IDH Convening

Bringing market, government, and civil society together.

Complex challenges cannot be resolved by one single actor alone. Through our convening power, we build trust across international, regional, and local markets, uniting stakeholders to create the conditions necessary for lasting change.

The challenges facing global value chains are often systemic, spanning borders, sectors and industries. To achieve real progress, we need to address these systems holistically, tackling the root causes of unsustainable practices.

Whether improving wages and incomes, reducing deforestation, ensuring worker safety or giving farmers better access to finance, every actor within a global value chain has an important part to play. Our convening work brings front-running business leaders, policymakers, investors, agricultural communities and practitioners together in a safe, pre-competitive space to create systemic solutions for sustainable value chains.

Our convening in numbers

How we’re helping improve sector governance

905

Public and private sector stakeholders collaborating with IDH in over 67 countries

multi-stakeholder agreements signed due to IDH interventions

141

multi-stakeholder coalitions and platforms convened for a common vision on sustainable development or sourcing

Global and local convening

Influencing global action with local insights

When it comes to sustainable change, global markets and local practices are intrinsically connected. To create system change, we convene at both consuming and producing country level, combining commercial and community experience.

In consuming markets we build coalitions of buyers to increase sustainable market demand. We also bring together public-private partners in national or global sector platforms and facilitate co-investment plans to support more ethical and resilient sourcing. In producing markets, we convene stakeholders, co-designing and driving ambitious sustainable action plans and testing new business models.

There’s no one-size fits all solutions to achieving system's change. Our regional teams apply context-specific expertise to convene unique strategies for maximum impact.

Market transformation at scale

Convening for system's change

At IDH, we go beyond working with individual companies or value chains, but convene partnerships to drive large-scale transformation. By bringing together businesses, policymakers, financial institutions, and civil society, we create platforms and coalitions that accelerate collective action for lasting impact.

Over the years, many of the initiatives we’ve convened have become institutionalised. From voluntary standards like ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council), Trustea, and BCI (Better Cotton Initiative), to sector-wide initiatives, these programs have become self-sustaining, continuing to shape sustainable practices and sector-wide collaboration long after their inception.

^“

“IDH challenges us to think differently. For example, changing the way that we were thinking about Living Wage which led to implementing it in our operations all over the world, in 190 countries. They also helped us to think about how we influence our partners on this topic – and we have over 75,000 worldwide.”

Reginaldo Ecclissato– Chief Business Operations and Supply Chain Officer, Unilever

“IDH has been a valuable partner to UNGC. The efforts of IDH to unite the private sector around a shared understanding of Living Wage and Living income have had a profound impact on the progress of the topic and willingness of global supply chain actors to have open and honest dialogue about business practices that can enable workers’ rights.”

Griet Cattaert– Head of Labour Rights, United Nations Global Compact

1 | 2

An open and transparent culture

We have a clear Code of Conduct governing how we work. Our SpeakUp policy encourages anyone to flag suspected violations or report breaches of laws and regulations in confidence.

Read our Code of ConductRead our Code of Conduct

News

Latest developments in our convening work

UK retailer living wage commitment marks one year of going bananas

News Article

Convening