Danone has significantly improved its climate-related lobbying disclosure. In early 2023, Danone came to the attention of the Climate Action 100+ Climate Lobbying Working Group (CLWG), as the company had not previously published a review of its direct and indirect climate lobbying.
The European CLWG, formed a few years ago and supported by IIGCC, aims to support co-leads and deepen engagement with European companies to improve their climate lobbying disclosures and practices. The members are AkademikerPension, AP7, BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNPPAM) and Church of England Pension Board and Railpen. Following the launch of phase 2 of Climate Action 100+, the group is now a ‘thematic workstream’ of the initiative.
A pivotal moment in the engagement with Danone came when BNPP AM, a co-lead investor, held a call with the company in April 2023 dedicated to climate lobbying. On the call, BNPP AM highlighted the Global Standard on Responsible Corporate Climate Lobbying and outlined related expected investor disclosures. The company went on to publish its Danone Position on Climate Advocacy in May 2023, and its Danone Policy on Advocacy in December 2023. In this second document, Danone indicated that its review of industry associations’ climate lobbying activities could be found in its 2023 CDP response. In that submission, the company specifically reported on its direct and indirect lobbying and evaluated the alignment of those association’s lobbying with achieving the 1.5°C warming goal of the Paris Agreement.
InfluenceMap has assessed all of these disclosures. For the lobbying review, Danone achieved three green ratings and one amber rating on the seven indicators used to assess lobbying reviews under Indicator 3 of InfluenceMap’s alignment assessment (which also forms part of the Net Zero Company Benchmark – NZCB). The company scored 50/100 for its climate lobbying review (see table below), making Danone the second highest scoring company in InfluenceMap’s assessments as of February 2024 (IM Danone Assessment). InfluenceMap is a critical research partner in tracking, assessing and scoring companies’ ongoing engagement with climate-related policy, and serves as a key resource for investors.
Source: Influence Map’s Disclosure Scorecard for Danone, February 2023
The progress with Danone builds on wider work of the European CLWG in recent years. Following the publication of the Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying in 2022, the group has intensified its engagement with many companies, which, when successful improves their scores on the Disclosure and Alignment assessments on Indicator 7 on the Climate Action 100+ NZCB.
This case study illustrates the exciting potential of this and other thematic workstreams, which can work with co-leads and companies to deepen engagements and deliver meaningful impact.
Rachel Crossley, Head of Stewardship, Europe, BNP Paribas Asset Management, and co-chair of the CA100+ European CLWG says:
“We were very pleased to have a discussion with Danone dedicated to climate lobbying. The company was very receptive to our suggested improvements and acted quickly to improve its disclosure. While some gaps remain, we are confident that Danone will work to address them in the near future. We hope that other companies will take a similar approach to demonstrating to investors that their direct and indirect lobbying is helping to deliver the Paris Agreement rather than undermining it.”