Good afternoon.
Welcome.
Welcome back.
And for some of you, I think welcome.
Some of you, I think, arrived just for the afternoon session.
And we're happy to have you.
That, I think, also goes for folks
that are tuned in online.
I know that for some of our guests, it's
getting very, very late in the evening online.
But those are hanging that are hanging with us.
Thank you.
I have the pleasure now of introducing
and another panel this time
focused on inter-agency investments in global sustainability.
And that takes many forms, as you will hear.
The moderator for this panel is David Alexander, Dr.
David Alexander, and he is the senior science adviser
for resilience within the Office of Science and Technology.
We're extremely, very proud that we have this
wonderful outfit in the form of the Department of Homeland Security,
Science and Technology Directorate.
And that I think, as you've heard from a couple of our speakers today,
they are an engine for innovation across the
the homeland security milieu,
and that includes resilience and sustainability.
So you will hear from David and from our other panelists
about the ways that they are moving and taking action
in building resilience and sustainability across
global supply chains and thinking about what this means for both government
and all of our private sector and NGO partners.
So with that, I will turn it over to Dr.
Alexander.
All right.
Thank you, Liane, for that delightful introduction.
I don't know if I even need to go through my bio.
I think it's usually commensurate with the government panels,
but with the I think we'll defer on on that for now.
What I'd like to do is introduce our panelist
and really introduce to the panel in the scope of the panel to the audience.
And we appreciate you sticking with us.
You know, one of the benefits of being in the afternoon is we get to learn
and hear from the earlier panels and discussions and feed off that.
And I think what you'll see is we've got an enthusiastic set of panelists
here with me to really discuss and and dig into this topic a little bit.
The areas that we're really trying to drive in terms of the panel
is a collaboration across the interagency in the private sector.
I think you heard some private sector earlier today.
This is your opportunity to hear from across the federal enterprise.
And we've got four key agencies that have significant investments in equities
and in both green trade, as well as driving
innovation across the ecosystem.
So without further ado, I'll introduce my my fellow panelists here.
So I have hope.
Big Peyton from International Affairs
at the Office of Chief Scientist within the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
I have Todd Johnson, senior natural resources officer at the Asia
Bureau of the U.S.
Agency for International Development.
I have Carlos Ochoa,
one of my colleagues here in Department of Homeland Security,
as branch chief of the Customs Trade Partnership
against Terrorism and Trusted Trade Partnership Division at U.S.
Customs and Border Protection.
I have with me
Sam Waltzer, director of the Smart Way and supply chain programs at the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
We did have a fellow panelist
that was going to join us from the State Department.
Unfortunately, Mayor Ramirez Pelagius was unable to join us.
He had a last minute change in his schedule.
But I do want to acknowledge that, you know, he has a significant role
to play both in green trade as well as within driving leadership.
And he is a member of the Foreign Service and our climate negotiation
negotiator at the U.S.
Department of State in their Office of Global Change.
So fortunately, he's not here to join us, but we'll look to include him
in some further conversations going forward.
So with that being said, and I'll turn it over to hope
and she'll kick us off, give me some agency introductions.
Thanks
so much and really appreciate the invitation to be here and speak
on behalf of USDA as work to motivate investments
in climate, smart agriculture and food systems innovation.
And we have the challenge of being in the post lunch break.
But I'll try to get everyone really excited about all of the public and
private sector investments in innovation that that USDA is working to facilitate.
I'm hoping to Payton International Affairs Advisor and USDA
Office of the Chief Scientist and I'll discuss some background
on the Agriculture Innovation Innovation Mission for Climate or aim for climate.
I'll discuss
how public and private sector partners can join and be part of the initiative,
and then also some early outcomes and progress
of the initiative.
The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate for Climate and for Climate
was launched by President Biden at COP26 in Glasgow.
As far as we know,
this is the first initiative related to agriculture and climate change
internationally to be launched by a US President,
and the intention is to enable global partnerships
and solutions at the intersection of agriculture and climate change.
It's a big year for the initiative, with COP 28 being hosted
by and for climate co-lead the UAE in Dubai, and they've indicated
that climate will be a leading platform for food and agriculture at COP 28.
The goal of the
initiative is to motivate public and private sector partners
to increase and accelerate their investment
in agriculture and food systems, innovation and support of climate action.
We heard this morning about upstream supply chain interventions in
poor climate is really aiming at that from the R&D side of things.
So research development to demonstration and deployment,
we're aiming to motivate partners to make those investments
to green their own supply chains.
The objectives again, to increase that investment
enable coordination and collaboration, as well as increased cooperation.
We just hosted the climate summit here in Washington, D.C.,
and there were over 42 government partner delegations in attendance,
all working together to increase their own
public sector investments in agriculture, innovation and R&D,
as well as over 260 partners and private sector organizations.
It was a great event and we aim to increase that cooperation around this.
The metric, the scope of the initiative, really focusing on climate smart
agricultural innovation, including scientific breakthroughs, public
and private applied research and that value chain
demonstration and development, deployment of actionable climate interventions.
And I'll just give some background on our definition of climate smart agriculture.
This comes from the U.N., FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization
is to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes.
We need to be able to produce more on the same land using less resources.
And to do that, we need to enable technology and innovation.
And the definition of climate.
Smart agriculture includes adaptation to resilience and climate change,
as well as mitigation, reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions.
So how to join the initiative?
And we really hope if government, government representatives or private
sector representatives are here today
and are not yet members, that you will join as partners of climate.
There are these three types of partners government partners,
innovation, spend, partners, which are private
sector partners and knowledge partners, NGOs and think tanks.
Government partners are
those who announce an increase in their public agricultural R&D
and innovation spending over this five year time horizon of the initiative.
As of now, there are 51 government partner representative government partners
of four climate.
And we hope to grow that number in time for 28.
Innovation spent partners are those private
sector partners that have invested
and created new innovations over this time horizon as well.
We now have 51 innovation sprints, and this is to advance
bold ideas to green supply chains in this expedited timeframe.
I'll give you some examples.
And we would really invite private sector partners to join the initiative
in this capacity as innovation Sprint Partners.
One a couple of case studies are here.
In the interest of time, I'll just highlight one,
which is the enteric fermentation R&D accelerator.
This is to advance R&D
on feed additives to reduce methane emissions from enteric fermentation,
which is one of the biggest
low hanging fruit kind of mitigation opportunities out there.
And we don't have yet the technology.
And it's very related to trade as well, because once we do have this technology,
how do we ensure that it can cross borders and be accepted internationally
as it would need to be to achieve those mitigation and emissions reductions?
And then we also have knowledge partners.
All right.
Moving forward, as a result of the initiative,
we are really excited to share that.
And USDA Secretary Vilsack pictured here, as well as UAE minister of Environment
and Climate Change, here to announce that the recent name for climate Summit,
that the initiative had mobilized $13 billion in this pooled fund,
including private sector as well as public sector investments over this
five year period in climate smart agriculture.
And 10 billion of this is from government partners, 3 billion
from the private sector.
So we'd love to issue this challenge to private sector partners to step forward
and share their own investments and to invest in climate smart ag
and food systems innovation that includes feed food fibers,
as we heard earlier this morning from RTI and under armor.
And we have now over 500 partners as part of the coalition.
This was
another announcement we shared at the climate summit was the outcome of the
AI and machine Learning grand Challenge that ran.
This was a group called Enterprise Neuro System that donated $5 million
of in-kind animal resources to a good idea and climate smart.
AG The good idea was a startup called Agro Space, doing precision irrigation
and leveraging remote sensing technology to achieve that in Chile.
So a great case study of the outcomes and impacts the initiative was having,
and we're proud to have a global reach as well in all 51 countries
that climate currently partners with
on the road to COP 28.
We invite partners to join us through innovation sprints
as government partners to host webinars with us
and to host events on the road to COP 28 and to join us at 28.
And you can connect with us on our virtual platform,
the Innovation Hub, to continue the conversation.
So if you're interested in joining the initiative,
please do get in touch with me and you can find more information here.
Thank you so much.
Okay, good.
Go ahead.
Thank you, David, for, uh,
thank you, David, for moderating this panel.
And I want to take this opportunity to thank CBP and everyone involved in
putting on the forum today, making it possible.
I'm honored to be invited to participate alongside interagency colleagues
in what I hope is the first of many similar conversations on ways
to incentivize green trade domestically and globally.
This afternoon, I will briefly highlight a few examples of the kinds of programs
that USAID operates to increase the volume and value
of sustainable supply chains in key sectors of the global economy.
I'll specifically touch on examples of USAID
support to encourage innovation and incentives for green trade
within the Asia-Pacific region where I work.
First, under the category of doing the right things or motivating investors.
The first example or highlight is from the Agriculture and forestry sector.
The Green Investor Asia Program out of our Southeast Asia
Regional Office in Bangkok actually closed about two weeks ago
but spent six years working with Project developers and financiers
to shift investments toward low emission practices
to produce the agro commodities that drive deforestation in the region.
Understanding why financial institutions were reluctant
to invest in climate positive production, processing and trade,
as well as why companies with good ideas could not find investors.
The team worked with businesses and financial institutions
to have each come closer to the needs of the other.
By the time they closed at the end of June, Green investor
Asia had brokered almost $450 million in investments
without providing grants, loan guarantees or similar tools.
We did that by both financing green and by greening finance in the region.
Deep understanding of how to reduce perceived investment risk
without masking it through subsidies is now being applied as we engage
with private sector partners, governments and other stakeholders for green trade
investment in other sectors, including timber and fisheries.
We also have a bilateral program in Vietnam called Sustainable Forest
Management, the supporting producers, primary processors, aggregators
and multinational traders such as IKEA to increase the amount of domestic raw
material used in the $11 billion furniture industry and other related markets.
And under
kind of doing the right things or institutionalizing ESG,
the next example takes a do no harm approach to infrastructure.
This program called Align Asia's Linear Infrastructures Safeguarding Nature, aims
to increase the adoption and implementation of high quality
environmental and social safeguards In response to Asia's
rapid expansion in
roads, railways and power lines.
A line is currently active in India, Mongolia and Nepal.
Building on previous work by each of those countries
to conserve their landscapes and their ecosystem services, building
resilience for the infrastructure itself and for the people who depend upon it.
Align works on policies and practices in natural resource.
Safeguards for linear infrastructure aligned with international norms
and standards
promotes planning, development and investment in our infrastructure
that incorporates natural resource safeguards and creates and shares
knowledge and training products on effectively incorporating
natural resource safeguards into linear infrastructure development.
USAID also supports the Coalition for Disaster Resilient
Infrastructure, or KDR, AI through an institutional support agreement
with the Civil Rights Secretariat and through our USAID Administrator,
who serves as co-chair of the Governing Council and U.S.
Aid. India's Director who serves as co-chair of the Senior Executive Committee
Steering is an India based international partnership of national governments, U.N.
agencies, multilateral development banks and financial mechanisms.
The private sector and knowledge institutions that promote resilience
of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks in support
of sustainable development.
And finally, on Beyond
Risks, or what I call proactive positives,
we're moving beyond risks and looking at how to identify and take action
on proactive, positive for resilient trade and sustainable supply chains.
USAID, along with UNDP, the United Nations Development Program
and other partners,
is supporting the Task Force on Nature related financial disclosures or TANF,
as they field test their draft risk management and disclosure framework
that enables organizations to report and act on evolving nature related risks.
TANF This framework also supports companies to identify
and assess necessary data and information required to meet ISB,
ISO, GRI, or other corporate reporting standards.
Many of you are familiar with
our particular interest as the actions that this knowledge
can inform the opportunity to channel finance toward climate and nature.
Positive investments in green trade, sustainable supply chains
or other nature based solutions to the climate crisis.
As companies use the 50 framework to identify, assess and disclose
their nature related risks, they can learn valuable information
to not only reduce nature negative investments, but realize positive outcomes
that build resilience of their companies, societies and ecosystems.
And with that, back to you, David.
Thank you very much.
You can find more on those links.
Carlos.
Thank you, David.
And good afternoon, everyone.
First, let me just say thank you to our colleagues from the Office of Trade
for inviting us.
The city program
not just to participate, but also to learn
how we've done so.
We've learned quite a bit so far.
I have colleagues in the back as well just by listening
to some of the presenters this morning.
Let me start by saying that we in City part are not scientists,
we're not climate experts, but we do recognize that all of us
have a responsibility and a role to play because it will take all of us
working together to address this existential challenge
by all of us.
I mean governments, academia, our international colleagues
and partners, those countries.
We have signed mutual recognition arrangements with concerned individuals
such as yourselves and of course, the trade community at large,
the owners and operators of most of the international supply
chain, and unfortunately, the source of much of the world's
total greenhouse gas emissions.
And yes, where some of the greatest innovations
taking place to address sustainability.
And yes, global warming is a national threat
not only to the United States but to every single country on this earth.
It is a threat to our economic viability and to supply chain resilience.
As we heard today, economic security is national security.
And many members and owners of the international supply chain
are certified certified companies.
So we have some leverage over these companies based on the relationship
and partnership that we have built over the last two decades through safety. But
this is why CBP has recognized
and I don't see the slide anywhere,
that the program has a role to play
in improving climate resilience and resource efficiency.
We have very dedicated members in the trade,
and we can use that collected
leverage to lead the rest of the world in the right direction towards green trade
from a supply chain security program perspective.
As you will see in just a couple of minutes,
we have actually been exploring how we can leverage the city program
to support the CBP green trade strategy.
But before I go into those details, I know that some members of the audience
may not be very familiar with what we do in city by city,
but stands for Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, and is the U.S.
version of the Authorized Economic Operator Program,
a key component of the World Customs Organization's
framework of standards to secure and facilitate global trade,
a key instrument based on international standards
that guides customs administrations from all over the world as to how and why
they need to do in order to secure trade so it can be facilitated
through CTP.
CBP works with the trade community to strengthen
the international supply chain and improve U.S.
border security.
And the program is part of the
layered cargo enforcement strategy that CBP implemented as a result
following the attacks of September the 11th.
We have close to 11,000 members
representing the entire supply chain spectrum from U.S.
importers and exporters, sea carriers, highway
carriers, US licensed customs brokers and so forth.
By implementing and following citywide security requirements,
CBP affords these companies several benefits,
including less inspections at the border and access to our dedicated lanes
the land borders, ports of entry,
what we call the fast lanes, or a 52% of all U.S.
imports into the United States or city certified.
And we have partnered with many nations through our mutual recognition arrangement
program.
So far, we have signed 18 of them.
One of them, of course,
being with the European Union, which and its 27 member states.
So we're actually working very closely with 44 countries from around the world,
many of them some of our main trading partners.
So with that background in mind, let me tell you what we have done
internally to address climate change and what we're currently exploring
in order to support CBP's green trade strategy.
Needless to say, and I do want to emphasize this,
any proposal or any change to the program that we think is needed
which will impact the trade.
Our members will be presented through the trade, through the commercial Customs
Operation Advisory Committee or Co.uk for a full discussion.
The first thing we did was to look
at the strategy, study its goals and opportunities
and see where we can leverage the program to help CBP meet its goals.
We've met with Director
Bigelow and her staff to the course, discuss
where the program with the program has proactively done and
where we can go in terms of powered operations
and ideas that we can explore
to implement in the future.
We have also been busy learning what other U.S.
government entities and international organizations
like the WCO and the IMO are recommending its members to do.
And most importantly, learning what the trade is
already doing to address global warming
so that we can
be aware of the challenges that you face
and at the same time understand
the best practices that have already been implemented
so that perhaps we can adopt those best practices in
some of the areas where City Park can strengthen the program to address
climate change is by looking at our eligibility requirements.
Those are
preconditions that companies must meet before they even apply to city.
But by strengthening our vetting protocols.
When a company applies on a yearly basis,
all companies go through a vetting process.
And finally, by expanding our security requirements
and I have an example here that has to do with the FTC,
we need to reach out to other partner government agencies.
An example is the FTC.
They have developed what they call green guides to help companies
avoid making environmental claims that misled consumers.
What is commonly known as greenwashing.
The FTC has several open enforcement cases and dozens of companies,
some of them in city, but who the FTC believes
have been involved in greenwashing practices.
So to what extent can we use these information that the FTC
already has publicly available
on their website to leverage the same type of program?
We've been working with the our colleagues at the WCO
to support
a proposal submitted
by the European Union that has to deal with green trade.
We're working with our mutual recognition arrangement partners
so that they support that proposal as well.
And finally, we have conducted our own analysis
internally to determine to what extent we have been able to
diminish, decrease our carbon footprint.
We use calculation methodologies and statistics
from the Federal Aviation Administration and the International Council
on Clean Transportation, and we were able to determine that
by implementing virtual validations, the program has been able to save
over 650,000 kilograms of carbon emissions
through virtual validations, which is the equivalent to the jet
fuel consumed by a fully fueled Boeing's 3737 600 airliners.
We will continue to learn which are all doing
adopt some of your best practices and see where we can leverage
the CTA program once again to support the CBP Green Trade strategy.
Thank you.
Thank you, Carlos.
So here we go.
Can you.
Ah, cue my music, please.
We don't have any music, but at one point we did have a.
EPA Smart way country song.
So you got to know your stakeholders. It's on a CD.
I'm sure somewhere if you can find a CD player to to play it.
So thank you, Dr.
Alexander, for organizing this panel and to the entire grain
Trade Office team for the invitation to join this discussion
now. So it's complicated.
I mastered it,
so I'm going to skip ahead
and go to the diagram.
And I'm going to begin by zooming out and discuss sort of why a smart way exists.
Well, our industry, government partnership grew out of a need for more reliable,
more credible and more accessible information.
So those in the supply chain could make greener decisions with greater confidence.
When we started 20 or so years ago, claims of greenness
and fuel savings from technologies abound, often
without a credible basis and sometimes with less noble intent.
For the economists among us.
This would be known as less than perfect market information.
So in a broad sense, smart way exists to support market based solutions
by informing the supply chain at key points
regarding the greenness of other links, as well as individual informing
individual links how they can genuinely improve their greenness.
And in general, we think of ourselves as debunking the myth that companies
can't simultaneously improve their triple
bottom line people, planet and prosperity or profit.
So that is,
it is possible to act in ways that advance your corporate social responsibility,
meet your environmental obligations and financially prosper.
Free to efficiency done properly inherently reduces your social
and environmental footprint and improves improves your profitability.
So how do we do it?
Well, at our foundation, we convene, inform and incentivize,
and I'll refer to the diagram here
to get a bit into the nuts and bolts.
So we have three primary stakeholders, our shippers, carriers and logistics.
Of course, shippers, you can think of those in the retail business might be
people selling cars, electronics, potato chips, whatever it might be.
Carriers trucking fleets, people that move stuff and logistics and third party
logistics providers, those that might use multimodal multimodal techniques,
whether it be rail, air, road to move things as well.
So the center of gravity of the program is depicted in the middle of this diagram.
It's really our smart way data.
So all of our all of our shippers, carriers
and logistics organizations submit data to us.
It used to be a spreadsheet.
Now it's an online portal and with that, with that activity data
on fuel used what they've what they moved in terms of tonnes volume,
how they've gone about it with different modes, time
they've spent on the road at different speeds, all kinds of valuable information.
We, we develop a set of metrics, a grams per ton mile,
so a sort of a freight efficiency for CO2.
Of course NOx and PPM, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
And these metrics, as well as developing emissions, projected emissions
using peer review methodologies, emissions that can be
that can be used as a credible source of how green
the movement truly, truly is.
So these metrics
and this data informs the gray lines on the outside of the smart way ecosystem.
It informs these decisions we hope and informs the transactions.
Using this information.
We rank how we rank the carriers, we build them,
and with some care to not give away too much of the secret sauce for that.
For each of the individual entities respecting their privacy, we provide
information that allows hopefully shippers to a
to steer their their work in their contracts
towards people who are genuinely greener, demonstrated greener.
So we also also program elements
that directly support individual nodes within this ecosystems.
So that comes in a variety of of of mechanisms.
We have a smart way technology verification center.
And this center has developed standard test protocols
that manufacturers use for a variety of equipment.
It could be aerodynamic excuse to retrofit tractor trailers.
It could be if the idle reduction equipment, low
rolling resistance tires, these kinds of things.
And we have developed standard protocols that they use, submit to us.
We review it and we list by product
devices and technology that our stakeholders
can use to to go out there and reduce emissions.
And again, not relying upon manufacturer claims, but relying upon tested
tested products,
education.
So we have a variety of ready to ready to use
education programs from driver training to idle reduction webinars.
And of course, we have several
sets of best practices that we share across our stakeholders.
And overarching all of this are incentives that we hopefully have.
We provide for our for our our stakeholders.
That includes the Smart Way Excellence awards list of high performers
on our website, and also access to our logo and brand
that we hope is a shorthand for for folks finding the greenest of the green.
So some results.
We have about 4000 partners.
We started with 15 charter partners.
About 3400 of those are trucking fleets.
And you can review these at your at your leisure.
There's a lot of great information on our benefits, baked and baked in there.
But suffice to say, we are very proud of the commitment and achievements
of our partners because they're the ones that are reducing the emissions.
We are along for the ride and hopefully providing providing incentives.
So I'll finish with a couple of key, key components
that we believe are part of our success and things that we've learned.
So first and foremost, this program is within for the freight sector.
We have to listen and evolve at a pace that serves the communities
and the markets that we're attempting to influence.
And this is really critical because by our very nature,
we're trying to align
with those that are on the leading edge, the leading edge of best practices
of corporate social responsibility and reporting and overall innovation.
Second engagement.
We've invested significantly in mechanisms for engaging our stakeholders
that not only make our program accessible, but if I dare say, even a bit human.
We have a partner, account managers.
Every partner is assigned a real, a real person that they can talk to.
You have to invest in something like this.
So while we're a great supporter of digital efficiency,
we are also committed to this other perspective,
this other prong of how we can engage
and interact with our our stakeholders.
Balancing competing forces, of course, where we might strive for simplicity,
but we also need to provide as much flexibility as possible,
informing and facilitating transparency.
But know that you'll need to protect sensitive business information.
And I'll conclude by just emphasizing you have to show the value proposition.
We're a voluntary program.
If we don't demonstrate a value proposition for the stakeholders
and for our community, they won't be with us for for very long.
So just emphasizing again, that triple bottom line
that we've heard discussed throughout several sessions here today.
And with that, I'll conclude without music.
It was great.
So thanks for all those opening salvos.
I think one of the most interesting themes that you probably
picked up on across all the the statements here is that
everyone talked about human centric and use inspired approaches.
And I think that's an important aspect that often is underappreciated
and overlooked.
It's not just about the technology,
although the the scientists and the technologists would like to say
that it's about the humans that you're trying to motivate action from.
So well done.
Here's where it gets fun, right?
So I get to challenge you with some questions.
So I do have a few general questions, but I also have some
some targeted questions for for each one of the panelists.
So, you know, the general question I'll start with
is what innovation opportunities do you see in green trade?
And then maybe make that a reflection of how
that how your your program is and maybe an example from your program.
So, hope, why don't we start with you?
Sure. Happy to.
To get started,
I think I would really highlight the economic opportunities that we see
in green trade for those in the food and agriculture sector.
USDA, for example,
is making historic investments in our climate smart commodities program.
So that's producing commodities
that are more productive using less natural resources.
And we hope that these sort of pilot programs USDA is funding
private sector partners can pick those up and run with them, and that there
will be preferential consumer demand for more sustainable products.
So we think looking upstream at the production side,
there's a lot of economic opportunities for partners
and then getting more into the trade side of things.
I think we expect that there will be an increasing number
of voluntary standards, for example, regarding climate smart commodities
and, that there will be additional opportunities internationally for U.S.
producers, for example, in that market.
There are specific innovation opportunities, as I mentioned,
food additives for enteric fermentation earlier.
We've seen and I don't want to jump the gun on challenges,
but we've seen some challenges
to adoption of new technologies, including biotechnologies, for example.
So we're hoping to increase the acceptance of new technologies through openness
to innovation, through campaigns such as the agriculture Innovation
Mission for Climate.
So really,
I think I would highlight those potential economic opportunities in trade,
and we'd love to engage more with private sector partners
working on the transportation and emissions side of this.
For example, DHL spoke this morning about SRF
using more sustainable aviation fuels,
and the USDA would love to continue to partner with the private sector
on the roll out of how do we work on the transportation
side of these more sustainably produced agricultural commodities as well.
Thanks.
So so maybe I'll follow up hope QUESTION So what what is most surprised
you as an outcome of the the agricultural mission Innovation Mission
surprised me.
I think potentially the enthusiasm
that different countries have shown for this.
Relating back to my example of biotechnologies, the U.S.
has been a longtime supporter and investor of these technologies.
Our science and research institutions do a lot of incredible work in this space,
which is critical for climate resilient crops, etc.
But I think one of the reasons there hasn't been as much acceptance globally is
there wasn't a lot of awareness of how this technology could be utilized.
So really bringing partners together to increase acceptance
of innovations and new technologies has been a critical outcome.
And it surprised me.
I think the openness to, innovation
we were excited to see at the climate summit, over 42 partner
countries in attendance and everyone working
to share their specific innovations, whether that be for smallholder farmers
in Southeast Asia or large scale agricultural commodity groups.
Everyone's working on different sectors and there's innovation opportunities,
food and agricultural supply chain.
So ranging from the R&D side of things, the production side of things
to the transportation we are seeing a lot of enthusiasm
for this approach, which has allowed us to mobilize that 13 billion pool
to fund over the five year period.
And we hope that this momentum continues to increase.
Of course, we're nowhere near where we need to be in terms of investments.
And we see the energy sector, for example, having historic investment
in clean energy technologies.
We need to get closer to that in the food and agricultural sector to ramp up
and to really make our food systems and agricultural supply chains greener.
So I think I would say what surprised me, the enthusiasm,
although we still have a long way to go, right.
It's a thought maybe for you.
You speak to the innovation opportunities, particularly
that you may have learned from your your Green Asia initiative and
and then maybe comment on how a lesson learned or some aspect
that surprised you as an outcome of what you've been driving forward.
Sure. Thanks, David.
In terms of opportunities, I think there's probably a couple.
One is that
because we've got 80 different offices
around the world working in more than 100 countries,
you know, we have that on the ground
presence to really understand different contexts and different places
and adjust and adapt to what makes the most sense for the
I'll speak about the agriculture
forestry field, because that's what I'm most comfortable with.
And following hope,
you know, how can smallholders participate in the global economy
and not be left at the side of the road as far as sort of large industries
start moving towards lower emission practices and,
you know, reducing their vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change,
that it's not coming at the expense of those who
maybe aren't able to participate in forums such as this or get on Zoom calls, etc..
Um, you know, we have the ability to really
include them in the work that we do throughout the world.
Maybe one of the other
opportunities is
markets that are sending a strong enough signal
that this is what's needed, that the middle man
not to be pejorative about that, but the middlemen in the entire trade
ecosystem are recognizing they need that better data.
And as people are getting that better data about where are they sourcing from,
what are the practices that are being used to produce a certain commodity.
They're finding inefficiencies in the system that they can then reduce
because they've now got better information about all of the production aspects.
And so you don't need as much pesticide, you don't need as much fertilizer.
You can still have the same yields without
applying over applying pesticides,
which then have knock on effects, of course, with water quality, etc., etc..
In terms of surprises, I was
surprised that in the Green investigation programs documented that one.
Some of the industries that we're working with, the different commodity chains
were really early adopters of, say, coffee.
We ended up having 80%
of the largest roasters in the world.
Name brands that you see on any supermarket shelf
get involved in pre competitive benchmark
and using common tools to be able to then
when they're competing against one another, at least know that you know,
my data and your data are being used or being gathered in the same way.
And so reducing the greenwashing that we just heard about
other industries weren't and I think that's what surprised me, is
some industries were just like,
yeah, no, we're not going to sit down with our competitors
and talk about these things and get a common benchmark.
And I was a little surprised that the more industries did not Cocoa, for example,
didn't recognize that as an opportunity for them to change their practices,
but at the same time also improve their own bottom lines.
Interesting
and definitely interesting comment about the the need to engage
more at the local level and take advantage of their knowledge and expertise.
So so, Carlos, maybe I'll I'll the question on to you.
So what do you see, particularly in this
the city pad program in terms of innovation opportunities?
And then you mentioned the Coke and
and authorized Economic operator program.
So maybe talk a little bit in terms of maybe some of the challenges
that you around those programs
or from a city
from a city perspective, I think I'm going to follow leads, hopefully.
Maybe talk a little bit about the economic opportunity through growing trade.
So continue to explore how we can internally
reduce our carbon footprint in the work we do,
how we can continue to
achieve efficiencies for CBP
without obviously
forgetting about the security side.
So once again, continue to expand
perhaps on the work that we do through virtual validations.
So once again, lower our carbon footprint, do our job better,
and even more important, be able to concentrate a little bit more
on those companies that were not virtually validating
to be virtually validated by city, by
the company.
The member cannot have any type
of security incident, any customs compliance issues.
So when we conduct these virtual validations
on these companies that we trust the most, we can concentrate our efforts
on those companies that perhaps need a little bit more help
now from the city parties, a partnership we need to work with the trade.
The trade is actually the ones that are
leading in terms of innovation.
So we're going to be learning what they're doing and hopefully
be able to apply some of those best practices into city.
But whether it's through a new eligibility requirement, a security requirement,
maybe evolving
our fast lane and aqua lane requirements
in the future, fossil rain, our dedicated lanes,
the southern border and the northern borders.
Right now, you don't have to have any
credential rules when it comes to green trade to be able to use these lanes.
But I suspect that as time goes by and this becomes a bigger
and bigger issue, events, really some of the eligibility requirements
to be eligible to participate in up lane in the fast lanes
is going to include something related to green trade
to incentivize companies, but also to reward companies, Right?
Yeah, that's great.
And I think that and I'm sorry, you mentioned that core
and yes, sure.
The site and I tried to stress that point
during my introduction, whatever we decide to do
is going to be done in cooperation, collaboration with the private sector,
our own members,
trade associations and of the stations that we work very closely with,
eventually present
something to the Coke for a full discussion.
We went through this process about five years ago
when we updated our minimum security criteria.
It took us about three and a half years, lots of meetings,
lots of phone calls, lots of email exchanges.
But it was a successful process and I think we were able
to eventually arrive at the the criteria that we have in place.
So once again, collaboration, collaboration with the ultimate
owners and operators
of the supply chains, a partnering, partnering and more partnering.
And I love that that use of the term reward.
I think that's a very astute observation.
Sam, maybe I'll carry it on to you.
You've heard your colleagues, particularly talk a little bit about benchmarking
in the role of benchmarking and helping them
accomplish some of their mission goals and objectives.
You know, the Smart Way program you you articulated has has a unique role and
and provides a lot of value in terms of measuring and benchmarking.
So maybe I'll I'll I'll rephrase the question.
Talk a little bit about the innovation opportunity is related to smart way.
And then maybe if you could share an example
of of the most creative
use of smart way data or tools that I know you had plenty of stuff
in your desk, but maybe you didn't get to share with the audience.
Yeah.
Thanks.
So opportunities
like some of this may have been covered a bit already,
but I just wanted to really emphasize it, which is I think first really this
the opportunities exist for additional connection in pathways between programs.
So we're essentially as a government programs, you're a system of
systems, right?
But we have entities that have various touch points.
They might come in through something that
is compliance focused.
They may come in through an environmental pathway.
But I feel like it's sort of like Chutes and Ladders, right?
There's opportunities to connect across not only for our programs to
to collaborate, but also maybe even for our for our systems.
Right.
We touched upon one of the fundamentals in the very, you know, very first session
this morning, which was the education and climate literacy.
Right.
So I think there's some definitely some opportunities there.
As far as the linking the programs,
connecting and providing opportunities
for our stakeholders to have sort of the fewest touches,
but get to all of the programs and the resources there.
Second, you know, just opportunities for for data.
Data data, Right.
I think one of the key things that seen is there is a lot of data out there.
There are a lot of data systems and a lot of them because they were designed
with some of their original intent or their original organization.
They're close, they're similar, but they're not exact. Right.
So these interfaces and this ability to get them to cross
pollinate their data is really, really critical.
You know, we've looked quite a bit at real time visibility of platforms.
So our data is on the timescale of a year.
We're looking at broader grams per ton mile metrics for on the scale of a year.
So we we see this opportunity more and more of
our stakeholders are using these real time data visibility platforms.
They want to know where the ship or the shipment is right now.
That's a lot of data.
We don't have the cloud space for it, but maybe some way to connect in there.
So again, at these these organizations and entities that don't have unlimited
resources can collect information in ways that really sort of multiple purposes.
So some opportunities there.
It's one example of the most creative use.
I mean, I mentioned the country song.
I mean, I don't know how much more creative that was.
That was us. We get someone to sign off on.
It wasn't me
early on, but
I think so many so many examples to to think of.
I'm going to touch upon one.
One study we did that I think was creative in its in its scope,
which was a study that we, we,
we collaborated with with an NGO.
And it looked
at the Home Depot supply chain and value chain all the way
from where the materials and the products were being produced in China,
across road through ports, across the ocean, into U.S.
ports, etc., and all the way to to the US customer.
And I think that's an example, maybe an example of how
we can think more creatively and how they were certainly had the vision
and insight to see this as a real value and participate in the study.
And I think these things will be really critical
because there's along along that entire chain and with broad kind of
spectrum research like this, a lot of of opportunities pop up or made visible.
Right.
So we sometimes can target in we have an idea.
We know there might be some inefficiencies at one point.
But I think these these are kind of continuous spectrum
and really a broad vision.
Studies really have some some potential.
There are creative uses. That's great.
So we've got a few minutes left and I'm going to pass
the question off to you and I'd like you to answer it in an
direct way to the audience.
So this is your chance to ask the audience
or charge the audience, you know,
in terms of what you would like them to do for you as a federal agency
in driving the green trade, ecosystem and economy.
So I hope I'll start with you, sir.
Thank you.
For me, that's a that's an easy answer, which would be to invest in climate,
smart agriculture and food systems innovation and work with your partners
to also create those new investments that could be government partners.
If you work with governments, that could be private sector partners.
If you work with the private sector, we really need to increase
this investment in order to meet our climate goals.
And the need really is pressing.
Innovation is the largest contributing factor to total vector
productivity, and yet public funding for innovation
and research has been declining in the past decade
in high income countries as well as around the world.
So we need to from the public sector these investments, but also have
the private sector
make these ambitious investments in order to get where we need to go
to feed a growing population on the same or less land and increasing
productivity while reducing emissions and meeting adaptation goals.
So really it would be to to invest.
And to do that
you can join in for climate and work with us to mobilize those investments
as a innovation partner, as a government partner, as a knowledge partner.
And if you want to learn more about how to do that, it's a pretty simple process.
Come and speak with me after the panel and I'd be happy to to chat more.
Thank you, Todd.
I guess two things.
One, if you have a business, please let your suppliers know
that this is important to you and pass the word along that you know,
the more we know about where everything that we consume comes from,
then the faster we can get to genuinely green.
And so then for all of you who are consumers, which I think
is everybody in the room, consume something somewhere, sometime
pay attention to what you're buying,
you should use your purchasing power
to send that signal to the people who are producing and trading.
Whatever it is that you buy.
Okay.
I got three things.
Number one, for those of you who are keypad,
are any any of you really
if you have any ideas as to what I can do
to support the CBP green strategy, please send it to me.
I'm Sure that at some point we're going to get together with some city board
members, some type of a working group, and talk about ideas and so forth.
Number two, make sure that
if you do not have done that already to include sustainability training
as part of your regular training for your employees, contractors.
And so forth.
And finally, I think we need to begin to think
about the security of the supply chain from a wider perspective.
It's not just the container and the conveyance,
but it's also the roads, the bridges, the oceans
that make it possible for that cargo to go from point A to point B.
And third, to ensure that our natural resources are available for the future.
And those are the types of messages that we need to convey
to our employees, to our business
partners, to our contractors.
And and following on what you just said.
Right.
Make sure that this is being discussed at every level of the organization
like,
you know,
I think from our perspective and that with the Smart Way program,
I think it is just a call
to to really participate.
And if there's one thing I think we've heard through throughout today
is that there are a lot of organizations,
there are a lot of government agencies, departments and programs
that are very genuinely trying to influence in a positive way
the supply chain and in ways that are that really,
you know, support their triple bottom line to overuse a term in my talk.
But but it makes a big difference.
And one thing I really want to underscore here is don't underestimate
the the influence that you can have on these programs.
All of these programs are very genuinely interested.
And we really need input.
If you go to the Smart Way website, which I know you will all do tonight,
if you see something on our program, if you like it, great.
If you see something that's a near miss or something you might want changed,
give us a call.
Give us a call.
Send us a note.
Every one of the programs that you've heard about today and on this panel are
trying to genuinely improve and influence and make a difference.
That's why we saw you come to work each day.
So really, just don't underestimate your your ability to influence
the programs here and hopefully the long term outcomes.
All right.
So again, thank you to my panelists.
I think we had a very compelling discussion here.
I think we lived up to the to the titling of the of the panel
and that we left you with a call to action.
And I think we'd appreciate if you if you take that and a deep consideration.
And as my fellow panelists here said, engage, engage not just amongst yourselves
and with your consumers, but also engage with the with the government programs.
We will learn as much from you as as we hope
that we can advance the knowledge of others. So.
So again, thank you very much for the for the time today.
And and to my fellow panelists and I think we had a
we had a task as moderator to finish up on time.
So we hit the mark there and I'll I'll turn it over.
I think
the executive assistant
commissioner, Anne Marie Highsmith, I'll turn it over to you.
You want to announce the next speaker?
Thank you.