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Meeting highlights:
- Global and Sustainable Vision: Local leadership now plays a global role focused on UN relations and sustainability, reinforcing Bayer’s purpose-driven mission.
- Driving a Culture of Integrity and Inclusion: Integrity guides Bayer’s operations, with a strong commitment to equality, innovation, and high ethical standards.
- Pride in Impact and Innovation: Bayer takes pride in the solutions it delivers to patients and farmers and highlights Costa Rica as a small country with global potential.
- The Power of Costa Rica: Small countries like Costa Rica can offer significant, often underestimated opportunities driven by well-intentioned, capable people.
- Bayer’s Global Positioning: Bayer positions itself as a credible voice on climate change, a partner of choice for agriculture and health solutions and a responsible corporate citizen, advancing sustainability worldwide.
EF: Could you elaborate on what your role is as Global Director of United Nations Relations and Global Affairs?
MC: Bayer’s story in Costa Rica goes back over four decades. We started with a small operation and then expanded, setting up different businesses.
I started as the Head of Public Affairs for Central America and the Caribbean. Then I moved into being a Senior Manager for International Public Relations, which was a global position. After that, I was moved into being the Director for Relations with the United Nations and Global Affairs. I am very engaged in sustainability-related topics, ranging from carbon markets to women’s health, to smallholders in agriculture, and the protection of water. So it is related to how water is involved in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Costa Rica is a success story of how reforestation is possible, even as a place that was once heavily deforested. In 1983, only 25% of our territory was covered by forest, and today almost 60% is covered. We are aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050.
EF: How does Bayer leverage its unique position at the intersection of agriculture and health to address the challenges of climate change, food security, and public health?
MC: Bayer is in a unique position because our mission includes both agriculture and health: “Health for All, Hunger for None”. Under agriculture, we have sustainable agricultural practices, regenerative agriculture, carbon emissions, food security, and protecting water, because if we do not take care of water, there is no agriculture. If there is no agriculture, there is no food, and that affects the 8 billion+ world population.
On the other side, we have health, how health is directly connected to climate change, and how climate change impacts everything from cardiovascular diseases to chronic kidney disease. Even women going through menopause are being affected more severely by climate change. So we are in a very unique position to speak about these issues.
With that in mind, we have set several overarching goals or outcomes. The first goal is to position Bayer as a partner of choice. We want to position Bayer as a provider of solutions in both agriculture and health and as a responsible corporate citizen of the world.
We are also working on specific projects related to the production of feedstocks for biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel as SAFs offer the most promising pathway to decarbonize aviation as an alternative to fossil fuels. All SAF feedstocks and production technologies can play a vital role in decarbonizing the aviation sector. If not done, aviation will be one of the only industries where emissions are expected to significantly increase over the upcoming years.
We continue to strengthen our initiatives towards net zero not only through optimization investments in our production sites but also through participating in collaborative efforts with governments and other corporates such as the case of the LEAF Coalition of which Bayer is a founding member and that has mobilised over $1 billion since launched in 2021.
On the health side, we are focusing on neglected tropical diseases, which are dramatically increasing due to climate change. Illnesses that were once only in the tropics have been migrating south and north to other latitudes where they were never seen before. For example, deaths from chronic kidney disease have doubled in the past twenty-five years. Women’s health remains one of our main pillars as well, and ensuring that self-care is effectively added as part of the universal healthcare mandates.
EF: What have been some of your proudest moments over the past decade with the company?
MC: To start with, I am proud to be part of Team Bayer. I feel I am in the right place with all the sustainable initiatives the company is pursuing and the provision of equal opportunities for both women and men. We are all human beings working toward the same goals, and we work together.
I am proud of the time I spent in Costa Rica, helping achieve the company’s goals. I am proud of how we are moving into the United Nations arena, positioning ourselves as a trustworthy partner. I am also very proud of the innovation we are creating, the research and development, and the solutions we are bringing both to patients and to farmers. This is a place where I feel truly good.
EF: What is your last message to our readers?
MC: My final message to the readers would be to never underestimate the potential and capacity of a small country. A small country may hold hidden treasures and others that are visible. It can offer not only great opportunities for investment but, more importantly, the chance to work with people who are well-intentioned and genuinely committed to doing things right.
