Sustainability report

AAK Sustainability Report 2020 14 Creating impact for Agenda 2030 Assessing our impact We take a balanced approach to the SDGs, which enables us to clearly distinguish how we can increase our positive impact and in what areas we can reduce our negative impact. Sustainable development is a continuous process, and our knowledge is constantly improving. To date, we have learned to apply the goals on a global scale and in a prioritized manner, but also to leave freedom for impact assessment and motivation locally. This approach has proven successful, for example in our shea supply chain. Business-critical SDGs Guided by our role in the value chain, the AAK mate- riality analysis, new customer insights, and our other commitments, we have identified business-critical SDGs that are important for us to focus on going forward. The SDGs are vital enablers in the food industry, as they give rise to new opportunities for everyone to work towards shared goals. The business-critical SDGs are outlined on page 72 and represent an alignment between our commitments, our significant contribu- tion to the 2030 Agenda, and the opportunities ahead. Opportunities and partnerships At AAK, we strongly believe in collaboration as the key to sustainability. As a result, our solutions are devel- oped in close partnership with multiple stakeholders. We have ten years to meet the 2030 targets and to make better happen together with our customers and partners. To this end, we will continue to assess our progress and develop ever better ways to ensure we embrace the opportunities in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, connecting them to our strategy and priorities. Our most significant impact During 2020, the most significant impact we created in connection with Agenda 2030 was through our Kolo Nafaso program within our shea supply chain. A key achievement has been the growth of the number of women involved by more than 90,000 (compared to 2019). Today, we are reaching 321,443 women in total. One of the many things that our women program in West Africa has taught us is that the SDGs are interconnected. We have also started categorizing our contribution to the SDGs in the program as “primary impact" or “secondary impact”. Pre-financing is one of our primary impacts and during the Covid-19 lockdown in April, our main priority was to distribute our pre-financing budgets in time for women to make farming investments. Since the money is often invested in direct food needs or in agriculture, the initiative is not only connected to SDG 1.4 (equal rights to economic resources and banking) but also to SDG 2.1 (end hunger and ensure access by all people) and SDG 2.3 (double agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers). In January 2020, we entered the Decade of Action, which comprises ten more years to achieve the Sus- tainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, progress has regressed as the world suddenly and profoundly was impacted by Covid-19. The onset of the pandemic has impacted key challenges such as poverty, inequality, the climate crisis, and unsustainable production, which has urged a need for the Sustainable Development Goals to take an even more prominent position on the global agenda. This has also impacted AAK’s approach and aim to maximize our positive impact going forward.