Climate change is sometimes misunderstood as being about changes in the weather. In reality it is about changes in our very way of life.
Paul Polman
Looking at the world through a sustainability lens not only helps us 'future proof' our supply chain, it also fuels innovation and drives brand growth.
Renewable energy could reduce emissions but also create jobs and improve public health.
I believe that the financial crisis of 2008/9 exposed more a lack of ethics and morality - especially by the financial sector - rather than a problem of regulation or criminality. There were, of course, regulatory lessons to be learned, but at heart, there was a collective loss of our moral compass.
Our political leaders have great responsibilities, but as with many situations in life, people often rise or fall to meet your expectations. Our responsibility as citizens is to expect our leaders to lead and to give them enough support so that they may do so.
Working together on solving something requires a high level of humility and a high level of self-awareness.
The basic skills of leaders are always the same: be driven by a deeper purpose, be a human being, have a passion for what you do, and it's also about hard work and ethics.
There are billions of people in the world who deserve the better quality of life that products such as soap, shampoo, and clean drinking water can provide.
If we all act together - business, governments, NGOs and citizens and, especially, the young - just imagine the good we could create.
If we tackle deforestation in the right way, the benefits will be far-reaching - greater food security, improved livelihoods for millions of small farmers and indigenous people, more prosperous rural economies, and above all, a more stable climate.
Sustainability makes good business sense, and we're all on the same team at the end of the day. That's the truth about the human condition.
Taking proactive action on climate change is essential to ensuring that Unilever remains a viable business in the future. We will also reap the benefits in innovation, new product development, and cost efficiencies.
I see business as an ecosystem.
Why would you invest in a company which is out of synch with the needs of society, that does not take its social compliance in its supply chain seriously, that does not think about the costs of externalities or of its negative impacts on society?
Purpose has always been part of Unilever's DNA. Our founder, William Lever, built a business around the sale of Lifebuoy soap that was not only profitable and sustainable but also helped transform the health of the poor in Victorian Britain.
Businesses and governments need to work together and make a joint commitment if we want to address climate change effectively and quickly.
The ideal is a world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead, unconstrained by harmful norms and stereotypes.
My own fear, if I have one myself, is a fear of being obsolete. This is a world that changes very fast, and one of the main human desires is to belong to, to be part of, something. It's probably one of our greatest needs next to oxygen.
I think the most important thing is to achieve what you set out to achieve. Just being a CEO in itself is not success. I would not relate success to a title or a position.
Large-scale deforestation can be prevented while increasing food production through better, smarter agriculture.
I wanted to be a priest. I could have done that. I wanted to be a doctor. I could have done that. Circumstances didn't lead me to it, so my fallback option was business. I wasn't really motivated to this.
As a consumer goods company serving billions of consumers every day, Unilever understands the drivers and motivations that create the norms that lie behind people's behaviour.
The moral case for gender equality is obvious. It should not need any explanation.
The young give us hope because young people are certain their best days still lie ahead - which explains why they're absolutely convinced they can change the world for the better.
At Unilever, we are committed to building an inclusive organisation where all individuals feel safe, valued, and supported - irrespective of gender, background, or any other difference.
I do not work for the shareholder, to be honest. I work for the customer.
It's easy to be a short-term hero. It is very easy for me to get tremendous results very short term, get that translated into compensation, and be off sailing in the Bahamas. But the goal for this company - and it's very difficult to do - the goal is to follow a four- or five-year process.
More and more businesses are seeing the potential of a more sustainable business model, driven both by the firm belief that business can be a force for good and by the realization that the cost of inaction often exceeds the cost of action - notably when it comes to the growing threat of climate change and water scarcity.
Practically, systemic thinking can be used to identify problems, analyze their boundaries, design strategies and policy interventions, forecast and measure their expected impacts, implement them, and monitor and evaluate their successes and failures.
It cannot be right in a world of increasing human progress - whether in medicine, space exploration or renewable energy - that so many people are denied the most basic human rights.
When women are provided with training and entrepreneurial opportunities in distribution networks, they become role models in their communities, showing it is possible to challenge limiting norms and stereotypes, and to succeed.
Leadership is not a contest of likeability. Leadership often boils down to making the tougher choices. You are not in a popularity contest.
When we empower women, society benefits, grows, and thrives.
We can no longer pretend that business is immune from the rising tide of environmental or social challenges or that companies can create value in isolation from the communities of which they are a part.
Runaway climate change would condemn millions to a life of poverty and cause us to fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. This is not an acceptable outcome.
Safe working conditions, fair wages, protection from forced labor, and freedom from harassment and discrimination - these must become standard global operating conditions.
We all have responsibility to stop violence and discrimination against women, whether it's in our businesses, in our homes, or on our streets.
I am very confident about the Modi government.
Too many companies are running their business into the ground, I would argue, by being myopically short-term focused on the shareholder.
My career has been a level of serendipity all along. I've never planned anything out more than a few years. All the places we lived - the 12, 13 countries - and the companies I worked for were a combination of circumstances.
I say to a lot of people you have to measure success in terms of progress, not in terms of end state.
As CEO of Unilever, my personal mission is to galvanize our company to be an effective force for good.
I don't have a problem crying when I need to cry.
At the end of the day, people will follow you or people will be energised by you if they buy into your vision or purpose. So the most important thing is to be true to yourself. That's why I would say to be a great leader - you, first and foremost, have to be a great human being. And sharing that purpose and sharing the values.
The great challenge of the 21st century is to provide good standards of living for 7 billion people without depleting the earth's resources or running up massive levels of public debt. To achieve this, government and business alike will need to find new models of growth that are in both environmental and economic balance.
Every few decades, we have an opportunity to make a drastic change to the way we live our lives. We get a chance to design the building blocks of our daily routines, the infrastructure that will support and accompany us for the years to come - from the trains and trams we ride, the offices we work in, to the energy that powers our homes.
The world faces enormous human development and environmental challenges, from poverty and disease to food security and climate change.
I don't subscribe to, 'Here are the top ten tips to successful leadership,' or, 'How to learn leadership in ten minutes.' A leader is someone who gives positive energy to others which then results in a better change than would have happened. I think everyone is a leader.
We cannot eliminate poverty without enabling developing countries to engage more people in economic activity that use natural resources, and we cannot resolve runaway climate change without creating wealth in a more equitable and less carbon intensive way.
We need new, dynamic models for growth through the sharing economy, using big data to unlock new insights and adopting closed-loop cycles.
