Search Results

Blog | Thursday December 14, 2023

How Businesses Can Address the Water Scarcity Crisis

Preview

New guidance from the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) is bringing an increased focus on the materiality of freshwater. Interventions to make water use sustainable bring difficult trade-offs for businesses and communities. Will economies need to reach a crisis point to galvanize support for interventions? Or can ambitious solutions and collaborations redress the balance in time?

BSR’s Anna Iles talks to Tim Smedley, who traveled the world researching water scarcity, for his new book The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis. Additionally, the Nature team provides key actions businesses can take to identify and address their impacts and dependencies on water and to understand their water-related risks.

Currently, 17 companies are piloting a methodology by the SBTN to set science-based freshwater targets. Why should businesses pay attention?

Water scarcity is knocking on the door of a lot of countries that aren’t expecting it. The World Resources Institute published a list of 25 countries facing extremely high water stress, and Belgium came higher than Syria. It’s not that Belgium doesn’t get enough rain: it doesn’t capture it when it falls. Like The Netherlands, it was designed on the drainage principle of sending all the water out to sea as fast as possible to avoid flooding, and that worked very well for a time. But now, as rainfall patterns change, they need to hold on to some of it.

Then there’s groundwater depletion. Unsustainable water use means aquifers dry out. In the US, aquifers supplying 90% of the nation’s water are being depleted. Meanwhile, one of its largest reservoirs, Lake Powell, is losing a cubic kilometer of water a year to evaporation, while its inflow is decreasing, due to less reliable snow caps. Mega dams and reservoirs will soon be stranded assets.

Are you saying the main driver of water risk is mismanagement—particularly in light of our changing weather patterns?

That’s right. A warmer climate causes more water to evaporate, from water bodies (including major reservoirs) and the soil. The air holds more moisture, and so the rain falls more heavily—and causes floods because it hits dry earth. Droughts have increased, which makes water management harder everywhere.

But much of the problem was man-made already. Many mega dams have past their 50 year intended timeframes. While pollution makes all these things harder, from soil run-off and microplastics to forever chemicals and human sewage. Polluted water is just as bad as no water.

The US Federal Government has stepped in to restrict water usage. Is more stringent legislation needed?

Legislation works for sustainability, but it doesn't necessarily work for people.

In Australia, the Government has been buying water back from farmers for the past decade to keep the River Murray flowing. In 2010 it no longer reached the sea due to over-abstraction: now it does. It’s a very successful policy but also hugely unpopular because it’s taking water from farmers. So we need to start having more honest conversations politically about the true value of water.

This raises the question of trade-offs between the private sector’s water demand and that of natural systems and communities. Analysts say tech giants’ water use is growing by 20-35% due to AI research and development. What is the way forward?

Water use for technology is set to increase and should certainly factor into business plans. You need water to cool servers and energy plants alike: French energy supplier EDF is forced to shut or scale down nuclear plants almost every summer due to water shortage. We need to invest in alternatives, like air cooling.

More sustainably, we need to harvest rainwater, and recycle greywater, from toilet to tap. There are off-grid solutions too: a company in Arizona is making ‘hydropanels’ that use solar thermal to draw water from moisture in the air. If it works in the desert air of Arizona, it can work anywhere.

Another way forward is public-private partnerships around watersheds, such as the Nature Conservancy’s Water Funds. It’s not currently the private sector's legal responsibility to maintain water, even if they depend upon it. Partnerships like these bring in private sector funding to update common infrastructure, and then public authorities maintain it afterward.

I also see impacts from sustainability standards like the Better Cotton Initiative and the Alliance for Water Stewardship, plus the leadership of big buyers. For instance, a major clothing brand recently announced it’s targeting a 40% reduction in water use among its suppliers. If you can’t deliver on that, you’re out. Buyers have huge influence.

Such policies have big implications for suppliers and their livelihoods.

Yes, there are clear Just Transition implications here. But current practices affect livelihoods too. The global crop system is currently based on moving from one region to the next. As one dries out, you start growing in another. There are huge Saudi-owned or invested farms in Arizona now, but Arizona also has dwindling groundwater reserves. The water will run out, and the investors will move on. The question is, how do you plan for a future without agribusiness dollars?

Are there solutions that work both for people and for natural systems?

Yes, there are—including indigenous practices. Peru—which currently grows the majority of the world’s out-of-season asparagus in the arid Ica region—is reviving a traditional irrigation method, part of a water-centric worldview called “Poza”. They flood fields such that it trickles into the aquifer below in a kind of closed-loop model.

In mainstream agriculture, no-till (effectively not ploughing) works on a similar principle. This mimics a natural system by enabling water to seep down into the ground and work its way back into streams and rivers. No-till approaches are much less costly and more effective than building reservoirs—and benefit farmers by decreasing fuel and labor costs.

A similar approach is Managed Aquifer Recharge, where you pump water back down into aquifers.

What’s the most important solution in your view?

Without a doubt, nature-based restoration and, where appropriate, rewilding. We are 100% reliant on our natural water cycle. One clear example is our approach to flood control. By moving away from grey infrastructure and restoring floodplains and wetlands, we get co-benefits from flood mitigation to carbon in the soil, groundwater recharge and water purification. Where I live, in the UK, they’re reintroducing beavers after 400 years: it turns out they’ll restore water courses for us.

We need to remember where water comes from. We thought we could decouple ourselves from natural systems. That was always hubris. We are fully reliant on natural systems.

Actions for Business

BSR supports businesses to develop positive relationships with land, freshwater, and marine systems in both their operations and value chains. We help companies to identify and address their impacts and dependencies on water and to understand their water-related risks, and how these intersect with climate change. Here are some key recommendations:

1) Understand your impacts and dependencies

Using a double materiality approach, assess your nature impacts and dependencies, including freshwater, and understand your reliance and impacts on freshwater quality and quantity. This should be done in alignment with the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure and the Science-Based Targets for Nature, and consider all significant pollutants, from microplastics to chemicals.
Conduct a water risk analysis for the company and its supply chain, collecting quantitative primary and secondary data and appropriately including impacts for communities and ecosystems in the analysis.
Prioritize locations in your supply chain based on gathered data, incorporating stakeholder perspectives to ensure an equitable lens is applied to location identification.
Ensure you consider freshwater ecosystems as an important landscape in nature-related work.
Apply foresight techniques to understand how a changing water cycle might impact supply chains.
Monitor emerging policy and recommendations, such as the EU’s proposed Blue Deal.

2) Invest in shared nature-based solutions

Map identified risks to science-based interventions to employ the correct solutions in the right landscapes (e.g., do not try a ‘one size fits all’ approach).

Explore and invest in nature-based solutions (NbS) for long-term supply chain resilience, taking advantage of win-wins towards net-zero goals.
Explore the ramifications of proposed solutions for all stakeholders.
Develop and engage in watershed and watercourse-based collaborations to find shared solutions for restoration and conservation.
Adopt a human rights, environmental justice and community co-creation approach to water management.

3) Reduce water use across your value chain.

Build awareness of embedded water, through water consumption labels and price restructuring.
Consider water sources, differentiating between groundwater reserves and recycled greywater.
Invest in waterless technologies and reduce water use within your value chain. This includes developing products and manufacturing systems with minimal to no water dependency.
Develop and utilize circular water systems within production and manufacturing facilities throughout the value chain.
Consider divesting from business lines or activities that are overly reliant or disproportionately utilizing freshwater and freshwater ecosystems.

For more information on how to develop ambitious nature-based strategies and solutions toward your sustainability objectives, contact BSR’s Nature team.

Blog | Wednesday July 20, 2022

A Business Approach to Reinforcing Democracy

Preview

Editor's Note:

It is obvious that we are living through a time of profound and accelerating change. Our world has been rocked by a series of disruptions: COVID-19, war and social conflict, rollback of rights and democracy, and now high inflation and the risk of recession. These developments have jolted society, and business.

To help our 300+ member companies navigate this volatile environment, we're releasing a series of blogs over the coming weeks to build insight into how to shape business approaches that address this unique moment. Following last week's piece on the "backlash" against ESG, today's piece explores changing expectations of business in protecting rule of law, rights, and democracy.

We’ll conclude with a deeper dive look into how BSR’s 2025 strategy can help your company to navigate these turbulent times—and how you can collaborate with our global network to push us further, faster, to achieve a more equitable, just world for all.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China’s suppression of civil liberties in Hong Kong. Ongoing attacks on voting rights, abortion access, and LGBTIQ+ health and safety in the United States.

Around the world, we see these and other examples of democratic decline. From multiple directions, the foundational elements of societies based on rule of law, transparently and evenly applied, are facing significant threats.

To state it bluntly: this presents a clear and present danger for business. Indeed, a recent poll from Morning Consult found that more than 80 percent of business leaders see threats to democracy as threats to business.

First and foremost, it is exceedingly difficult for business to thrive where rule of law is absent, where governments are paralyzed, and where instability is the status quo. Indeed, the decline of rule of law in Hong Kong is causing many companies to shift staff and offices away from that territory. This is not new. Businesses have long recognized that operating where the rule of law is strong is in their self-interest; after all, it protects business, employees, and consumers alike from harmful practices, and helps provide safeguards against governments which otherwise might engage in abusive practices.

Second, business finds itself embroiled in polarized and angry debates that both reflect and cause the deterioration of public institutions. Many companies have been drawn into the crossfire of policymaking in various American states in the wake of the overruling of Roe v. Wade. Initial efforts by many companies to provide travel stipends for workers who need to travel to access abortion services have been challenged by political figures. Similarly, government inaction on climate change creates both economic and social risk, and it also can lead to an unpredictable environment in which some aim to fill the policy vacuum through litigation. This creates an inconsistent and unpredictable approach to policymaking. Dysfunctional governance creates and amplifies business risk and uncertainty.

Third, many employees and consumers expect business to speak out on this, and other, important social issues. Worker, consumer, and investor sentiment supports companies taking decisive action. There also has been increased scrutiny of companies that continue to financially support elected officials in the United States that refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Fourth, and finally, there is a values case for action. We regularly engage with senior business people who are angry with the decline of democratic institutions in their home countries as well as in the wider world. Many business leaders do not want to stand aside while fundamental rights and freedoms are under attack. In addition to their own preferences, they also see employees, customers, and sometimes shareholders pushing them to express support for public institutions and processes. They face numerous cross-pressures, however, with many voices challenging the wisdom, and even the right, of companies and business leaders to speak out on topics many see as “political.”

What Can Business Do?

First, business should extend its stated commitment to human rights principles to apply more explicitly to the protection of democratic institutions, wherever they are in peril. Most large companies have now committed to upholding the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Much of the impetus for this movement focused on human rights abuses and poor governance in the global south. It is now time to deploy them closer to home, for example by considering whether law enforcement is equitable when making siting or investment decisions.

Second, business can take action through large-scale collaborations. Initiatives such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative are designed to combat non-democratic means of violating rights that affect business directly. Such efforts leverage strength in numbers, with companies, NGOs, and governments working together to achieve reforms that have made a real difference. These models, which promote law enforcement and provision of private security consistent with human rights principles, are good examples of how collaboration is a useful tool to address violations of rule of law.

Third, business can advocate for systemic or structural reforms. Though some will characterize these efforts as partisan, the actual approaches offered can be decidedly nonpartisan, such as supporting action on issues, including the protection of voting rights to ensure full and equal access, the potential for mandatory voting requirements, and other electoral reforms.

Fourth, and particularly in the United States, companies can withhold political contributions from elected officials and aspiring candidates who fail to commit to upholding democratic processes and the rule of law, There is a rising tide of criticism of such practices, including in shareholder resolutions. The silver lining of the current situation is the opportunity to push back against the arms race of political funding.

Finally, it is time, once and for all, for companies to address the many concerns about the role of trade associations. Companies such as Volvo, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, and others have conducted formal reviews, with public disclosure, of their membership in trade associations, aiming to reduce misalignment with their ESG priorities. It is also well past time for trade associations themselves to recognize that new threats require new thinking and new models. Advocating for reduced taxes and regulations cannot be the only priority if they are to have a positive impact not only for business, but also for society. If trade associations cannot rise to the occasion and see the bigger picture by calling for democracy protection, perhaps they have outlived their usefulness.

We can anticipate significant pushback against business taking on this agenda. This is “too political,” and business cannot “pick sides.” In fact, many businesses already do take sides when weighing in on legislation, e.g., with many businesses and associations arguing that the SEC is exceeding its mandate with its draft regulations requiring climate disclosure.

In the final analysis, it is no longer difficult to imagine a near total breakdown of the public institutions the West has taken for granted for the 75 years since WWII ended. Eric Vuillard wrote in The Order of the Day, his satirical account of the run-up to WWII, that “great catastrophes often creep up on us in tiny steps.” Business cannot afford to wake up one day and find that the societal foundations on which it relies have collapsed. Business is taking action to combat a similar challenge with respect to climate Isn’t it also time for business to recognize that it can no longer wait for others to address the looming disaster of the collapse of democratic institutions and processes?

Blog | Monday July 1, 2019

Eliminating Violence and Harassment Just Became an Obligation for Businesses Worldwide

Preview

On June 21, 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO) voted overwhelmingly to adopt a Convention on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work. This represents an important step forward on strengthening protections for all workers around the world against violence and harassment.

Business should see the adoption of the Convention as a signal that:

It’s time to recognize the stark reality that far too many people—primarily women—continue to experience violence and harassment in the world of work.
Stakeholder expectations have changed radically for how companies should not only respond to workplace violence and harassment, but also actively work to prevent it from happening in the first place.

For the first time, there is an internationally agreed-upon standard and guidance for addressing violence and harassment in the world of work, setting a high bar for companies and governments on their responsibilities to manage this critical issue. The treaty includes many categories of workers: corporate employees, workers in factories and farms across global supply chains, informal workers, and job seekers. The Convention also looks beyond the walls of the workplace, recognizing there are risks of abuse throughout the “world of work,” e.g., when commuting to and from work.

While the specific applications to businesses will depend on the country and type of business in question, the overall message is clear: More—much more—is expected from businesses when it comes to tackling violence and harassment. Here’s how companies can take action using BSR’s “Act, Enable, Influence” framework:

ACT

Companies can act on this issue by developing programs, policies, services, and products that contribute to ending sexual harassment. A first step for companies is to assess their current efforts on gender-based violence and harassment across their value chains. BSR has developed a tool, in line with the new ILO Convention, to help companies to understand their current gaps in the following three areas:

Policies: The Convention identifies workplace policies addressing harassment and violence as part of an employer’s responsibilities. The Recommendations accompanying the Convention include additional guidance on what should be included, such as measures to protect whistleblowers and information on complaints procedures.
Risk identification and assessment: The Convention requires employers to identify hazards and risks of violence and harassment. One way for businesses to approach this is to ensure that their human rights due diligence fully integrates gender considerations, as outlined in the new report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Gender Dimensions of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Trainings: The Convention asks employers to provide information and training for workers on violence and harassment and to take specific measures for sectors and roles where “exposure to harassment is more likely.”

BSR’s tool helps companies to conduct a thorough analysis of these and other areas and to assess opportunities to improve their practices.

Companies can enable business partners to tackle harassment and violence by collaborating with them to introduce appropriate measures.

ENABLE

Companies can enable business partners to tackle harassment and violence by collaborating with them to introduce appropriate measures. This is especially critical in supply chains for garments, agriculture, and other light manufacturing, which employ large numbers of vulnerable workers. Increasingly, evidence shows that violence and harassment is widespread in these sectors and across sourcing countries, with women workers particularly vulnerable.

Many companies are already taking steps to address violence and harassment in supply chains with BSR’s HERrespect program, a leading initiative that connects global brands with their suppliers to implement workplace-based programs. HERrespect takes a comprehensive approach, working with female and male workers and managers to cultivate more cooperative and gender equitable relationships. HERrespect programs also strengthen the ability of workplaces to respond effectively when abuse occurs. Following pilots in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, and Kenya, this tried-and-tested program has confirmed its potential for impact and is ready to scale up. To learn more, please register for a HERrespect webinar on July 17 here (Asia/EMEA) or here (EMEA/U.S.).
Companies are also collaborating with peers through networks such as Business Action for Women and HERproject to tackle the complex issues of gender-based violence throughout their operations and to partner on designing and implementing new solutions.
Business Fights Poverty has created a challenge on: “What role can business play in tackling gender-based violence?” Through this, Business Fights Poverty and partners have gathered resources to help build the business case for action and case studies of good practices. More information will be released on this site throughout the year.

With their brand credibility, marketing expertise, reach, and access to key influencers, companies can be uniquely positioned to shift harmful social or gender norms.

INFLUENCE

Businesses can also use their advocacy efforts and communications strategies to influence the wider community to address harassment and gender-based violence.

With their brand credibility, marketing expertise, reach, and access to key influencers, companies can be uniquely positioned to shift the harmful social or gender norms that often contribute to the acceptance of violence and harassment against women. The recent advertisement from Gillette is a great example of this strategy: Through a commercial, the company opened an important conversation on toxic masculinity.
Companies can also work with governments and advocate for strong protections for women workers as public officials work to put in place the various laws and policies mandated through the new ILO Convention.

BSR members looking to strengthen their policies on violence, harassment, and women’s empowerment should connect with our team. In addition, we will be hosting a webinar in the fall to explore the new ILO Convention in more depth with our partners from Business Fights Poverty and CARE—registration is open here.

Blog | Wednesday February 8, 2023

Family Medical and Leave Act Turns 30: Five Actions Business Can Take in 2023

Preview

This month, on February 5, 2023, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) turns 30. The FMLA—which guarantees job-protected, unpaid leave to certain workers—was always intended as a first step toward a country that honors and supports all working people, families, and businesses. But decades later, its promise has not yet been fulfilled.

Since 1993, the law has been used more than 460 million times to help working people welcome a new child, care for a spouse or for parental and sick leave. Yet despite its benefits, many—including those in disproportionately low-wage jobs, hourly workers, workers of color, rural workers, immigrants, and others who make our workplaces thrive—are unprotected. Even among workers covered, the fact that the law only guarantees unpaid leave means millions of working adults cannot use the FMLA due to financial risks.

Among the 44 percent of the workforce excluded are people who work for smaller businesses, part-time workers, and any workers with less than 12 months’ tenure. This translates into workers trying to fit healthcare appointments, both routine and significant, on their breaks; children being placed in daycare settings where quality is second to coverage of hours; and frontline workers worrying about ailing loved ones in hospital rooms alone. These gaps can also impact job stability: nearly one in four parents reported last year being fired from their jobs due to the continuing breakdown of child care for their kids.

Access to paid family leave, and expansions of the FMLA, are social justice issues that companies can address internally as well as champion externally.

The US is an outlier when it comes to paid family leave and paid sick or medical leave relative to our economic peers. While most other countries’ laws guarantee paid leave to workers—and multinational companies outside the US are used to doing business within these regulatory landscapes—there is no US equivalent.

Despite the lack of federal requirements for paid family and medical leave, two programs have helped fill the FMLA’s gaps and paved the way for future progress.

First, 11 states and the District of Columbia (DC) have created public programs that guarantee access to paid family and medical leave to all workers. More state programs are on the horizon in 2023 and beyond—and they will help to build additional momentum for a national paid leave program, which a range of communities, including smaller and larger employers, has endorsed.

Second, private sector innovation has shown the value of paid leave in helping to create healthier and more diverse workforces, with benefits for productivity, retention, and profits. For companies that articulate equity, inclusion, and justice and set goals to achieve gender and racial equity, paid leave is a policy that can help drive positive outcomes .

Despite important business and economic benefits, paid leave leadership is still the exception rather than standard business practice—only 24 percent of private sector workers have dedicated paid family leave at their jobs.

Business can become paid leave leaders by taking the following five actions in 2023:

Adopt comprehensive paid family and medical leave programs. Make programs meaningful in terms of duration. Offer a flexible process for returning to work. Make the program reflective of new parents and all workers with caregiving responsibilities. There are examples of great corporate leadership to draw from.
Ensure paid leave are provided to all workers, regardless of job, and with minimal tenure requirements. Take a proactive approach to closing the gaps between professional and hourly workers, full-time and part-time workers, and new employees. If a substantial part of your business includes contractors, ensure they have the same policies as your own.
Encourage workers to use the policy. Manager training is an essential precondition to the success and utility of your policy, but so is storytelling—from workers and managers, from your employees’ family members, and from company leadership. When leaders can set an example by taking leave of their own, they should do it and talk about it.
Measure and report publicly on the impact of your policy. Add to the data about effective paid leave programs, and help answer the questions of other companies looking at new policies, by measuring the relationship between paid leave and retention, advancement, employee health, healthcare costs, and more. Help other companies and policymakers understand the costs and benefits of paid leave by tracking and reporting on the costs and multiple measures of value you see with your newly implemented policy.
Advocate for public policies. Officeholders take business leaders’ views with great weight. Help them understand the value, lead on paid leave for everyone, and help dispel preconceptions they might have about business opposition to national paid leave programs.

In addition, be a leader for change within the trade associations you belong to. Don’t let them talk about the value of gender and racial equity and the importance of a strong and diverse workforce while opposing public policies that would help to achieve these goals.

By becoming a paid leave leader, you’ll join other corporate and business leaders on advocating for social justice issues, setting the country on a better path for all.

BSR’s Center for Business and Social Justice works with a network of civil society partners and experts in paid family and medical leave to provide tangible guidance to business. All BSR members can contact the Center for specific inquiries.

Resources to Help Your Company Become a Paid Leave Leader:

Paid Family Leave: Why It’s Essential and How to Design An Effective Policy (ADP)

Designing Equitable and Effective Workplaces for A "Corona-normal" Future of Work (Better Life Lab at New America)

Partnership in Action: An Employer Guide to Building Gender Equity in the Workplace (National Partnership for Women & Families)

9to5 Newsline (9to5 National Membership Organization)

Case Studies | Monday July 9, 2018

The Coca-Cola Company: Building a Climate-Resilient Value Chain

Preview

The Coca-Cola Company has been working to reduce emissions in its supply chain for years—including not only those associated with bottling, but also those associated with growing ingredients, producing packaging, and distributing and refrigerating products. As climate change impacts have begun to manifest around the globe, the 132-year-old company partnered with BSR to take this work a step further to examine what climate risk and resilience might mean for The Coca-Cola Company value chain.

The Challenge

From agricultural ingredients, like citrus and tea, to hyper-local distribution systems, The Coca-Cola Company supply chain is one of the largest and most complex in the world. Coca-Cola products are sold in more than 200 countries and territories, and each of those markets faces unique exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

Mitigation efforts—those focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions—are vital to any company’s climate strategy and critical to global efforts to avoid unmanageable climate impacts. As the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt around the world, however, it has become clear that simultaneous efforts are necessary to increase adaptive capacity and build resilience.

“Resilience” is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.” In the context of climate change, resilience is the ability of a system (such as a bottling plant, distribution network, or supply chain) or community to rebound following a shock such as a natural disaster. Building resilience requires not only recognizing potential hazards like extreme weather events, but also understanding the underlying vulnerabilities that may affect recovery from these potential disasters. For example, insufficient infrastructure can reduce a community’s capacity to rebound following a disruption like an extreme weather event, as can poverty or gender inequality.

After years focused on climate mitigation and water stewardship, understanding climate risk and resilience was a natural next step for Coca-Cola.

Our Strategy

BSR partnered with Coca-Cola to begin building the foundation for a more resilient company that is better able to anticipate, avoid, accommodate, and recover from climate risks in the future. At the outset, we identified seven markets—Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States—and two commodities—coffee and tea—to serve as proxies for the full Coca-Cola value chain. For each of these markets and commodities, we explored exposure to major climate hazards in the context of underlying vulnerabilities, such as rapid urbanization, at-risk populations, food and economic insecurity, and insufficient infrastructure.

Using this analysis, a benchmark of climate resilience activities in the food and beverage sector, Coca-Cola’s existing risk mitigation strategy, and insights from internal company interviews, we developed a framework for identifying and prioritizing climate-related risks. We then mapped Coca-Cola’s existing programs and initiatives to high-priority risks and outlined an approach for expanding this work further across the company’s major business units.

Our Outcomes and Impact

The climate resilience framework we developed aims to integrate resilience into Coca-Cola’s existing strategy, risk management, and sustainability systems. The framework is designed to connect and amplify The Coca-Cola Company’s efforts in empowering women, protecting the climate, and sustainably sourcing ingredients, as well as in water leadership and community development. Over time, we hope to see the framework used to help Coca-Cola create a more resilient value chain, enabling the company to confidently source responsibly cultivated ingredients, withstand or promptly recover from climate-related impacts, identify and reduce climate risks, and contribute to building value chain and community resilience where Coca-Cola is produced and sold.

We hope that these leading-edge efforts will inspire other companies, as well as their partners in the public sector and civil society, to take a more holistic look at climate risk in their value chains and communities and identify opportunities to build adaptive capacity and resilience.

Lessons Learned

Undertaking this work with Coca-Cola allowed us to translate what we know about climate risk and resilience into the context of a global supply chain. Here are a few suggestions for companies interested in exploring climate risk and resilience in their value chains:

Start small: Begin with a selection of facilities, locations, or products that represent important aspects of your business. This will allow you to identify the most useful and important data points before scaling your approach across the organization.
Integrate into existing systems: Rather than approaching climate risk and resilience as a new, standalone exercise, consider integrating climate considerations into existing risk management and/or sustainability systems.
Appreciate both the global and the local: Much like water stewardship, managing climate risk and building resilience is both a global and intensely local challenge. While some tenets and approaches can be broadly applied, individual interventions must be customized and reflect on-the-ground realities.

Learn more about our work on climate-resilient supply chains.

Blog | Monday October 7, 2019

Q&A with BSR Senior Advisor Susan Morgan

Preview

A year ago, BSR’s Future of Sustainable Business report listed “technology, ethics, and human rights” as one of three issues—alongside climate resilience and automation—that will define the future of sustainable business. Since then, we’ve been making true on this belief by steadily increasing our capability to help our member companies and today, we move one step further by adding Susan Morgan as a senior advisor.

Susan has spent the past 20 years working at the cutting edge of technology across three different sectors. She spent 10 years at British Telecommunications, served as the first Executive Director of the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative, and as part of the Open Society Foundations, funded issues of disinformation and the health of the online public sphere.

I recently spoke with Susan to reflect on these experiences and to share the insights she has gained on how change happens in the world and how companies in all industries—not just technology—can work with other stakeholders to address disruptive technologies.

Dunstan: You’ve spent time in the private sector, at a multi-stakeholder initiative, and in a foundation. What have you learned about how to address issues arising from disruptive technology?

Susan: No one stakeholder group can singlehandedly address the challenges now facing the world. For example, in the technology sector, vital questions are posed by the rapid evolution in technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) can embed discrimination into decision-making systems, discriminating at speed and scale. Established democratic norms are vulnerable to nontransparent, poorly understood, and misleading information campaigns that are poorly regulated. And technologies such as facial recognition could fundamentally change the balance of power between citizens, governments, consumers, companies, challenging privacy, a fundamental human right. These issues have profound societal implications, and everyone must be represented in the deliberations about them. All stakeholders need to recognize and embrace this as well as the need for public policy and regulatory frameworks that protect citizens and govern the use of these new technologies.

The sweet spot that produces progress is when all stakeholders are stretched and feeling uncomfortable. But being comfortable with being uncomfortable is not easy. It takes work.

Dunstan: You say that the balance of power between citizens, governments, and consumers may fundamentally change. How and why will this happen, and what does this imply for how we address disruptive technology?

Susan: In the last few years we have witnessed incredible consolidation of power by companies operating in the technology sector. These companies have access to huge financial resources that they can deploy to achieve their goals thanks in part to large quarterly earnings and tax regimes that are poorly adapted to the global nature of the Internet. The acquisition of AI talent leads to a concentration of technical knowledge and expertise within companies that could make it more difficult for effective oversight by regulators, governments, and others due to a scarcity of talent and human resources. This is happening at the very same time that the space within which civil society operates around the globe is under pressure due to restrictions being imposed on the funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), punitive registration requirements, and direct government pressure.

Although these power imbalances reflect the current reality, initiatives serious about bringing different stakeholders together to tackle a particular challenge must proactively address them to be successful. In practical terms, this means designing governance models with equal representation and power amongst different stakeholder groups, being innovative about how to address knowledge gaps, and building in mechanisms to ensure companies are accountable for commitments they make.

Dunstan: You say that cross-sector collaborations and partnerships are essential. What are the main challenges?

Susan: An important pre-condition for effective cross-sector working is an understanding that no one will get everything they want. Understanding this reality is vital. In my experience, the sweet spot that produces progress is when all stakeholders are stretched and feeling uncomfortable. But being comfortable with being uncomfortable is not easy. It takes work. It is something that people running initiatives bringing different stakeholders together need to focus on, just as participants in these initiatives need to embrace it.

Dunstan: What are the main sources of success?

Susan: Building trust between the parties, who will sometimes have started on opposing sides, is an essential component of successful cross-sector working. Leaving behind preconceived notions is essential to achieving this. NGOs need to acknowledge that companies often do the right thing or want to put something right when it goes wrong. Companies need to recognize and accept when criticism of their actions or decisions is justified or can be useful in creating momentum for internal change. Confidence and courage is needed to invest time building personal relationships with people from other stakeholders when there is often external pressure and public scrutiny. These personal qualities are insufficiently recognized as important ingredients in the success of any initiative.

Over time, the core business of companies will increasingly be driven by technology and data even if they are not classified as being companies in the tech sector.

Dunstan: What are some of the most valuable learnings from your work in the field of tech and human rights?

Susan: One of the important lessons I learned during my time as a funder was how difficult it was to predict what would gain traction or produce pressure for change. It’s far too simple to assume that those things with the most financial backing will be the successful things. Sometimes, it is something that unexpectedly captures people’s imagination, something where the timing happens to be right, or an experiment or gamble that pays off. When developing theories of change or strategy, it is essential that initiatives consider all of these options.

Dunstan: You and I have often spoken about the importance of “non-technology” companies being much more proactive in addressing technology and human rights issues. How can we accelerate that?

Susan: Over time, the core business of companies will increasingly be driven by technology and data even if they are not classified as being companies in the tech sector. But these have much less experience with the types of issues that technology companies have been facing for years, and they will have much to learn. BSR is at the intersection of many different forces, from companies where technology and data are already central and those moving in that direction to the connection between the protection of human rights and broader company sustainability strategies. It also plays an important role in bringing different stakeholders together to make progress on critical societal issues. I look forward to playing a part in that at BSR as a senior advisor.

Blog | Tuesday February 11, 2020

Human Rights Assessments in the Decisive Decade: Applying UNGPs in the Technology Sector

Preview

This blog is the first in a series of two about human rights assessments in the technology industry. The next blog will consider how to address the challenges raised here.

Over the past 10 years, the BSR team has undertaken a number of human rights assessments for companies in the technology industry. While most have not been published, recent publicly available examples include the assessments of Facebook in Myanmar, Google’s Celebrity Recognition tool, Telia Company’s exit from Eurasia, and Facebook’s proposed Oversight Board.

Our assessments have focused on a variety of topics: some have focused on geography, others on a new product, service, or technology, and others on how to integrate a human rights-based approach into a decision-making process. A common challenge throughout has been how to address traditional human rights concerns in the technology industry’s very different modern setting.

This challenge is well recognized by UN Human Rights, which has launched a project to provide guidance and resources to enhance the quality of implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the technology sphere. As their scoping paper rightly recognizes, there is both a lack of clarity on how to apply the UNGPs in practice and a need to ensure that approaches are aligned with international standards. BSR looks forward to active participation in this project.

There is both a lack of clarity on how to apply the UNGPs in practice and a need to ensure that approaches are aligned with international standards.

Human rights assessments are just one part of the overall human rights due diligence approach expected by the UNGPs, though they are often a key input into the design of overall approaches for identifying, preventing, mitigating, and accounting for how companies address human rights impacts. Our past decade undertaking human rights assessments in the technology sector has raised several challenges, which must be addressed when designing human rights due diligence frameworks fit for the decade ahead as newer technology is developed, introduced, and adopted.

The role of users in shaping impact. A significant challenge when assessing human rights impacts is the interplay between the design of the product by the technology company and how it is used in real life, whether by individuals, enterprise customers, or governments. While technology companies may not typically be the cause of harm, they are often contributing or directly linked to it by the use of their products and services by others, and for this reason, it is increasingly common for companies to set out restrictions on how a product can be used. However, identifying violations while respecting user privacy is not easy—often technology companies simply lack visibility into the data needed to spot misuse. We often finish a human rights assessment for a technology company and wryly conclude that we should be undertaking the assessment for the companies using the technology, not just the company designing it.
The substitutability problem. “If we don’t sell this product to a nefarious actor, then someone else will” is a common refrain in the technology industry—and while not unique to the technology industry, this problem does take on special significance. Today’s concerns around facial recognition illustrates the point perfectly: the overall realization of human rights is not improved if a responsible company decides not to provide service to a nefarious actor and a different company chooses to do so anyway. At the global scale, there is no shortage of technology companies willing to step in where rights-respected companies decide not to.
The need for system-wide approaches. While today’s human rights assessments are typically undertaken for a single company, in the technology industry, the solutions often need to be applied at the system level. For example, the risk of governments gaining access to data and using it to violate human rights—extreme surveillance, for instance—cannot be addressed by one company acting alone. As such, collaborations such as the Global Network Initiative are essential in making sure that insights gained at the company level are addressed collectively. In many cases, standards setting, multi-stakeholder efforts, and regulation by governments are essential to effectively addressing adverse impacts.
The differential importance of local context. Users across the globe can quickly adopt and begin using a new technology product, service, platform, or feature, but the human rights significance can vary significantly depending on local contexts. This creates twin challenges of identifying what these impacts are in a timely fashion and trying to apply global policies in nearly 200 countries—and often different local contexts within each country. Companies can prioritize higher risk locations, but there is always a risk that countries, regions, and communities covered by the western media gain much more attention from companies than those that do not.
The challenge of scale. Related to the importance of local context is the sheer reach of technology, and the operational implications of this scale should not be underestimated. As we noted in our recent human rights review of Facebook’s proposed Oversight Board, “while efforts to provide access to remedy in other industries are typically designed to meet the needs of a bounded number of rightsholders, based in clearly defined geographical areas and speaking a limited number of languages, the Facebook Oversight Board needs to be designed to meet the needs of billions of rightsholders (both users and non-users), who could be anywhere in the world and who may speak any language.”
The democratizing impact of technology. In several recent human rights assessments, we have recommended that companies deploy approaches based on “allow lists” and “block lists” to define who should or should not be able to use a product, with the emphasis on avoiding or preventing product misuse in higher risk scenarios. The critique of this approach is simple: the original promise of technology is that it democratizes and opens closed societies, so who are companies to decide where, when, and how it gets deployed?
The government problem. The UNGPs clearly state that governments have the duty to protect human rights; however, in practice governments often fall well short of this duty and make use of technology, data, and regulations to violate rather than protect rights. In many other industry contexts, the laws are often good but are not being enforced, and in the technology industry, the laws are often bad and are being over-enforced. System-wide approaches are impossible when a key player in the system isn’t willing to cooperate or is a source of the problem—for example, facial recognition solutions need regulating, yet governments are often the customer using face identification in ways that violate human rights.
Assessing for uncertainty. A human rights assessment of a new product, service, or feature should focus on identifying, avoiding, preventing, and mitigating adverse human rights impacts that may be associated with this use—the challenge being that we often don’t know for certain how it will be used, where it will be used, or by whom it will be used. We’ve begun deploying futures and strategic foresight methods as part of human rights due diligence, but it would be naive to suggest we can anticipate every eventuality. This challenge is multiplied the further up the research and design chain that the human rights assessment takes place.

Will restricting the use of new products to avoid adverse human rights impacts also hinder the urgent priority of spreading the benefits of scientific advancement and technological progress, which itself is a human right?

Taken together, these challenges present a complex mix of ethical questions and dilemmas: When is it appropriate for a company to define how its product can and cannot be used, and when is it appropriate for government or society to do so? Will restricting the use of new products to avoid adverse human rights impacts also hinder the urgent priority of spreading the benefits of scientific advancement and technological progress, which itself is a human right? How much autonomy should companies provide rightsholders on how they use a product, and to what extent should that autonomy be restricted? Is it right that appropriate actions may vary at different levels of the internet, such the platform provider, service provider, or the infrastructure layer?

Looming behind these questions are also fundamental debates shaping the future of internet, such as the role of international standards-setting bodies in defining how the internet works, the risk that the internet “splinters” along geographic, political, and commercial boundaries, and whether governments should place limits on encryption.

The UNGPs and the various human rights principles, standards, and methodologies upon which the UNGPs were built provide a pathway to address these challenges, but much work remains to be done to define the direction this path should take. At BSR, we’ve undertaken human rights assessments knowing that they are just one part of a journey of discovery in learning about the impact of technology on human rights. We greatly appreciate companies that have contributed to the dialogue by publishing their assessments, and in the second part of this series, we will share more about the solutions to address the challenges raised here.

Blog | Wednesday September 23, 2020

Freight Buyers Are the Zero-Emission Fuel We Need

Preview

As more and more businesses take action to address the climate crisis, few sectors can make as much of an impact as transportation. Representing approximately 15 percent of global energy demand, transport emissions accounted for over eight percent of global carbon emissions in 2015 according to the International Transport Forum, and is expected to continue to rise until the mid-century. Driving down emissions from freight transport is critical to achieve the Paris Agreement goals— and decarbonizing this sector will take both extraordinary ambition as well as global, coordinated action. Taking on a challenge of this scale will require working with multinational companies, as well as their suppliers; simultaneously changing air, sea, road, rail, and waterways transportation; and driving transformation across the entire global system.

In 2020, business ambition to address the climate crisis has never been higher, with nearly one thousand companies committed to Science Based Targets since the initiative was launched in 2015. As companies leverage climate science to drive emissions reductions in their operations and their value chains, they have realized that reaching these targets requires addressing the carbon emitted in their supply chains, including freight transport, if they wish to remain in line with the Paris goal to limit warming to 2^oC or its stretch goal of 1.5^oC.

As businesses look to move beyond commitments and take concrete steps to combat climate change, now is the time to take meaningful action to address freight emissions. With years of experience working collaboratively on initiatives aimed at decarbonizing freight, BSR and the Smart Freight Centre (SFC) are moving to address gaps in current efforts and accelerate the shift to zero-carbon freight across all modes of transport—air, sea, road, rail, waterways—by 2050 through a new buyer-focused collaborative platform: the Sustainable Freight Buyers Alliance (SFBA).

In order to drive system-wide change, we need a new type of collaborative platform purposefully designed to send a united market signal across the entire freight ecosystem. In a globally interconnected network, this unified market signal will enable more impact than disparate ones for individual modes, countries, or technologies – further driving the ability of other initiatives such as the Getting to Zero Coalition, the World Economic Forum, and others to progress meaningfully towards decarbonizing technologies for freight. We need to unite corporate buyers, suppliers, and other stakeholders in the freight value chain in order to meet the following three essential conditions for zero-emission transport by 2050:

United market signal: Corporate buyers of freight share the same global freight system and have overlapping suppliers. We need to bring all these buyers together under a single purpose, define the common objectives, and agree to mutual accountability in order to translate this need into a powerful, specific, and united market demand signal for low-carbon freight.
Opportunity for action: Once buyers have defined and signaled a common market demand, they can accelerate action. This can be done by joining initiatives that support the scale up or co-creation of promising technology, operational or financing solutions, and alignment of buyers and suppliers. Well-established collaborative buyer-supplier platforms for different regions and freight transport modes exist; such as BSR’s Clean Cargo for maritime freight, BSR’s Future of Fuels initiative and U.S. EPA’s SmartWay for road freight in North America, and BSR’s Sustainable Air Freight Alliance for air cargo. Other initiatives are focused specific technologies, such as Drive to Zero for electric trucks or Getting to Zero Coalition for zero-emission marine vessels, and a growing number of countries have national green freight programs. Solutions and knowledge must be shared across these platforms, to ensure the rapid identification and scaling of the most promising solutions.
An industry standard: To ensure accountability, we will need standardized guidelines and an assessment tool that allows individual companies to monitor progress to achieving zero-emission freight. SFC’s Global Logistics Emissions Council has developed the GLEC Framework, which we believe to be the best example of standardized guidelines for emissions calculation and reporting, and an assessment tool to track progress can be coupled to this.

This Sustainable Freight Buyers Alliance will specifically focus on creating a united market signal by working with global buyers and tracking emission reduction progress across their entire freight value chain - not be limited by region or mode of transport. We can then accelerate action and industry standards by collaborating with existing initiatives. Together we can share knowledge and learnings—and identify the best technologies and opportunities to scale impact.

We look forward to connecting with more shippers to join us in creating a single voice to drive down freight emissions—and take coordinated action to meet science-based targets to counter the climate crisis. We encourage companies looking to scale impact and meet their SBTs to reach out to our team to learn more.

Blog | Tuesday September 25, 2018

Climate Solutions Need Women at the Center

Preview

The intersection of climate change and women, although rarely prioritized in decision-making or solutions, is not a new concept. But, as Mary Robinson said, “If we took away the barriers to women’s leadership, we would solve the climate change problem a lot faster.”

As Mary Robinson said, “If we took away the barriers to women’s leadership, we would solve the climate change problem a lot faster.”

In 2015, the international arena formally gave this women-climate nexus a platform within the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2017, UNFCCC countries adopted the Gender Action Plan at the climate negotiations. These international frameworks now recognize the intersection between gender inequality and climate change, as well as the need for the integration of women’s voices, skills, and knowledge in solutions. It is time for businesses to act by empowering women leaders to take climate action throughout their value chains.

Today, we are excited to launch a new report that highlights tangible ways of doing this. Companies can address climate risk more effectively and efficiently if they put women at the heart of their climate resilience strategies.

Women are disproportionately affected by climate change—not because they experience more climate impacts than men, but because women face underlying socioeconomic, political, and legal barriers that limit their choices in the face of climate change. Climate impacts exacerbate these barriers and ultimately hinder climate resilience activities from reaching their full potential.

For example, only 47 percent of women have an account at a formal financial institution, compared to 55 percent of men. Without bank accounts and financial resources, women cannot easily diversify their livelihoods or access financial capital before and after climate disasters. Additional barriers include norms related to unpaid work, limited access to income, discriminatory laws, land ownership restrictions, a lack of capacity-building resources, and a lack of voice. These barriers not only limit the adaptive capacity of women to climate impacts, but they also influence the adaptive capacity of communities and company value chains—in particular, agriculture (nearly 50 percent of smallholder farmers in some countries are women) and apparel (nearly 80 percent of apparel factory workers are women).

Despite these deeply rooted barriers, women possess unique and key skills, knowledge, and experiences critical for climate resilience solutions, making them powerful change agents. For example, women make different choices than men that can help an agricultural community within a value chain thrive and adapt to climate change. For generations, women have been land stewards and have maintained local climate, plant, and seed-planting knowledge. This makes them natural targets for involvement in the creation and use of climate adaptation tools and trainings, in particular as men continue to move to more non-farm jobs and climate impacts continue to worsen.

Climate resilience solutions with a specific focus on women are a win-win: They tackle climate risk and gender inequality simultaneously, with clear benefits for business, women, and communities. For businesses, empowering women and also making them leaders in the development and implementation of these solutions can drive productivity and innovation, especially within sectors like agriculture and apparel that depend heavily on a female workforce. Companies can also protect raw materials, increase financial stability and returns, strengthen the resilience of local communities, and deliver other co-benefits, like stabilizing livelihoods, improving food security, and making progress toward closing the global gender gap, as part of this approach.

Businesses that recognize this can play an important role in developing these solutions within their own operations, and they can also collaborate with others to make progress. More specifically, they can:

Act to put women at the center of all internal climate resilience approaches and solutions. In particular, companies can provide women in supply chains access to relevant trainings, inputs, financing, and technologies.
Enable women throughout the value chain and broader community to effectively respond to climate-related events by linking them with local networks and partners, which can serve as mutual support mechanisms to strengthen climate resilience.
Influence policymakers and other organizations to help address underlying inequalities, such as the lack of decision-making power of women, which are particularly challenging in the context of a changing climate.

Through the Business Action for Women collaboration, BSR works with leading companies on climate change, including Mars, L’Oreal, and Coca-Cola, to share best practices and collectively develop innovative solutions that empower women to lead on climate resilience in agricultural supply chains from the ground up.

Real transformation for both climate resilience and gender equality will happen when companies tackle the structural and systemic barriers women face and involve women in solutions—putting women at the center of their climate strategies.

BSR’s climate and women nexus report is the fourth in our series, which also includes reports on the intersection between climate and supply chains, health, and inclusive economy. Stay tuned for more on the connections between climate resilience and human rights and a just transition to the low-carbon economy in the months to come.

Blog | Thursday December 14, 2023

How Businesses Can Address the Water Scarcity Crisis

Blog | Wednesday July 20, 2022

A Business Approach to Reinforcing Democracy

Blog | Tuesday December 20, 2022

COP15: A Historic Deal to Halt Biodiversity Loss by 2030

Blog | Monday July 1, 2019

Eliminating Violence and Harassment Just Became an Obligation for Businesses Worldwide

Blog | Wednesday February 8, 2023

Family Medical and Leave Act Turns 30: Five Actions Business Can Take in 2023

Case Studies | Monday July 9, 2018

The Coca-Cola Company: Building a Climate-Resilient Value Chain

Blog | Monday October 7, 2019

Q&A with BSR Senior Advisor Susan Morgan

Blog | Tuesday February 11, 2020

Human Rights Assessments in the Decisive Decade: Applying UNGPs in the Technology Sector

Blog | Wednesday September 23, 2020

Freight Buyers Are the Zero-Emission Fuel We Need

Blog | Tuesday September 25, 2018

Climate Solutions Need Women at the Center

Search Again?

Sustainability Insights

Advisory Services

Collaboration

Membership

Events

Focus Areas

About Us