steps that means to the fabric, yarn etc., so it’s a full traceable model. That’s the regulations coming in. In the next four or five years for every industry from us to Ferrari to loads of Industries and everyone’s scrambling because no one realizes it’s coming very soon. Our customers are not going to pay for it they’re putting a lot of onuses on us but I think you know Sri Lanka is in a very unique position because we’re a relatively small industry and we’ve been very transparent over the years. I think we can leverage on that and take advantage and be a supplier of choice not only in apparel but in tea and various other Industries because a lot of the stuff that’s been asked for, we’re already doing it. There will be some costs involved and there’ll be some blockchain models or models that will have to be adopted but I don’t think that’s going to be difficult and I’m very positive that we as a country will come out on top – but in the next four or five years – there’s a big change.
MODERATOR: Coming to you Yvonne the reporting initiative is something that has come through quite recently and it hasn’t been really implemented across the board, so far but it’s an aspirational model yet. Do you think that this is going to have a big impact like it did for sustainability as a buzzword back in the day?
YVONNE ZHANG: I have a unique perspective because you know I am part of the expert groups that contributes to making the standards for GRI. GRI is the world’s most adopted sustainability disclosure standard but it’s not just about disclosure. We want to understand as lawyers what do things mean – so taxonomic definitions and also standards have a key role to play so that everybody can have the same understanding and then things can be measured and compared on a fair basis. That’s the point of having GRI, so that what does labor mean? it includes seasonal labor includes a lot of casual labor and also that’s important in the forestry and agriculture industry because you don’t sign off your 8h hour day as a farmer that’s what you do for your family for your culture for your livelihood full-time 24/7 without a break. What does child labor mean? Does that mean someone who is under the age of 18 contributing to a working farm is child labor? Automatically a lot of the definitions need to take into consideration what is real and what is legal given the jurisdictions that they operate from, so without these guard rails it is very difficult for any entity to know whether they’re doing the right thing. For all their stakeholders externally to having alignment with international standards such as GRI and also for example ISO – you understand how you’re playing against others and also there is inter-operability and reciprocity in how you work with others. It also gives a lot more confidence to financing, to investments, to decisions where money needs to flow and accountability needs to be shared, so I think that it can be said that it is aspirational for GRI to be propagated – but how is it aspirational you know that businesses want to be measured fairly – I think everybody want to actually be seen in the correct light by the people that matter to them, so relying on standard is one way of doing that and it’s doing that from a perspective of being fair and being transparent which I think a lot of companies already know.
MODERATOR: Speaking of measurements Yvonne, how do we do that accurately how do you build awareness in the community who are the consumers in the businesses, who are the Producers how do you tell them – look the loss of this species is going to cost you x amount of dollars the loss of these two species is going to cost you 3x amount of dollars?
YVONNE ZHANG: Because there has been research that has told us that there’s trillions of dollars in losses in biodiversity but how are these calculated and how do they translate into real action impact measurements is always about perspective and when you talk about dollars my question always is who pays and who receives. it’s not just a number printed somewhere for everybody to look at – its something that one side of the economy is looking upon as something that they’ve lost whilst who’s actually gaining – so when we look at impact measurements, it’s not just about the overall impartial number which we know means not much unless it’s contextualized on from a perspective of who pays, who receives, who shares and who takes away from the system – a lot of the impact measurement is tied to productivity as in per unit measure or intensity, so that applies to emission intensity. We should extend it to many other contexts as well so that we can see sustainability is not about constraining productivity, it is about making sure that correct measurement is done in line with productivity and productivity translates very easily into cost and revenue and other considerations where who pays, who receives and who shares can be easily tracked. So for impact measurement, one should not wait for universal consensus to arrive when you look at it from the perspective of how do I integrate, what is the right kind of impact measurement into my current model, into my current way of measuring – whatever I put in and whatever I get out so that I can use that as a tool to communicate with the people that I need to convince – so that there’s utilitarian value coming out of it. Otherwise, I think this is going to be a very frustrating topic for all and say for instance Vinod wants to build his next Green Factory and wants a net zero emissions on that and he wants to measure the impact of that, sell it to his CFO and say look I need this much money in order to build this factory. This is what it’s going to give us – Is there a product that will enable him to do that I want to open this up for my co-panelists as well. As you know a smart factory or green factory and all of that is not a product – it’s a strategy. When we’re talking from the lens of CFO a lot of times there is a degree of projection forward, so this goes back to that complex decision making about risk adjusted return. So when we talk about how do CFOs now raise investments, extend their lines of credit talk to the various partners they have, there are so many perspectives that may not align and then who pays, who receives, who benefits from the greener way of doing something. You cannot really productize that you have to tie it down to the bread and butter and CFOs are leaning on the advancements of integrated reporting. I know that a lot of people have heard all the buzzwords of Integrated Sustainability Reporting and all the different taxonomies that are coming in to align accounting metrics with sustainability metrics. You can so that you can put a dollar amount right on sustainability efforts that is coming in 2 years’ time but what we do now is about making sure you find the right ways of integrating what you say you want to do – your road maps your goals your undertakings to different stakeholders and put it into your plans, your budgets, your projections and your financial reporting as well as the strategy. Communicating those things are not exciting – it has to be done. It’s not easy but it has to be done A CFO’s job is doing that right. A CEO’s job is doing that and I think they know how to do that already we just need to put the right lens on what they need to do.
MODERATOR: Vinod, I know what I’d like to ask you also is how much interaction is there perhaps between your Sustainability Department, your Finance Department, your HR Department, maybe your operations Department – how much of interplay is there? How much would you and Dilhan if I can ask you the same question of your company just briefly to answer Yvonne’s question.
VINODH HIRDRAMANI: 20 years ago, when we were building Mahila it was us and an idea and there was no ecosystem support. I think uh you know looking at new projects and looking at the country we all agree that we have to be an export driven economy and I think as an ecosystem it’s the banks, the government and all stakeholders to make it attractive enough for companies no matter how big they are to have that sustainability pillar so you know looking now I know you know the banks are getting funding from the World Bank and stuff to do sustainable projects so I think that needs to continue and Sri Lanka can leverage on that and be a point of difference to our major competitors – India, Bangladesh, Vietnam. So, it has to be an ecosystem kind of situation just the individual firm can afford so much but they need the help of the ecosystem. Our business is a very price sensitive business, so sustainability is a pillar but we have this tension of young buyers’, customers who are being driven by The Profit incentive, yet we are preaching the sustainability Mantra. So, when we’re discussing new designs or new products, we have these innovation teams of designers, our commercial teams and our production teams looking at how we can make sustainable products at the correct price for the customer. So, there are obviously a few aspirational customers like Patagonia and brands like that, that live on sustainability, but to take it to the mainstream is another conversation all together. People drink tea, but they don’t eat garments, so you have to make someone feel differently when they’re wearing something right so it’s a different kind of sense. But we are getting there and as I said Sri Lanka has a lot to leverage on and other Industries like tourism. I’ve never been to Costa Rica but I’ve heard how much they play on the whole eco-friendly environmentally friendly and I don’t think we do enough of that in other Industries. I think we’ve had success and I think Tea has had some success but I think there’s so much more we can leverage on
Homes, setting up beekeeping, really embracing what we do – in going around the country and teaching and training our centers, doing stuff different to the thing that you do at work. If you don’t embrace it, we’re not going to get the benefit of the involvement and the strength that you get from having a bottom up approach and right now the technologies in every instance from the example of the micro-organisms that I mentioned at the Fijian University study to any other area it’s the people, it’s the engineer responsible who knows that compostable material might respond better at this temperature, it could by laminating at this level, I could get a better result if everyone comes on board, so my advice, yes of course have your sustainability departments but don’t compartmentalize sustainability. We need to make sure that it comes deep down and it’s not very difficult you need to simply go and visit Kanneliya, have a look at some of the historical pictures and see what it was, what it is and what it’s become now in terms of the species – there are an incredible number of species there and so on and then you’ll see yes our actions can reverse some of the terrible damages we’re seeing.
MODERATOR: Thanks for that speaking of a bottom-up approach I’d like an independent – when I say independent, I mean a non-Sri Lankan eye on this Yvonne, we have a human elephant conflict which I’m sure you may have heard or read about and when Dilhan speaks of bottom up obviously there are farmers who don’t want elephants destroying their crops that they’ve been growing for the last few months because that’s literally their only livelihood. I can use the phrase because Dilhan used it previously you’ve got the tree huggers who think okay all elephants are beyond the pale – you cannot touch them, there’s no harm that can come to a single animal, you’ve got these two extremes and in terms of managing biodiversity and I use that word very deliberately “managing” what kind of approach would you give to that particular problem where you’ve got one interest on one side another interest on the other side and business in the Middle?
YVONNE ZHANG: This is an incentive problem. If the small holder farmers are really struggling to keep their livelihoods, then of course they feel isolated and they’ll do whatever they can to protect their livelihoods. They have no friend. The poor elephant feels the same way and for everybody that wants to solve the problem, unless the incentive structure changes, the problem will persist. So how do we deal with the incentive structure change? That’s a system level change, so you know as we heard from Vinod in some Industries the cost is still not being shared and even when there’s more conscious consumption, meaning consumers are paying higher for less, not paying lower per unit for more, do the benefits pass down to the people that needs it the most or do the benefits accumulate to where it can be easily accessed? So when we talk about the human versus elephant conflict that’s representing a lot of the externalities that still hasn’t been addressed so a lot of the incentive problems is not about let’s do more charity runs, let’s make sure that we subsidize some of the necessities It’s about finally putting together all the stakeholders along that chain to see how do we minimize friction, how do we make sure that the funding that goes to or as Dilhan has mentioned, there’s a lot of funding that is dedicated towards biodiversity and sustainability. Are they trickling down? Are they reaching the end of the value chain all the way upstream to the small holder farmers and are the small holder farmers being educated and given the right resources and support and have the community rally around them? If I can put it figuratively, so that they are not alone in fighting against the elements and elephants feel the same way too, so maybe doing R&D on what’s the most effective fencing technology, what’s the best method to keep animals out without causing them harm? what’s the best method to find productivity in the soil? all those things can be transplanted if we were just not trying to thrash a square peg into a round hole and look at the incentives instead and the governance that’s another sensitive topic, we know that technology is just a tool it doesn’t replace the infrastructure of policy of incentives and behavior so without the governance, without the rights and also the repercussions being institutionalized a lot of these great efforts just don’t stick around so I know I’m speaking at a sensitive time given what’s going to happen on Saturday. I hope that everyone is looking forward to perhaps some changes on the governance structure, so that there’s longevity in good things being implemented and there are safeguards for all the different change programs that everybody’s trying to put into place. Incentives are temporary, governance is more lasting and I hope that we cannot look at technology as the only saving grace but look at a lot of the things that are more difficult but has larger impact
MODERATOR: If I can use that subject of governance now to speak to Vinod and Dilhan about their perceptions of that governance. We know you’ve said banks need to be a little bit more cooperative. There are a few banks here that I think are members of BSL already. Are you saying perhaps that you need to look at what we’re doing in terms of strategy, you need to look at capital and you need to look at the expenditure that we need to put in here and maybe you all need to be a little bit more flexible with giving us debt to do this because we are the ones who are bearing the cost disclaimer?
VINODH HIRDRAMANI: I’m on a bank board, as well so I have to be a little diplomatic here but no in all seriousness though as I said we have many different sizes of firms in the country and you know we have to be able to allow everyone that access, to be able to do the right thing and yes it’s a government private sector banking kind of partnership that needs to happen and as I said if we put it as a country strategy and say that Sri Lanka stands for this you know we can go forward. I remember many years ago the apparel industry had a slogan called garments without guilt and this was maybe 10-15 years ago and we went around the world saying that you can come and visit us and see that we’re not running sweat shops, you can come and visit all our factories and it was a total transparent strategy. We gained a lot of kudos for that, so similarly if Sri Lanka was to say we aim to be at these targets by 2050 or 2045 and then agree to that and then go around the world canvassing that, I think that’s very powerful and then we have the backing of the government and the financial industry and private sector in a combined effort – then it’s a very powerful message so yes, I think we’re at the point where firms want to do good but with the current difficulties they’re constrained so if there’s a combined partnership it can go a long way given the impending events on Saturday.
MODERATOR: Dilhan, whoever takes over what would you like to tell them in terms of biodiversity safety, what would your washing be for a government that comes in and says look we want to do the best for the country, we are trying from our end as business people, BSL is trying their best this is the help you can give us, what would those low hanging fruit be for governments to go with immediately?
DILHAN FERNANDO: There’s lots of things I’d like to tell them but where biodiversity is concerned, picture the Nine Archers Bridge surrounded by concrete. Would it be interesting probably not, would it be Instagram-able – definitely not and therefore would it help us in presenting our nation to the world? No, we’re a small country in a very large world. We need to establish our point of difference. Our unique setting. Sri Lanka is blessed with rich biodiversity, so whether you look at tourism and as you heard whether you look at apparel or if you look at agriculture it is that biodiversity that is going to sustain and fuel that point of difference. We cannot compete on price with Vietnam. We cannot compete on price with India, with so many other countries – but it is that biodiversity because today no matter what, marketing is driven by images. If it’s not Instagram-able your restaurant will not succeed. If it’s not Instagram-able your Café, your business, your product will not work and therefore our biodiversity and I am reminded of a story that Hiran said at this forum a few years ago, talking about Vil Uyana and talking about their conservation project there, Loris’s conservation was highlighted, which really is a point of difference – I mean I still remember it. I think it was what 3-4 years ago that Hiran was talking about this and I think all of us know there’s a Crocodile in that pond, there are Loris in that constructed wetland forest that they have created and so that is a point of difference for Vil Uyana. It’s a luxury accommodation, but you go there for the biodiversity and today when you see the pictures of Sri Lanka people are not coming here to see the Lotus Tower or to see our buildings. They are actually coming here because they want to experience nature and regardless of whether it is food you can connect our food to Nature. We have an ayurvedic pharmacopeia of 2,000 different elements. In the West, you have Western medication which is typically based on elements. Our richness whether it is in medicine or in any other aspect is in our biodiversity so when you look at Sri Lankan cuisine most of those ingredients can be connected with a specific aspect of biodiversity, connected with a specific health benefit. That is a powerful statement. When you visit Sri Lanka and people talk about our Southern Expressway or visiting the mountains, tea country they don’t talk about our buildings they don’t talk about any of that they talk about the richness of biodiversity the animals they experienced and so on, so what I would tell whoever comes in is to understand that there are limitations on capacity. So, align your export strategy, align your tourism strategy, build on the resources that we have – don’t destroy it – if you do, too soon you will have a situation like Bali. Bali a few years ago was the envy of the world – why? because the Russians were coming, the Indians were coming there were lots of people going to Bali. I don’t know if you’ve been there recently – it’s not a pretty sight because you have these malls that have come up, there’s concrete everywhere and what happened to the beautiful rice fields and the pictures that originally made Bali, Bali. It’s no longer there, so I think we need to understand that Sri Lanka is a phenomenal asset it is the biodiversity that fuels Ceylon Tea, Cashew, Cinnamon and all those products. When we talk about Cinnamon, we’ve recently started doing some work in Cinnamon – there is medical and health benefits but we’re not talking only about that. What really embellishes our story is the biodiversity. Run a drone over the Cinnamon fields at dawn and you’ve got the most magical marketing story. Since 1985, my father has been presenting images of Sri Lanka’s beautiful biodiversity. People often told us that we investing more in promoting Sri Lanka, than the tourist board – and sometimes it’s true – and I think that’s what we need to realize, that it is biodiversity that is the uniqueness of Sri Lanka.
MODERATOR: Sri Lanka’s uniqueness in medicine in our products in our appeal to the world hinges very much on our biodiversity, so I think it’s fair to say if you forgive the metaphor that Sri Lanka is the pretty girl at the biodiversity bar and we need to protect ourselves from rich old men in the sense that money talks, Yvonne and that’s an aphorism that’s stayed the test of time so what does a country in Sri Lanka’s unique position – we don’t have 200 million people like Pakistan, we don’t have a billion people like China or India. We are an export driven marketplace. We also have to import our food but in that context what does a country like Sri Lanka which only has biodiversity to really offer as an asset – has that asset been valued enough? can we push that value to other countries to maintain our position, to make sure we don’t get exploited – are those things that we can do without government involvement?
YVONNE ZHANG: So going on your analogy of biodiversity being the pretty girl at the bar, which needs defense against all the hungry eyes, social media has a hashtag called choosing the bear, so for some of us that are not aware of the whole choosing the bear movement, it’s about when any woman is in a potentially dangerous or tricky situation do you choose a bear or do you choose a man as the next entity that you encounter. It’s almost like a prisoner’s dilemma. So, the movement is that overwhelmingly people choose the bear instead of choosing between different men – not a gender play. But to talk about what is the third option you don’t need to think about what degree do you compromise yourself, what degree do you lose yourself if you choose the bear which funny enough in the analogy is choosing nature – what do you figure out in not going down the tried and tested ways of exchanging and short changing your valuable resources for short-term gain but to look at what is a best negotiated outcome with entities that are traditionally not in the exploitative model. So, multi-stake holder platforms have made a difference in some sectors such as natural rubber and coffee. Looking at a lot of multinational companies that have long-term interest in keeping strategic assets and longevity of this type of strategic assets being preserved – so natural rubber forestry faces a lot of the same issues that biodiversity preservation in Sri Lanka faces you have biodiversity rich locations in South Asia and Africa facing a lot of threat of labor shortage, a lot of land grabbing and also disease. Meanwhile if you actually look at how those commodities were historically traded, they’re all traded on volume and the cost per unit is traded on exchanges which is more easily swayed by financial markets than by what’s happening fundamentally on the ground. So what happens the industries choose the bear what do you mean by choosing the bear is that they integrate with Petrochemical, with Mobility with many types of industries that will benefit from the longevity of having access to nature, so that they will have an useful resource that have tensile strength – that have a lot of qualities that are irreplaceable with synthetics so that they can co-invest into preserving what is there for capacity building for looking at how to prevent diseases allowing sustainable finance to come into play not just as bond issuance, but look at what are the derivatives and a lot of more creative structures that you can put in to provide liquidity where you need it – not to give money when you don’t need it – so all of those choosing the bear moments have shown some change in the conditions of specific types of Industries and nature bound corners of the earth I would say choosing the bear – choosing who is the lesser evil may be a good solution for all of us to look at.
A: Well, that’s interesting. Do you find the next 10 years perhaps of business terrifying or exciting?
MODERATOR: Dilhan finally do you see the Chamber of Commerce, the members, other big businesses how do you convince them to perhaps maybe be a little bit more altruistic when it comes to biodiversity – maybe give a leg up to people who are struggling to stay above the survival line and that will payoff for everyone?
DILHAN FERNANDO: in the long run, I think awareness and that’s the direction we’ve been focusing on. We partnered with the Chamber and Global Compact with the Climate Summit, to explain amongst other things biodiversity aspects. Yvonne was there and presented solutions and I think the key thing is to help induce that mindset, to understand that if you embrace the changes, you’ll find the solutions, rather than complain about the changes and stick to the old system. I think that’s where we see a big difference. But more and more I very much like what we have here at Biodiversity Sri Lanka – going back 5 years we never had to worry about whether we could get a room large enough to fit our um members. In the first few years we were struggling to get a quorum which is where the hoppers came in, and that was fixed after that, but I think as we see more and more people understanding the reality but at the same time the regulatory environment also changing to a point where they have no choice but to accept that, we are offering solutions and helping them to also understand that in this whole mix the problem isn’t beyond us because I think that’s the initial response. Going back a few years was almost like the deer caught in the headlights – thinking what do I do- this is too big for me – then the second reaction was typically it’s a problem of government – it’s not my issue – it’s too big for me. But then, once we started these collaborations, they help people understand that we can together move the needle – we can translate those positive environmental interventions into customer engagement, into benefit for our product – then we saw the difference. Many of the members here – I think some are here for altruistic reasons but others are here because they believe, of course they believe, but they also understand that the green economy, the green growth pathway offers vastly more opportunity than the old way and which is why I echo, everything Vinod also just said about the excitement for the future, because we now have a surplus of green growth options, the pathways that are available to us are incredible. It’s just a question of us adjusting our mindset, aligning our colleagues and moving in that direction easier said than done, but if you ever need to convince your colleagues there’ll be more hoppers at the next AGM bring them along and we’ll help you.
MODERATOR: A final word Yvonne, from your experience regionally
YVONNE ZHANG: I know lawyers are trained to be pessimists as we were discussing previously, but a final word of encouragement to our membership that biodiversity and sustainability along with it is the way forward. You give me a really hard task because law school has trained us to think of other potential risks and how to address them but a bit of optimism is the fact that you are here – you are here because you think that there is something you can learn, something that you can explore with each other and also hearing from us on what does biodiversity mean, what are the opportunities you can look at – otherwise you wouldn’t come here today, fighting against the traffic and all the unpredictable things ahead of this Saturday. I think we inherently know that this is a moment of change the old does not give us protection especially the old ways of doing business. The new is already upon us and I can see all the attention that you’ve been paying and please we’ll be eating hoppers over there, thanks to Dilhan. The hope is that we can save each other, the hope is that in nature we can find solutions because that’s how we have survived as a species for thousands of years and we can continue to do so. I think we are all convinced that we will find a way out and even as lawyers who have gone through years of law school to train the optimism out of us.
I know that this is a conviction that we can all agree upon. Nature is a place where sometimes deer get killed by leopard but all in all everyone thrives. Ms Yvonne Zhang, Deloitte Singapore’s Sustainability Director, Mr Vinod Hirdaramani, Chairman of Hirdaramani Group and Mr Dilhan Fernando, the Chairman of Dilmah Tea, thank you very much for your contribution today. Thanks ladies and gentlemen!
