USAID chief meets corporate leaders at the White House

Thursday, December 5, 2013

U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah met corporate leaders — including the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Mike Duke: Unilever, Paul Polman; and Nestlé, Paul Bulcke — at the White House on Wednesday to discuss supply chain management within the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020.

The agency describes TFA 2020 as “a public-private partnership in which partners take voluntary actions, individually and in combination, to reduce the tropical deforestation associated with the sourcing of commodities such as palm oil, soy, beef, and paper and pulp.” The initiative seeks to engage “smallholder farmers and other producers on sustainable agricultural intensification, promoting the use of degraded lands, and reforestation.”

According to Shah, the meeting offered an opportunity to discuss how supply chains can better draw smallholders into major retailers’ production markets in developing countries, as well as factor more effectively into U.S. development programs — with private sector partners — to achieve sustainable poverty alleviation goals.

In response to a question about Pope Francis’s recent “apostolic exhortation,” which cautioned that capitalist economic growth is not the solution to all human development goals, Shah stressed the importance of “intermediaries” like USAID and its partners, who can help ensure private enterprise contributes to poverty alleviation.

Source: Devex (link opens in a new window)