EO President Joins Other Social Enterprise Innovators at UK’s Emerge Conference
Equitable Origin President and co-founder David Poritz headed across the pond to Oxford, U.K. for the Emerge Conference last weekend, where he mingled with other “young professionals aspiring to drive transformational change.” He spoke on Sunday morning at the Developing and Enforcing Standards of Sustainable Business Practice track session, which explored certification as a means of promoting fair and responsible social and environmental practices and as a response to the growing movement of conscious consumption.
As part of his session, Poritz introduced Equitable Origin and described the company’s evolution since its founding in 2009. He highlighted engagement with governments as a key component of effective certification standards, and noted that many governments view the Equitable Origin system and the EO100 Standard as tools for improving accountability of oil and gas developers. He explained that independently-verified standards save regulatory agencies time and resources by providing a preexisting set of performance criteria that align with and sometimes exceed standards set by national laws.
Finally, Poritz spoke about how EO looked to established certification organizations like Fair Trade USA and the Forest Stewardship Council for lessons on how to successfuly drive change in an industry and grow as an accepted standard for best social and environmental practices.
The trip to Oxford University for the Emerge Conference was something of a homecoming for Poritz, who studied Latin American Public Policy there as a 2012 Rhodes Scholar.