Climate change, faux-green sourcing practices, and modern slavery are not separate issues.
The need to drive down emissions in the procurement process is well-documented. Increasingly, this need is being highlighted, both by the worsening effects of the climate crisis and an increasingly strict regulatory landscape. As controversial stopgap measures like carbon credits are phased out, and misleading claims of carbon neutrality are penalised by organisations like the European Union, corporations need to find meaningful ways to not only reduce their emissions, but also promote a more circular economy, cut down on waste, and measure the total carbon cost of ownership.
Climate-smart procurement
Climate-smart procurement refers to an approach to sourcing goods and services that weighs a holistic view of emissions and environmental impact against other factors like cost and supply chain resilience.
The procurement process is a significant source of emissions, as sustainable or unsustainable choices made at the earliest stages of the value chain can have profound effects that ripple outwards through the entire lifecycle of a product or service.
For example, Nestlé’s Head of Climate Change and Sustainable Sourcing Benjamin Ware, explained in a recent company report that “the bulk of our carbon footprint is already present when we purchase raw materials such as dairy, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and meat,” adding that “packaging and shipping are much less significant – only a fraction of the carbon footprint compared with how the raw material is produced. This means selecting ingredients produced using climate-smart practices can make a significant difference, even if they are shipped from further away.”
However, climate-smart procurement needs to go beyond a simple calculus of carbon emissions and water consumption.
Emissions calculus is insufficient
Many of the procurement practices employed by companies like Nestlé are directly harmful to the countries and populations where they operate. Nestlé itself has faced harsh criticism and several lawsuits for “aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of thousands of children on cocoa farms in their supply chains,” exploiting natural water resources in California, and contributing to significant deforestation throughout the Ivory Coast and Ghana—among many other allegations.
The legacy of colonialism in the Global South is capitalist exploitation that continues to allow forced labour, environmental exploitation, and other unsustainable practices to flourish. Not only this, but such practices are instrumental in preventing the necessary economic development in these regions to allow for more environmentally friendly practices to flourish.
Researchers working on a report released in 2021 argued that the “modern slavery–environmental degradation–climate change nexus may threaten the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” set out by the United Nations. They add that, around the world, more than 12 million workers are entrapped in circumstances of modern slavery. Many are forced to perform “environmentally degrading activities,” leading the report’s authors to theorise that the elimination of modern slavery “may be instrumental in accelerating attainment of other SDG targets” like reduced carbon emissions and the cessation of deforestation and biodiversity collapse.
Interconnected issues
Just as corporate sustainability rhetoric often reiterates, there is no silver bullet for the climate crisis. This is because issues of climate are also issues of colonial legacy, capitalist exploitation, and human suffering on an globalised industrial scale.
“Labourers subjected to modern slavery are forced to participate in environmental criminal activities,” argues the report. “Environmental degradation and unsustainable extraction pulls vulnerable workers into conditions of modern slavery by creating a demand for cheap labour in these sectors. When resources become more scarce, many of these industries could not continue in their primitive and inefficient production without modern slavery, thus modern slavery can function like a subsidy allowing activities to remain profitable.”
