Major Companies Join Forces to Drive Climate Resilience in Supply Chains

SAN FRANCISCO, September 13, 2018 /3BL Media -- BSR today launched a new corporate leadership platform that will aid companies in the fight against climate change. The Climate-Resilient Value Chains Leaders Platform is being launched as leaders of the Global Climate Action Summit call on corporations to step up their climate efforts.

The Coca-Cola Company and Mars Incorporated are among the first multinational corporations to join the new leadership platform. They believe the initiative will improve the ability of businesses to monitor and diagnose climate risk throughout supply chains.

“Supply chains, the engines of global growth, are broken,” said Barry Parkin, Chief Sustainability and Procurement Officer, Mars Incorporated.  “To fix them, we must shift to long-term models for corporate buying that are anchored on building mutuality, reliability, resilience, and risk management into the core of our buying patterns.”

New data from the platform will accelerate the adoption and implementation of climate resilience measures. These new measures will benefit communities throughout the value chain while safeguarding business viability.

“We believe working with other businesses will help us build a resilient supply chain and improve living conditions in vulnerable communities,” said Ben Jordan, Senior Director of Environmental Policy, The Coca-Cola Company. “This new BSR leadership platform will help us engage with peer companies to drive action that benefits our communities and our planet.”

Participating companies have committed to develop shared tools and methods that help them prioritize climate resilience in corporate value chains. This includes efforts to investigate physical climate risks in their supply chains and explore how to build climate resilience through a science-based approach that draws lessons from the Science-Based Targets initiative and RE100.

“These companies are coming together out of a shared understanding that the private sector requires a common, science-based approach to value-chain resilience that will maximize the benefits to communities and business,” said David Wei, Climate Director at BSR. “Fortifying supply chains is one of the best ways that companies can act to mitigate climate change-related impacts.”

As much as 80 percent of global trade is integrated into supply chains, including trade in intermediate goods and services of about US$12 trillion[1], and many of these supply chains move through parts of the world that are most vulnerable to climate impacts.^[2]  In addition, CDP data reveals that 76 percent of suppliers report climate risks with the potential to generate a substantive change in their business.[3]

Businesses recognize the need to take direct action and partner with their peers, suppliers, and governments in new and different ways to shore up their supply chain against climate shocks. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that the annual costs of building climate resilience could range from US$140 billion to US$300 billion by 2030, and between US$280 billion and US$500 billion by 2050. However, public investment in resilience totaled a mere US$25 billion in 2014. Over the last 30 years, an estimated one out of every three dollars spent on development has been lost to extreme climate events: a total loss of US$3.8 trillion worldwide.
 

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For more information contact:

David Stearns, Director of Communications, BSR
dstearns@bsr.org
+1 718-501-8666

About BSR
BSR™ is a global nonprofit organization that works with its network of more than 250 member companies and other partners to build a just and sustainable world. From its offices in Asia, Europe, and North America, BSR™ develops sustainable business strategies and solutions through consulting, research, and cross-sector collaboration. Visit www.bsr.org to learn more about BSR’s 25+ years of leadership in sustainability.

About the Global Climate Action Summit   
The Global Climate Action Summit takes place Sept. 12-14, 2018, in San Francisco under the theme “Taking Ambition to the Next Level.” The summit will showcase climate action around the world, along with bold new commitments to give world leaders the confidence they can go even further by 2020 in support of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Partners supporting the summit and the mobilization in advance include The Climate Group; the Global Covenant of Mayors; Ceres, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group; BSR; We Mean Business; CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project; the World Wide Fund for Nature; and Mission 2020.

For more information on the Summit, visit globalclimateactionsummit.org.

[1] UNCTAD (2013) World Investment Report, ‘Global Value Chains: Investment and Trade for Development.’ United Nations, Geneva.

[2] Standard Chartered (2015) Global Supply Chains: New Directions. Global Research Special Report. Standard Chartered Research. Singapore, p. 9.

[3] CDP (2018) Closing the Gap: Scaling up sustainable supply chains. CDP Supply Chain Report 2017 | 2018. London, p. 7.