Photo: Malene Sighaug Bigseth (FUTURE-PROOF), Harald Fotland (Odfjell), Tom Christer Nilsen (Bergen Chamber). Photo by Gunnar Eide.
The Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights and Business have created the business and human rights collaboration platform known as ‘FUTURE-PROOF’. The aim is to assist businesses in complying with their human rights responsibilities.
Through competence and capacity building, combined with knowledge and experience exchange, FUTURE-PROOF seeks to establish a forum where difficult issues, challenges, and dilemmas can be expressed, discussed, and jointly resolved.
More than 90% of the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ objectives (UN SDG) are related to human rights and international labor rights. To achieve these objectives, we must include society, profitability, climate and human rights as integrated parts of our sustainability work.
The FUTURE-PROOF initiative shall bring together parties who take the lead in addressing and collaborating on our shared human rights concerns. It shall challenge, inspire, and contribute to information sharing on how we can best meet our collective human rights responsibility.
“Human rights have always been integral to our business. We have set clear policies and guidelines to ensure our employees' safety, health, and rights. Through contracts and supplier principles, we also make it clear to our partners what we expect of them in terms of upholding global standards for safety and human rights. Odfjell fully supports the statements of the Future Proof initiative.”
Harald Fotland, CEO
As one of the world leaders in the global market for seaborne transportation and storage of chemicals and other specialty bulk liquids, safety and sustainability are at the heart of our operations – and a significant responsibility. Sustainability is not only good for society and the environment – it is good for business. We have a responsibility for our employees, our investors, our customers, the local communities where we operate, and the global environment.
“As a company operating worldwide, we have experiences that we hope and believe will be valuable to the FUTURE-PROOF initiative. As a signatory, we also look forward to learn from the other partners’ experiences and expertise. Through collaboration and information sharing, we can more effectively achieve the SDGs. We look forward to collaborating within the platform.”
Øistein Jensen, Chief Sustainability Officer
As a signatory and part of the collaboration platform, Odfjell joins a range of other Norwegian companies from various industries, among them Corvus Energy, DOF Group, Grieg Group, DNB, Nordea and Manpower Group.
