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This week in the podcast, Richard Howitt welcomes one of the leading business voices on supply chain management in the world, Linda Kromjong, president of amfori, Global Business Association and a key advocate of open and sustainable trade in Europe and in the world.

Together they discuss:

• Why is due diligence important for companies?
• Why is the CSDDD a pro-business directive? Why is this good for business?
• An insider view on what happened in the last moments before new and unexpected deals had to be done by Member States.
• How environmental due diligence and human rights due diligence go hand in hand
• Linda’s message to businesses about implementing the CSDDD

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This week in Frankly Speaking, we put the spotlight on a new report produced by the OECD and analysing the state of corporate sustainability reporting in the world.

To discuss it, we welcome Caio de Oliveira, policy analyst at the OECD, who's had major responsibility in producing the report and who leads the sustainability work streams at the OECD on behalf of the Corporate Governance Committee and the Financial Markets Committee at the organisation. Caio has previously worked for the Brazilian government's Economic Ministry and for the country's Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM).

Richard and Caio address:

• The findings of the OECD’s Global Corporate Sustainability 2024 report

• How much and to what degree is sustainability reporting going on by companies

• The high levels of reporting of scope 1 and scope 2 GHG emissions compared to low levels of scope 3 indirect emissions reporting

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Many of us know that dependence of developing countries on raw commodities leaves them vulnerable to price volatility and sees profit made in countries where the commodity is imported and then processed, rather than where it is produced. It's often farmers in those developing countries who are at the end of the line. That problem has been specifically highlighted in the cocoa sector this year.

Today in the podcast we look at where cocoa prices have gone parabolic, rising from just over 2,000 USD a tonne in 2022 to over $10,000 a tonne in 2024. It’s seen not just companies and farmers in producer companies suffer, but major chocolate companies in the global North, which have seen costs multiply and their share prices plummet by up to a third.

To discuss what's happening here, our guest is Antonie Fountain, managing director of the Voice Network, watchdog and catalyst for a reformed cocoa sector. Antonie is also the co-author of the Cocoa Barometer, the biennial review of sustainability in Cocoa.

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