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Everything we buy has contributed to the climate change, in future Procurement must contribute to the solution.
Despite the fear of stating the obvious, everything we consume as individuals and everything an organisation consumes has been subject to some form of procurement process and for the vast majority of goods and services via professional procurement functions, with trained and qualified procurement and supply chain professionals.
So let’s imagine over the last 3 decades, that all global procurement and supply chain activities had been focused with the strategic and operational intent of maximising the positive contribution to the environment and that was the overriding objective alongside being fit for purpose. Idealistic as that may sound our planet and the environment would be in a very different position than we are in today. We would have seen far more innovation in products, services and logistics and innovative organisational models and approaches.
Climate change is already negatively impacting every citizen and every organisation, that impact is now multiplying and accelerating faster than previously thought.
All organisations within the public or private sectors face numerous strategic and short-term challenges, impact of COVID, Ukraine war, energy costs, assurance of supply or inflation, but an inescapable fact is the impact of climate change will dwarf these challenges over the short and medium term. These impacts will be highly impactful, occasionally global, often with no notice and varied from a procurement and supply chain perspective. Challenges such as price volatility; availability of supply; customer demand changes; increased legislation and regulatory compliance requirements; end of life / waste management obligations; supply chain disruption; direct environmental taxes / costs; new disruptive technologies etc. are going to be faced by every procurement team and every organisation.
Procurement’s role is twofold, stop contributing to the problem, its unethical, its short-sighted, it will impact your organisation’s ability to deliver its strategy in the very near future, it will impact customers, it will impact citizens and as awareness and the direct impact on all societies grows it will become unacceptable very quickly. Organisations are already seeing a backlash, whether that is the sharp increase legal cases against historic and current practices, consumers shifting buying habits or having to adapt to rapidly changing legislation, policies, and regulatory obligations. What is very clear, is if we don’t buy in an environmentally friendly way, and that is no longer limiting negative impact, it is seeking and having a net positive impact on the environment, governments will have no choice but to legislate and legislate quickly. How long do we believe that citizens and societies will tolerate death, displacement, disruption, starvation, economic impacts at the scale that we have witnessed over the last 2-3 years? Remembering the impact of climate change will increase in scale, impact and frequency over the coming years.
Not taking action is not an option for a credible procurement and supply chain leader.
Hence the second fundamental role of procurement is to prepare for the future. It will take considerable time and commitment of resources, funding, and expertise to shift any organisation to putting environmental considerations at the heart of what they do. This is particularly complex in procurement and cannot be undertaken overnight, it could take years to re-configure supply chains, transition from carbon intensive or water intensive technologies or embed circular economy best practice. However, a credible leader should be championing this within their organisation, designing the strategy that will safeguard that organisation’s future role and reputation, public or private.
The future role of procurement is critical, we will need to directly influence organisational strategy to transition to future sustainable products and services (whether as a buyer, seller or service provider or all of these); redefining organisational requirements; redefining value; changing how we measure success and compliance; changing product life-cycles; embedding new technologies within supply chains to measure and manage environmental and I believe social impact; implementing and managing circular economy practices.
Procurement at scale, as a community, across sectors can collaborate and deliver sustainable solutions at pace with a local, regional, and global impact.
As a function if we start to define requirements and intended outcomes in such a way that suppliers must ensure delivery has a net positive environmental impact, markets will start to shift and change.
If we will only contract with suppliers who are managed and operated to limit climate impact and wherever possible have a net positive impact, suppliers will change.
If we are willing to collaborate or invest with our suppliers and create long term commitments and contracts to support product and service innovation to deliver sustainable solutions, environmental innovation will happen. Suppliers will invest.
If we measure relationships, contract success and performance through a net positive environmental lens, then we will see and experience a positive impact.
If we collaborate as a function, share ideas, best practices, perhaps even share risk across many organisations and sectors we can drive positive change.
This isn’t the future, this is already happening in some leading organisations, the issue is that it is not happening fast enough, with enough organisations and with enough collaboration. So we need to see greater leadership and coordination. In part this needs to be orchestrated by global institutions, Government’s and the Public Sector alongside private sector initiatives, membership organisations and educational institutions.
I will outline why the Public Sector is a crucial component and accelerator of the solution to climate change and why this petition is so important in the next think piece. In the meantime please sign the petition below:
For everyone and any organisation who signs the petition or ideally contributes by posting comments or communicating this through other media channels a big thank you for taking part.
