company:wal-mart stores inc

23 Companies Sign Manifesto to Halt Destruction of Brazilian Cerrado | Sustainable Brands
▻http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/supply_chain/sustainable_brands/23_companies_sign_manifesto_halt_destruction_brazilia

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/sites/default/files/article_images/cerrado635.jpg

Soy and beef production have played significant roles in the exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest, but the rollout of regulations to protect these precious natural resources have had unexpected consequences, driving these activities into regions that have largely been left untouched, such as Brazil’s Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna ecoregion of 2 million square kilometers.

The pressing situation was a major topic of discussion at an event hosted by The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit and Unilever on Wednesday morning in London, during which the Prince of Wales called for greater actions to be undertaken to protect the Cerrado and other threatened areas around the globe. “An increasing concern is the extent to which success in reducing agricultural expansion into forests comes at the expense of the destruction of other wonderful ecosystems such as the Cerrado, the Chaco and the world’s remaining savannahs,” he said. “All of [these landscapes] are so vital for the services they provide and the biodiversity they sustain.”

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Signatories include Carrefour, Colgate-Palmolive, Co-operative Group Ltd, IKEA Food Services AB, Sainsbury’s, Kellogg Company, Lidl UK GmbH, L’Oréal SA, Mars Inc., McDonald’s Corporation, Marks and Spencer Group Plc, Nestlé S.A., Tesco Stores Plc., Unilever, Waitrose Ltd and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

▻http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CerradoManifesto_September2017.pdf

Support for Cerrado Manifesto Triples, Momentum Builds for Cargill and Bunge to Agree to End Deforestation for Soy, Meat
▻http://www.mightyearth.org/support-cerrado-manifesto-triples-momentum-builds-cargill-bunge-agree-e

61 leading meat, dairy and soy companies and retailers announced today their support for the Cerrado Manifesto, a pledge to eliminate clearance of native vegetation in the Brazilian Cerrado for large-scale agriculture. This number represents a tripling of support for the Manifesto since its release in October 2017. We appreciate the leadership of companies like Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Unilever, and Carrefour on this initiative.

Cargill and Bunge, two of the world’s largest agribusinesses that are operating in the areas of Latin America with the highest levels of deforestation, are facing significantly increased pressure from their customers to expand their own success in eliminating deforestation for soy in the Brazilian Amazon to the Brazilian Cerrado, and other priority landscapes in Latin America.

#Cerrado #Brésil #engagement #agroindustrie #soja #viande

HCDH | UN expert on extreme poverty and human rights to visit USA, one of the wealthiest countries in the world
▻http://www.ohchr.org/FR/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22465&LangID=E

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Les #États-Unis exigent des autres pays (ou plutôt des pays qui ne leur sont pas inféodés) le respect de droits humains qu’eux-mêmes refusent formellement de respecter.

“Some might ask why a UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States. But despite great wealth in the US, there also exists great poverty and inequality,” said Mr. Alston.

“I would like to focus on how poverty affects the civil and political rights of people living within the US, given the United States’ consistent emphasis on the importance it attaches to these rights in its foreign policy , and given that it has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

Why the UN is investigating extreme poverty … in America, the world’s richest nation | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-poverty-america-special-rapporteur

The US poses an especially challenging subject for the UN special rapporteur because unlike all other industrialized nations, it fails to recognize fundamental social and economic rights such as the right to healthcare, a roof over your head or food to keep hunger at bay. The federal government has consistently refused to sign up to the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights – arguing that these matters are best left to individual states.

Trump Revamps U.S. Trade Focus by Pulling Out of Pacific Deal - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-23/trump-said-to-sign-executive-order-on-trans-pacific-pact-monday

With the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump abruptly ended the decades-old U.S. tilt toward free trade by acting to withdraw from an Asia-Pacific accord that had been promoted by companies including Nike Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as well as family farmers and ranchers.

“Great thing for the American worker, what we just did,” Trump said on Monday after signing a memorandum directing the U.S. Trade Representative to withdraw the U.S. as a signatory to the Trans-Pacific Partnership accord with 11 other nations. He left the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada untouched for now, but an aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said action on that accord is still in the works.

#TPP #NAFTA

Analysis : Bangladesh still works for retailers, despite disasters | Reuters
▻http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/bangladesh-building-retailers-idINDEE93Q02I20130427

Un excellent article de Nivedita Bhattacharjee et Jessica Wohl pour « Reuters India » sur les conditions de travail et l’exploitation des salariés du tiers-monde par l’industrie textile et la complicité des institutions transnationales et des consommateurs.

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About 18 months before the previous big tragedy in Bangladesh - a fire in November in a textile factory that killed 112 people - shareholders at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) had the opportunity to weigh in on the safety question. By a nearly 50-to-1 margin, they rejected a proposal to require suppliers to report annually on safety issues at their factories.

In arguing against the proposal, Wal-Mart’s management made its reasoning clear: Having suppliers compile such reports “could ultimately lead to higher costs for Walmart and higher prices for our customers. This would not be in the best interests of Walmart’s shareholders and customers and would place Walmart at a competitive disadvantage,” the company said in proxy materials.

Soon after the fire, Wal-Mart and Sears Holdings Corp (SHLD.O) admitted their goods were being made at the Tazreen Fashions workshop even though they had denied that factory authorization as a supplier.

FAR FROM ALONE

Bangladesh is hardly the only source of inexpensive clothes and cheap labor that has sparked concern about labor conditions. From Vietnam, to the American protectorate of Saipan, to the massive workshops in China, Western companies have found themselves entangled with places where worker health and safety conditions are often questioned.

Disasters such as the April 24 collapse of an eight-story factory building in Bangladesh have not changed the calculation for apparel makers and retailers. Cheaper products appeal to shoppers. And the taint, if any, appears to be manageable.

The courthouse, marketplace and stock market seem to be telling them they are right.

Shoppers such as Mohini Raichura are making decisions that justify the retailers’ strategies. Raichura, a 30-year-old London charity worker, was shopping Friday at Primark, a discount retailer owned by Associated British Foods (ABF.L), even though she knew that some of its products were made at the factory that collapsed earlier in the week.

“I go there because it’s cheap. That’s awful. It really makes me a bad person,” Raichura said. “But you know, I work for a charity, I’m on a limited income, and I pay rent in London -that’s how I justify it.”

Consumers continue to purchase products from brands like Wal-Mart’s Faded Glory, found in the Tazreen rubble, and Loblaw’s Joe Fresh, found in the ruins of the factory building this week.

... That disaster, in which locked doors prevented workers from fleeing to safety, did not appear to have any measurable impact on sales at Wal-Mart and Sears after both acknowledged their products were made there.

The world’s court systems have not provided a disincentive, either. For example, in 2005, a lawsuit was filed in California state court on behalf of factory workers in Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and other countries accusing Wal-Mart of failing to address substandard working conditions in suppliers’ factories.

But the case was ultimately dismissed, and according to a search of available filings on the Thomson Reuters legal database Westlaw, there have been no U.S. lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart or Sears on similar matters since the Tazreen fire.

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