Dear colleagues,

Dear colleagues, partners,

2024 marked the end of a cycle, as well as setting a strong foundation for the work ahead. We successfully completed our three-year strategy, having for example significantly increased our membership. UEBT now brings together over 180 companies from around the world. These companies span various stages of botanical supply chains and share a commitment to sourcing with respect for all people and biodiversity.

Throughout the years, we focused on amplifying local voices and enhancing positive impact in sourcing areas. There are now over 100 biodiversity action plans, delivering measurable benefits to local biodiversity through practical and adaptable approaches. Likewise, UEBT now has representation in six key sourcing countries, facilitating UEBT services and support to local companies.

At the end of 2024, we adopted new strategic directions for 2030, further expanding our efforts to drive impact in sourcing areas in line with new global policy targets. Aligned with this, UEBT launched a new strategy on human rights, offering increased transparency on assessments and guidance on action plans for supply chains in high-risk conditions. The importance of companies taking proactive approaches to human rights is underscored by growing understanding of challenges in working conditions in botanical supply chains, such as Jasmine in Egypt.

At our annual conference, local companies called for the sector to increase investment and partnerships in sourcing areas. This is a key driver for the work ahead: focusing on social and biodiversity risks, tackling root causes, and working beyond individual supply chains to address systemic issues. The IFRA-UEBT Responsible Sourcing Initiative is an example of such a sectoral, collaborative approach focusing on fragrance ingredients.

We would like to thank our members, partners, and donors for their support, trust, and collaboration. We live in interesting times. As we look ahead, we are pleased to count on you to take UEBT into this new strategic cycle and enhance our joint, positive impact.

All the best,

Angela Pinhati

2025 Board President

Rik Kutsch Lojenga

Executive Director

Eder Ramos

2024 Board President

(Eder’s term as Board President ended December 2024)

Impact over 3 years

UEBT set its strategy to 2024 with three-year aspirations and targets. See our results below on key targets:

Looking forward to 2030

At the end of 2024, UEBT published its new Stategic Directions to 2030 including priorities for 2025 to 2027.

We are:

Sharpening UEBT’s focus on botanicals and their sourcing areas
Standing for ‘sourcing with respect’ as our core, including:
- how botanicals impact people and biodiversity in sourcing areas
- how to drive positive impacts in different production systems: wild collection, agroforestry as well as agriculture
- collaborating with our priority sectors: beauty and personal care, herbs and spices, botanical beverages, natural flavours and natural pharma.

From left to right: Nelly, Karène and Lien in a field verification forAgarwood in Vietnam

Adélie, field verification for helicrysum in Croatia

Our Strategic Directions for 2030 are:

Conserve and regenerate biodiversity: Promoting biodiversity conservation and regeneration in sourcing areas.
Deepen the work for people: Increase attention to human rights, working conditions, just remuneration and livelihoods in sourcing areas, and provide greater socio-economic incentives to local producers for implementing sourcing practices that respect people and biodiversity.
Drive work in supply chains, sectors and landscapes: Drive improvements and impacts in sourcing areas through assessments and improvement plans in company supply chains, as well as through projects in sourcing landscapes that are strategic in terms of livelihoods or biodiversity.
Facilitate responsible sourcing due diligence: Guide and support companies along the supply chain to respond to evolving rules on responsible sourcing due diligence, promoting active collaboration with suppliers in sourcing risk mitigation.
Promote platform for inclusive and effective collaboration: Strengthen UEBT’s platform function for companies committed to sourcing with respect for people and biodiversity, by promoting sharing of experiences and joint action, with special attention to the role of local supply chain actors.

UEBT’s new strategy supports our vision of a world in which all people and biodiversity thrive, and our mission to regenerate nature and secure a better future for people through ethical sourcing of ingredients from biodiversity. We advance this vision and mission through our **Theory of Change** (pictured above) that also advances the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Global Biodiversity Framework.

First UEBT regenerative practices label

Natura has been a partner of UEBT for over 15 years. In 2024, the company concluded a regenerative pilot, where UEBT assessed six key ingredients using the UEBT standard and UEBT’s regenerative add-on indicators that include a living income and living wage analysis. The regenerative pilot assessment covered five countries (Brazil, Ghana, Namibia, Peru and Switzerland), five native species, two production systems and around 14,000 farmers and wild collectors with more than 200,000 hectares of land. At the end of 2024, Natura announced that it had achieved UEBT regenerative certification of its Brazil nut supply chain. The first consumer-facing products (see picture) containing an ingredient with UEBT certified regenerative practices was unveiled at the UEBT conference in October 2024.

Launch at UEBT Conference

Launch of wild-harvest partnership with SAI Platform

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform) and UEBT announced in 2024 their new partnership aimed at enhancing responsible sourcing practices for wild-harvested botanicals. This collaboration combines expertise and strengths of both organisations to provide a unified approach to ethical sourcing, benefiting their respective members and the broader industry.

Solen and Estefani assessing wild species in the Alps, France

Supply chain due diligence to drive change

UEBT continued in 2024 to guide and support companies along the supply chain to respond to evolving rules on responsible sourcing due diligence, promoting active collaboration with suppliers in risk mitigation. UEBT offered companies guidance and support in line with the global UEBT standard and using three main tools:

UEBT supplier due diligence platform
UEBT responsible sourcing risk database
UEBT ABS due diligence database

Sector-level working groups and projects

Checking practices in local processing facilities, cultivation areas and wild collection sites, plays an important role in identifying issues, and understanding risks and impacts in places where ingredients are harvested. However, on their own, assessments cannot solve deeply rooted problems. UEBT therefore also focuses on other ways to support companies, including sector-level working groups, biodiversity monitoring plans, and on-the-ground projects. None of these are a ‘silver bullet’ and supply chain approaches such as field verification can often move more quickly and directly, while working collectively can be more stepwise. A range of approaches are needed.

Some of UEBT’s active projects or sectoral approaches in 2024, among others, included these pictured here.

Promoting responsible purchasing practices of natural fragrance supply chains in India and Egypt
Starting in late 2023 and ramping up in 2024, UEBT began working with business, government, and civil society stakeholders in Egyptian and Indian supply chains of key botanicals commonly used in fragrances for the beauty and personal care sectors. The project, with support from the Initiative for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains of GIZ, aims to better understand the potential risks of unsustainable harvesting and collection practices of botanicals and the potentially difficult working conditions of farmers and farm workers, many of which women. The project carried out research and dialogue with stakeholders, including rights holders in sourcing areas. The project is also leading discussions with international stakeholders to encourage and define possible collaboration to address risks and improve sourcing practices.

Q&A: UEBT’s new human rights strategy launched in 2024

Centella asiatica - Madagascar

Sectoral approach

Carnauba wax - Brazil

Working group

Jasmine, Mint - India

Project supported in part by the German Due Diligence Fund

Jasmine, Herbs & Spices - Egypt

Project supported in part by the German Due Diligence Fund

Guaiac wood - Paraguay

Working group

Platform for companies – insights and exchange

Through a membership platform for committed companies, UEBT promotes responsible sourcing policies and practices. Companies are supported through UEBT’s field expertise, and recognised programmes and tools. Benefits include improved company sourcing systems, better risk management with suppliers, robust approaches for biodiversity regeneration and conservation, and clear steps to advance responsible sourcing in botanicals supply chains. Other benefits include peer-to-peer experiences, and opportunities to join or develop sectoral projects and collective action groups.

UEBT team meets UEBT members (verification, membership and claims teams)

UEBT team at in-cosmetics 2024

UEBT team at SIMPPAR 2024

 Members' exchange highlights
  
122 member representatives participated in the in-person UEBT members’ exchange in Amsterdam in 2024.  They shared challenges and insights with each other as well as implementation ideas for the new UEBT Strategy to 2030. Each company joined facilitated topic tables on discussions on human rights, collective action, improving the standard, and developing incentives for local biodiversity and climate actions, among others.

Sourcing with Respect Conference

More than 300 business leaders gathered online and in Amsterdam on 8 and 9 October for the ‘Sourcing with Respect’ Conference, the annual event hosted by UEBT that brings people together to discuss how ingredients from biodiversity can be sourced in a way that respects people and nature. The conference covered four main topics and several breakout sessions on day two. Plenary topics focused on:

Local voices on people and biodiversity
Industry trends
Consumer trends
Responsible sourcing

In the Local Voices session, leaders from Egypt, Türkiye, India, Guatemala, Zimbabwe and Madagascar focused on how buying companies must work in more meaningful partnerships with their suppliers.

UEBT Conference 2024 was sponsored by:

UEBT takes company delegation to Cali, Colombia for COP 16

UEBT was on the ground with some of its company members at COP 16 – the Biodiversity COP - in Cali, Colombia.  UEBT led two high level panel discussions at the official event of UN biodiversity for business: the Business and Biodiversity Forum.  UEBT also co-hosted side events with GIZ, Symrise, and Business for Nature and held a press conference on the new UEBT Biodiversity Barometer.  It was important to speak throughout the COP – in relevant events - about these actions for companies: 1) engage not only on larger commodities but also botanicals where biodiversity is high and livelihoods are dependent, 2) work in long term partnerships and engage meaningfully with suppliers, and 3) ensure local producers (farmers, pickers) have incentives needed to carry out sustainable practices.

UEBT Barometer 2024

UEBT released its latest Biodiversity Barometer at the end of 2024 at COP 16 in Colombia. The survey results showed that consumers have their highest awareness ever of biodiversity. The concept is now very well understood, and biodiversity loss is recognized by the public as an urgent global issue, ranking as the second most urgent global environmental concern following climate change. The vast majority (86%) of the 6,000 consumers surveyed agree that companies have a moral obligation to ensure that they have a positive impact on people and biodiversity.
Check out UEBT 2024 Barometer here.

Supply chain assessments

Strengthening supply chain assessments

In 2024, UEBT made several improvements to its field verification programme, including building on past advances. These included in 2024:

Risk based approaches to field verification through the expansion of UEBT’s responsible sourcing risk database and the launch of the Protocol for auditing supply chains in high-risk conditions.

Enhanced training for UEBT assessors, external assessors and subject-matter experts on assessment teams, including on social and human rights auditing.

Hiring of a dedicated human rights expert to support these and other improvements at UEBT.

Increased transparency by providing more information on official attestation documents such as when action plans are required and the measures and timeframes established for addressing risks or impacts.

UEBT verification team in a group assessment in Moldova. From left to right Karène, Florine, Elitsa, Solen and Adélie

UEBT team on the ground in 2024 (country representatives, verification and certification teams)

Sureel - Centella, South Korea

Karène - Neroli, Morocco

Lien - Cassia, Vietnam

Mees & Solen - Salicorne, France

Fran - Liquorice, Uzbekistan

Seher - Rose, Türkiye

Madagascar team

Mada team with Tim

Estefani - Lavender, Spain

Enora - Beeswax, France

 Developing incentives for local biodiversity and climate action 
  
In 2024 UEBT received a grant from the ISEAL Innovations Fund to design and pilot nature premiums, specifically payments for farmers and pickers of botanicals who take positive actions for biodiversity and climate in supply chains. These premiums could provide incentives for local actors and link to downstream companies’ commitments and reporting obligations. The project will be working over the next two years to develop the nature premium approach, conduct pilots in five locations in the Global South, and integrate the idea into UEBT’s assurance programmes on a voluntary basis.

Auditing supply chains in high-risk conditions

Many cultivated and wild harvested raw materials are sourced from supply chains that frequently have high-risk conditions with respect to some of or all UEBT’s principles of ethical sourcing found in the UEBT standard.

To address these challenges, UEBT rolled out a Protocol for Audits of Supply Chains in High-Risk Conditions, which establishes requirements for auditing botanicals supply chains that face risks to people or biodiversity. The protocol applies to all certification audits, as well as verification assessments, that involve supply chains determined by UEBT to be in high-risk conditions.