Joint declaration
Fulda, 10.11.2021
There is time, up until 12 November – time for the negotiators at the UN Climate Conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow to take meaningful action to address the challenges of the climate catastrophe. The companies in the Assoziation ökologischer Lebensmittelhersteller e.V. (AöL) and in the Organic Processing and Trade Association e.V. (OPTA) are calling on participants at the conference to face up to these tasks for the future and to take action to make our planet a place fit for our grandchildren.
Business models and economic strategies from the last century are not suitable for a future worth living in. The negotiators need to recognise this, they must turn sustainable business into a standard and must throw old business concepts overboard. A world economy that consumes resources and is geared to achieving unlimited growth needs to be replaced with something entirely different. The time is ripe for a new economy, one based upon sufficiency and recycling.
As business players, we are already travelling down that road. Nonetheless, we need to have a clear framework for transforming ourselves into a society fit for the future, imbued with entrepreneurial spirit and courage. As entrepreneurs who shoulder responsibility and who internalise the environmental costs that we have incurred, we must be able to offer the best of prices. The negotiators at the COP 26 climate conference must ensure that environmental services such as honouring climate-neutral production and services, protecting bio-diversity and genuine concepts that favour recycling are promoted consistently by legal and economic guiding principles. The market economy needs to sign up to the sustainable transformation of our economic system.
Dr. Alexander Beck Bavo van den Idsert
Managing Director AöL Managing Director OPTA
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OPTA Europe – Bavo van den Idsert – bavo@opta-eu.org – +31-626160049
Joint declaration * Publication free of charge * A specimen copy is kindly requested * 1694 characters
See pdf here.