A brief released today by Sedex Global and World Wildlife Fund finds that the majority of environmental non-compliances in global supply chains originate from a lack of understanding of relevant laws and regulations, despite the fact that the majority of self-assessors believe they meet all relevant requirements.
The brief concludes that although positive efforts are being made to manage and set targets around water risks, improved, more collaborative systems are needed to help suppliers ensure environmental legal requirements are met.
Published in the run up to World Water Day - 22nd March 2015 - the new Sedex WWF Water Risk Briefing, part of a series created by Sedex and partners to raise awareness of responsible sourcing issues, analysed data from over 20,000 audits on the Sedex Global platform to reveal key insights into how water is managed throughout global supply chains.
The briefing studies the partnership between Sedex members Marks & Spencer and Woolworths (South Africa) with WWF and the Alliance for Water Stewardship in South Africa’s Western Cape as an example of successful collaboration.
The project worked with nine farmers in the stone fruit supply chain to help assess their water usage and identify opportunities for improvements, as well as bringing the farmers together with other catchment stakeholders to assess the wider catchment risks. The resulting water stewardship opportunities will invite other farmers, the municipality and urban residents to take part, further spreading awareness and encouraging collective action.
“We don’t expect all companies to be water conservation specialists. As this brief shows, the issues are much more complicated than people realize,” said Lindsay Bass, manager of US corporate water stewardship at World Wildlife Fund. “But that’s exactly why collaboration is essential. We all need to work together to facilitate new, innovative ways to responsibly manage and share water.”
“Water-related supply chain risks can have a profound impact on companies by affecting profitability, brand value and even ability to operate ”, commented Marianne Voss, report co-author at Sedex. “Good examples from Sedex’s global membership and beyond highlight how capacity building can aid suppliers’ understanding and further collaboration on a local, river basin level as well as on a bigger scale.”
The Water briefing is available to download for free here. The briefing will be used to illuminate discussion around the wider topic of resource scarcity at a panel discussion at the Sedex Global Responsible Sourcing Conference on 25 March in London.
Media contacts:
Sedex: Mark Robertson | Head of Marketing & Communications | +44 (0)20 7902 2347 (direct) | mark.robertson@sedexglobal.com |Twitter: @SedexCSR
WWF: Lorin Hancock | Media Relations | +1 (202) 495 4107 | Lorin.hancock@wwfus.org | Twitter: @World_Wildlife
Sedex (www.sexdexglobal.com) works with buyers and suppliers around the world to deliver improvements in responsible and ethical business practices in global supply chains. Our mission is to drive collaboration, increase transparency and build the capacity that’s needed to raise standards across all tiers of the supply chain. We offer the world’s largest collaborative platform for managing and sharing ethical supply chain data, along with leading-edge services which multi-national companies use to understand, monitor and manage supply chains risks and improve standards. Our global membership totals over 37,000 buyers, suppliers and audit firms, including key sustainability thought leaders.
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