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Blog | Thursday April 25, 2019

Three Questions to Think About for Your 2030 Strategy

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For years, 2020 was a distant concept, the end-point for business goals and timelines. With many sustainability strategies and goals expiring in 2020, it is now time for companies to think about their sustainability priorities for the next 10 years.

At Sustainable Brands Paris, we discussed the dynamics shaping post-2020 strategies with representatives from Avery Dennison, evian, Fortitude Partners, and Mastercard.

The landscape for sustainable business is rapidly changing, as evidenced by the accelerating energy transition, highly disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, new business models, increasing geopolitical volatility, nascent climate disruption, and new expectations from stakeholders.

At BSR, our view is that the next phase of work requires building resilient business strategies with sustainability at their core. Gone are the days of piecemeal, siloed approaches and ticking off the quick wins. Now is the time to reset the trajectory recognizing the interwoven reality of business, society, and the consumer.

"Most big businesses have been working on sustainability with reasonable success for the last 10 to 15 years, but we have been picking the low-hanging fruit,” a BSR member once told us. “The next phase will be much more difficult. It is about what you buy and what you sell; it goes into the heart of your commercial operations and investment decisions."

This brings a huge opportunity to reflect on lessons learned from the past decade of sustainability management: what has worked well, what we have achieved, and what we need to do to drive ambition for changing the way we meet consumer needs while creating long-term value for business and society. In this context, we need to reflect on the following three questions as we work with member companies to develop strategies for 2030.

What could our world look like in 10 years, and how do we ensure the relevance of our priorities in 2030?

Companies cannot plan for 2030 without considering how different the world will be 10 years from now. While we cannot anticipate all the disruptions and innovations that will unfold in the next decade, we can leverage futures thinking and scenario planning to prepare long-term sustainable business strategies.

Futures thinking and scenario planning offer structured methodologies to identify signals of change on the horizon, explore possible future scenarios, and ensure your 2030 strategy is fit for the changing world. Scenario planning is not a prediction of the future, but a way to expand our field of vision, challenge assumptions about the present and future, and improve our capacity to adapt to and steer change. Importantly, it helps to understand how your business would look in a plausible new environment.

Explore BSR’s research into the key drivers of change affecting sustainable business in the Doing Business in 2030 report and theorize the impact of four plausible scenarios on your business and consumers.

Sustainability teams will need to develop new competencies to be fully empowered to drive the design of meaningful 2030 sustainability strategies and goals.

How are consumer needs and wants evolving, and how do brands partner with consumers and others to enable more sustainable lifestyles?

One BSR member company told us the most important thing for sustainability is to ensure pathways to growth for businesses and finding business benefits: “Consumers will use words other than sustainability, such as wellbeing and technology obsolescence. You should not put out new sustainable products just to win nice awards, but because consumers need and want these products.”

Truly sustainable and resilient businesses are those that integrate their commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into core business strategy. BSR member companies understand the “need to focus primarily on how solving major sustainability challenges create new revenue opportunities for the company. This means integrating the SDGs and sustainability into business planning.” More and more, companies see the value sustainable efforts deliver to their consumers and, conversely, the demand from consumers for goods and services that reflect a contribution to solving major societal challenges.

In the past, sustainability strategies have focused on doing business as usual, with fewer negative impacts. But, as another BSR member company explains, “products, services, and technologies are more important than processes and procedures, but we in the sustainable business field are too focused on process. This misses the key strategic link with market-based needs.”

Which business approaches can work to drive deeper internal integration and business value to get the entire company on board with a 2030 strategy?

According to the State of Sustainable Business 2018, consumer and customer demand is the second most powerful driver for sustainability efforts after reputation. However, only 34 percent of companies state that their sustainability team works effectively with marketing, 29 percent with research and development (R&D), and 28 percent with product development.

Integrating sustainability into brand strategies and innovation requires new approaches for teams that may not have worked closely before. Sustainability teams can give marketing and product development the right tools to enable sustainability to drive brand purpose and innovation.

Our partner Fortitude Partners outlines some tangible ways to work with your marketing department, such as developing a toolkit to enable brand managers to turn what is often an abstract sustainability strategy into consumer-led brand strategies. One BSR member explains how they have “baked sustainability attributes into the product development stage-gate process. Innovation teams are part of our sustainability governance. We’ve also partnered with an accelerator to incubate entrepreneurs that will generate ideas that will benefit us.”

Concrete tools and methodologies exist that can help companies build sustainability strategies that create business and stakeholder value over the next decade. Sustainability teams will need to develop new competencies to be fully empowered to drive the design of meaningful 2030 sustainability strategies and goals, such as the ability to identify value creation opportunities, drive internal change, and identify future factors.

Blog | Tuesday April 23, 2019

Accelerating the Adoption of Clean Fuels: Building a Sustainable Fuel Assessment Framework

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Business, in addition to countries and multinational bodies, has a role to play in combating global climate change. The freight transportation sector represents a significant and growing share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And as companies seek to reduce their environmental impact, meet climate goals, and reduce fuel costs, there is increasing demand for sustainable fuel technologies such as renewable natural gas, renewable diesel, electricity, and biodiesel.

Already, leading global companies are piloting and deploying many of these fuels and technologies, including members of BSR’s Future of Fuels initiative and signatories to the Sustainable Fuel Buyers’ Principles. Companies such as UPS and DHL are building their fleets of electric delivery vans in an attempt to meet their corporate sustainability goals, to reduce fuel costs, and to continue service in areas that have banned fossil-fuel-powered vehicles — such as some cities in Europe. Major retailers and consumer goods manufacturers are also making ambitious commitments to reduce the GHG emissions impact of their road freight fleets. For example, Amazon aims to have all of its shipments to customers become net zero carbon, with 50 percent of all shipments net zero by 2030.

In continued partnership with ACT Expo, Future of Fuels will host a Buyer-Supplier Roundtable on April 23 in Long Beach to discuss how companies are evaluating the sustainable fuel market for their commercial freight fleets. 

While some progress has been made, many companies encounter significant challenges when assessing sustainable fuels options for their fleets, specifically trying to integrate economic, operational, and sustainability criteria. Fleet and goods owners today are faced with a proliferating set of new sustainable fuel choices, however, they do not have a streamlined, comprehensive framework to evaluate these fuels for their economic, performance, and sustainability attributes. As a result, uptake is lagging the availability of new options.

To help alleviate this need, BSR’s Future of Fuels initiative is currently developing an assessment framework that will outline key financial and performance criteria for at-market and near-market sustainable fuels. Co-developed with Future of Fuels members, this tool will help companies evaluate fuel suitability, financial viability (ROI), and potential barriers to uptake/adoption. 

In continued partnership with ACT Expo, Future of Fuels will host a Buyer-Supplier Roundtable on April 23 in Long Beach, California, to discuss how companies are evaluating the sustainable fuel market for their commercial freight fleets. Insights collected during this session will serve as inputs for the development of an assessment framework that the group aims to complete later in 2019.

The Sustainable Fuel Roadmap will complement a series of tools co-developed by Future of Fuels over the past years: a case study library allowing fleet owners to compare clean fuel technologies independently tested and rated by peer companies, the Fuel Sustainability Tool (available for free), the world’s first apples-to-apples way to compare emissions reductions investments in efficiency and advanced fuel technologies, and the Sustainable Fuel Buyers’ Principles, through which companies demonstrate demand for sustainable fuels and catalyze the partnerships needed to drive a sustainable transition in the freight fuel system.

As described in the IPCC Special Report released last fall, we must limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030 to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change. Reducing GHG emissions from freight transportation is one effective tactic companies can deploy to mitigate their climate impact. Business looking to address the emissions of their freight transportation are welcome to connect with us, either at our event at ACT Expo or online.

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We invite fuel purchasers and shippers to sign on to the Sustainable Fuel Buyers' Principles. There is no cost to join; we simply ask that companies offer a sincere commitment to use these principles to proactively engage with their value chains around sustainable, low-emission fuels. View the full list of signatories and the Principles themselves here.

Blog | Monday April 22, 2019

Five Trends Defining the Future of Retail

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Chinese online retailer JD.com recently launched the first fully automated warehouse, where only four employees are needed to do work that previously required 400. Forty German supermarkets tested using facial recognition technology to serve personalized advertisements to customers waiting in checkout lines. Two hundred ninety companies have committed to ensure 100 percent of their plastic packaging can be reused, recycled, or composted by 2025.

As the signals of change above show, retail is changing in complex ways, and the future will look quite different from today. We need to prepare now for new challenges—such as job loss due to automation and ethical concerns related to artificial intelligence (AI)—but also for new opportunities to drive more sustainable consumption patterns, promote diversity and inclusion, and meet emerging consumer needs.

The future is not pre-determined. As we seek to shape a better future, it is important to both understand current trends and be attuned to signals of change that suggest new and emerging possibilities. Here are five constellations of trends and signals we’re monitoring that any retailer should consider as it thinks about the future.

The Workforce of Tomorrow

Automation, demographics, and wages are driving change in the retail worker landscape. While income inequality in Europe is generally lower than in non-European countries, focus remains on wage initiatives such as the U.K.’s Living Wage Foundation and IKEA’s living wage commitment. In contrast, in the United States, worker pay is stagnant and income inequality is at record high levels. National legal systems are also increasingly adopting gender pay laws, including the U.K., Iceland, and the Netherlands, to document and reduce the gender pay gap. In addition, automation is poised to significantly disrupt retail. McKinsey and PwC estimate that 62 million jobs in Europe’s five biggest economies can be automated, with retail being approximately 20-30 percent by 2030. Due to aging populations and declining birth rates, AI might, however, make up for productivity shortfalls mitigating technical unemployment.

Smart Everywhere

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are enabling retail companies to immerse customers in highly personalized interactions and bring the retail experience closer to home or anywhere their consumers are connected. The majority of retailers are already implementing or planning to further invest in mixed reality. By 2021, nearly 79 percent of retailers will be able to customize the store visit for customers as a majority of them will know when a specific customer is in the store. AI is enabling companies to better anticipate consumer preferences and is already capable of improving demand forecasting up to 50 percent.

The Social Life of Business

Corporate activism is on the rise, with issues such as refugees and immigration, LGBTIQ+ rights, and the climate crisis drawing public commentary from thousands of executives, companies, and their employees. Brands from Primark to Starbucks are supporting various causes through their products, marketing, or commitments such as IKEA’s Refugee Employment Program. In Deloitte’s Millennial Survey 2018, three-quarters of the young workers interviewed see businesses around the world focusing on their own agendas rather than considering the wider society, and climate tops the list of issues where they expect business to take action. According to FleishmanHillard, two-thirds of consumers said they’ve already stopped using a company’s products or services because that company’s response to an issue didn’t comport with their own views.

Successful business—and the well-being of people and the planet—will depend on developing new strategies for the future that not only account for the profound changes underway but can also imagine transformative new opportunities to create a more just and sustainable world.

Over There Is Now Here

Western democracies are being challenged by the rise of populism, cultural nativism, and economic nationalism, and in response, international cooperation on global challenges is being undermined. On the other side, global grassroots movements for the climate and just capitalism are growing particularly among youth. In March, climate strikes around the world gathered hundreds of thousands of students. Disruption requires that companies constantly evaluate their short- and long-term sourcing options, both locally and globally. Climate change has the potential to critically disrupt the supply chains for important commodities like coffee and vanilla. Over 500 companies have committed to set science-based targets (SBTs), which require inclusion of Scope 2 and 3 emissions—increasing focus on supply chain climate impacts. Automation can provide significant costs savings on labor compared with offshoring to low-cost economies, and it is poised to lead to the reshoring of production and significant job losses in the supply chain.  

Race to Stay Within Planetary Boundaries

The urgency to act on climate change has significantly increased this year, following recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stockholm Resilience Institute that warn that 1.5 degrees, not 2 degrees, is the upper limit for warming if we are to avoid catastrophic impacts. The European Union (EU) aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. In 2018, it aligned its ambitious Circular Economy Plan in a Memorandum of Understanding with China. California, the world’s fifth largest economy, declared its ambition in late 2018 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. In the meantime, plastics has become a hot button issue, both single use plastics such as straws as well as microplastics, which have been found in everything from fish to bottled water to table salt.

The European Parliament has voted for a complete ban on a range of single-use plastics across the union in a bid to stop pollution of the oceans. Other waste bans, e.g. on microplastics, are likely imminent. At the same time, the EU is considering a law for the ‘right to repair,’ forcing manufacturers to make repair accessible for all their products, either at repair shops or in their own stores.

From automation to climate impacts to social values, a diverse set of powerful and complex interacting forces are changing the retail and consumption landscape. However, it’s not enough just to read about these changes. Successful business—and the well-being of people and the planet—will depend on developing new strategies for the future that not only account for the profound changes underway but can also imagine transformative new opportunities to create a more just and sustainable world.

The most effective way to do this is using strategic foresight—a structured approach to exploring multiple future possibilities, clarifying the better future we’d like to shape together, and creating a roadmap to get there. For more information about BSR’s new strategic foresight offerings, please contact the BSR Sustainable Futures Lab.

Blog | Tuesday April 16, 2019

Supply Chain Sustainability in a Rapidly Changing World

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Ten years ago, Norway-based Telenor Group transformed its approach to supply chain sustainability. To mark this anniversary, Telenor commissioned BSR to review lessons learned and consider what direction both Telenor and the broader telecoms industry should travel over the next 10 years. Telenor’s supply chains include thousands of suppliers around the world, which provide goods and services ranging from IT equipment and devices from global suppliers to a wide range of local services needed to build and run the network, including construction and maintenance. In addition, suppliers are needed in areas such as digital services, brand and marketing support, and outsourced customer services and business processes. 

Informed by this work, today we are sharing our thoughts on relevant global shifts transforming telecommunications supply chains and best practices for companies in the industry to improve supply chain sustainability in the future. 

Three Global Trends  

Three key trends are likely to influence the future of sustainable supply chains in the telecommunications industry—new technologies and digitization, climate resilience, and large-scale human migration.  

1. New technologies: Innovations and digital advances are revolutionizing supply chain management across industries, and more companies today are using technologies like automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain, and augmented reality to supplement traditional approaches. There are opportunities to consider how new technologies can increase financial incentives for suppliers that are performing well on social and environmental indicators—for example, blockchain technology and financial technology solutions are making it easier for companies to gear their supply chain finance mechanisms more readily toward incentives for these high-performing suppliers. 
2. Climate resilience: While it’s impossible to predict the exact effects of climate change, it’s clear that supply chains are vulnerable to global warming, especially for those companies with operations and infrastructure in countries that are already experiencing more frequent and severe weather events. Over the past decade, the telecommunications industry has done an impressive job building climate resilience, and networks are increasingly able to withstand severe weather events. Looking to the future, telecommunications companies have an opportunity to expand their approach to climate resilience by focusing on opportunities to deploy telecommunications networks and digital services in ways that support the resilience of other industries.  
3. Large-scale human migration: Companies will also need to prepare for the burgeoning trend of human migration at a massive scale. More than 240 million people now live outside their country of birth, and a record number of people have become refugees. This is already affecting many companies. While local contexts vary significantly, migrant labor presents risks in both emerging economies as well as in developed markets. One of the biggest risks is that migrant workers represent a vulnerable group requiring special protection. Often, these people may not be aware of their rights, or they are willing to take jobs where rules and regulations are not followed. As a result, they might be paid under the table in cash, they might be paid below the legal minimum wage, or their employers may force them to work excessive hours or in unsafe conditions. It is important for companies to identify and eliminate these violations, and it’s also important for companies to invest in strategies to create decent jobs that integrate migrants into the workforce, develop their skills, and give them opportunities to make positive contributions to society. 

What Companies Can Do 

We recommend companies dig deeper on impact—encourage more local ownership, connect more deeply on key issues, and create change for rights-holders. 

A dedicated company’s efforts in an era of rapidly accelerated change has the potential to create value for its business, its stakeholders, and society at large. Our recent work with Telenor illustrates how companies can act within their own boundaries, enable relationships with stakeholders, and influence policy change to advance sustainable business goals, drawing from the “Act-Enable-Influence” framework articulated in Redefining Sustainable Business: Management for a Rapidly Changing World.

We recommend companies dig deeper on impact—encourage more local ownership, connect more deeply on key issues, and create change for rights-holders. We also suggest more proactive engagement with global peers and suppliers in collaborative efforts, such as advocacy for necessary policy changes.  

Our additional guidance for companies includes the following: 

• Companies can act by taking local context into account in risk assessments, audits, inspections, and capacity-building, as well as by prioritizing efforts based on risk to the rights-holder (i.e., supply chain employee), rather than risk to the business. This focus on risk to the rights-holder rather than risk to the business is consistent with the expectations in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 
• Companies can enable change by creating and participating in local collaboration platforms among telecommunications companies and their suppliers, as well as with other industries and key stakeholders. This can also include making the case for more telecommunications operators, including local competitors, to join relevant industry associations and strengthen their ability to drive industrywide change.  
• The telecommunications industry can influence change by adopting an advocacy agenda that represents the complete company and industry value chain. This means promoting rule of law and good governance, especially effective enforcement of labor, health, safety, environment, and anticorruption regulations.  

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about our work on the future of supply chain sustainability, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Blog | Monday April 1, 2019

Four Ways Companies Can Transform the Health of Communities

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Health is not just for healthcare companies: All businesses have an important role to play in community health. In the United States, close to 80 percent of one’s health is determined by where you live and work. Leading companies both invest in employee health and well-being and go beyond their four walls to make an impact in local communities. By doing so, they are creating business value and a competitive advantage.

Already, a wide range of companies are taking action to improve health outcomes in their communities through various channels, such as expanding employee wellness programs to family members, partnering with local organizations like schools to reach community members, promoting healthier choices and/or behaviors to customers, leveraging technology to benefit vulnerable or underserved populations, and investing in affordable housing projects near corporate headquarters. Together, BSR’s Healthy Business Coalition and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have developed a collection of case studies to demonstrate how companies are taking action on community health and to assess the landscape of corporate healthy business program metrics. These case studies supplement a series of resources in the Healthy Business Toolkit that support companies in identifying opportunities and developing programs and partnerships to improve the health of employees, customers, and communities.

Beyond charitable donations, philanthropic giving, and employee volunteerism, businesses are making investments in community health by integrating health and well-being into core business practices across four scopes of action:

Create a workplace that values health 

Businesses have an opportunity to serve as a model for health by creating a workplace that values positive health outcomes for employees as well as exemplifying corporate environmental responsibility.

Johnson & Johnson’s HealthForce 2020 is an integrated initiative to empower at least 100,000 employees by 2020 toward a personal best in health and well-being at work, home, and in their communities by enhancing their core employee health and well-being programs and services. The program measures employee engagement and utilization, in addition to business metrics (like recruitment, retention, performance, and promotion) and health outcomes.

Differentiate products and services by taking a health lens

Businesses have an opportunity to not only mitigate negative health impacts but to also improve health outcomes of current products and services. In addition, they have the tools to develop accessible solutions for critical health and well-being needs.

Every year, around 3.6 million Americans miss doctor appointments due to lack of reliable transportation.  Uber Health, a HIPAA-compliant technology solution, helps to address this problem by helping patients and caregivers get to and from care. Providers also use Uber Health to transport crucial staff to work. The program aims to eliminate access to transportation as a barrier to receiving health care services.

Another great example is The Walt Disney Company’s Healthy Living program, which seeks to improve child nutrition and well-being by providing food options in parks, products in stores and online, recipes, and physical activity ideas that meet Disney’s nutrition guidelines. The program tracks the number of servings of fruits and vegetables provided to kids every year and the percentage of guests that make the healthier choice.

Partner with community organizations to have a bigger impact

Businesses have an opportunity to incubate more meaningful health programs and partner with community organizations to improve community health outcomes of a company’s key communities and focus populations. Partnerships with community organizations can enhance a business’s reputation and help achieve more than they could alone.

The One for Good Initiative is an exemplary collaboration among Consumer Goods Forum members, such as General Mills, PepsiCo, Walmart, and others, in partnership with a local public-private collaborative, Healthy Washington County. The collaboration supports community wellness by empowering consumers to make healthier choices, from food and exercise to smoking cessation and medication adherence.

Take a stand against health inequality through public policy engagement

Businesses have an opportunity to influence the cultural dialogue and policy debates by promoting health equity through public policy engagement as well as public communications that serve to promote health.

Few companies have engaged in policy and advocacy like Etsy has in its effort to increase economic security for the gig economy. Etsy is working to foster economic security for its sellers and other workers in the gig economy via targeted research on the future of work. Further, the company is supporting advocacy to U.S. policymakers to streamline employment benefits and to minimize the impacts of income variability.

We need more U.S. companies to see the strategic significance of healthy business programs and leverage their core business assets to make a positive impact.

Across these four scopes, it is encouraging to see companies across industries invest in improving the health and well-being of employees, consumers and communities. Still, we need more U.S. companies to see the strategic significance of healthy business programs and leverage their core business assets to make a positive impact. Our findings show that most companies have not yet gone beyond tracking outputs and/or are solely tracking metrics on outcomes or impacts for internal purposes. As such, there are limited outcome and impact metrics from companies’ community health programs. By measuring and publicly disclosing outcome metrics, companies can increase the rigor of the program, quantify how the company is making positive change, create opportunities for collaboration by sharing information, and encourage peers to do more. 

Blog | Thursday March 28, 2019

Getting to a Price on Carbon: Collaboration, Action, and Leadership

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At GreenBiz 19 in February, BSR and Ceres convened business and civil society leaders to explore new collaborations in pursuit of public policy to support climate ambition in the U.S. The meeting was a prime example of the work of BSR’s CoLab, an incubator and accelerator of private-sector collaboration that mobilizes the collective power of business to solve the world’s biggest sustainability challenges. The conversation was framed around one big question: “How can businesses work together to support meaningful public policy to address the climate crisis?”

Our session at GreenBiz 19 left us more convinced than ever that the time is right for action guided by a thoughtful and inclusive long-term strategy and action plan—and we are committed to working with our many partners in the field to make it happen.

We had a rich discussion of the many barriers we will need to overcome—both within companies and across the broader political landscape. But for every barrier identified, we surfaced several great ideas for how to address it. Some of the key “design criteria” we took away from the meeting include the following: 

• Move from an ad hoc to a strategic approach. We need to create a framework and priorities for policy advocacy that enable companies to advocate with confidence. What do we want for the future, and what policies are necessary to get there?
• Organize around principles before policy details. Rather than overcommitting to a specific policy proposal, we need a set of “principles” to identify specific policies for which to advocate and to serve as the focal point around which to mobilize a broad and diverse coalition. Carbon pricing is important but not a silver bullet, and it will need to be accompanied by many other policies and practices—from new actuarial standards to building codes.
• Connect climate action to existing priorities. We can create a better foundation for consistent policy advocacy by linking climate change to issues that already obviously matter within our organizations (rather than trying to “add climate to the list”). Most companies have stated “values” or priority areas that drive programs and choices—and many of those elements link to aspects of the climate crisis. For example, building resilience may be a key piece in supporting local community development.
• Build a more powerful narrative. At the same time, we should balance the language of “business case” with the language of society and morality. It is always strategic to put the issues in terms and metrics people understand, to meet your audience where they are, and to encourage stakeholders to consider going further.
• Acknowledge and address the diverse needs and impacts of different sectors. Some industries will fare better than others in the transition to a zero-carbon economy, and we need to have a plan for addressing all of them.
• But above all, get started! Even as we work to build out a longer-term strategic approach to climate policy advocacy, we need to show up and engage with lawmakers, both on a local and national scale, to send a clear signal as well as to test and refine our approaches.

We see an opportunity for companies to highlight the need for a strong and meaningful price on carbon as part of the overall response to climate change.

What Comes Next?

On that last point, we are delighted to partner with more than 15 highly respected organizations to field a Lawmaker Education and Advocacy Day (LEAD) in Washington, D.C. on May 21-22, bringing together companies large and small from all over the country to drive forward three key messages:

1. Climate change is an urgent threat to the American economy.
2. Businesses are taking action to reduce emissions, but they cannot tackle the problem without strong leadership from Congress.
3. Congress must put forward a policy response equal to the severity of the challenge—and that should include a price on carbon.

Led by a core group of CEOs and organized by an unprecedented collaboration of NGOs, think tanks, trade associations, and other groups, this event will help to elevate and emphasize the private sector’s vision for lasting, predictable, and effective climate solutions. In particular, we see an opportunity for companies to highlight the need for a strong and meaningful price on carbon as part of the overall response to climate change.

If you would like to learn more, BSR and Ceres are hosting a webinar on April 3 at 2 p.m. EDT to provide more details on the LEAD event and the state of play of climate policy in Washington, D.C. and share our vision for how this event contributes to overall efforts to move climate policy forward at a national level. In addition to speakers from BSR and Ceres, the webinar will feature Joseph Majkut, director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center.

We will also use our time together in Washington to advance the conversation on a broader and longer-term strategic approach to public policy advocacy. Please join us and don’t hesitate to contact either BSR or Ceres with your thoughts and ideas in the meantime. For more information about the LEAD event, please reference this resource or connect with us via email.

Blog | Friday March 22, 2019

To Advance Gender Equality, We Need to Tackle Climate Change

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Tackling climate change requires tackling gender inequality. On International Women’s Day, an article in Business Green quoted L’Oréal’s Chief Sustainability Officer Alexandra Palt as saying, “I do not think we will see any advances in gender equality if we do not succeed in mitigating the consequences of climate change on women's lives.”  

As the effects of climate change continue to exacerbate poverty, inequality and other social issues, the solutions we put forth must include social focus. This includes empowering women to be leaders. Even if slowly, we’re moving in the right direction. The international community has begun to mainstream gender-friendly decision-making through policies and solutions: in 2015, through the development of the SDGs, both climate change and women’s empowerment were prioritized as goals, and in 2017, the UN climate change negotiations put forth the Gender Action Plan to promote gender equality throughout climate change policy.  

As these gender and climate solutions trickle down through global, national and subnational solutions, what does this mean for business?  

First, as we’ve seen in multiple climate-fueled extreme events, climate risk can affect every aspect of a business from operations and supply chains to the communities crucial in providing raw materials or labor. Following severe flooding in Thailand in 2011, reported insured losses were estimated as high as US$20 billion, and more than 14,500 companies reliant on Thai suppliers suffered business disruptions.  
 

Second, the opportunity for empowering women to lead on climate solutions can unlock multiple business benefits, including driving productivity and innovation, especially within sectors with large women workforces; protecting raw materials; increasing financial stability and returns; and strengthening the resilience of local communities because women are well connected in their communities. The broader business benefits of investing in women are already clear: BSR’s HERproject, for instance, found that following the implementation of workplace programs promoting women’s health in 37 factories across six countries, turnover of the workforce decreased by 4.5 percent. When women are empowered not just in the workplace but as changemakers and leaders for their communities, the benefits multiply and the return on investment grows. And companies are already seizing this opportunity: Through the Women4Climate initiative with C40, L’Oreal aims to provide climate change leadership opportunities for women in their own company and influence others to do the same.  

Business has a role to play here not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes pure business sense.

Although acting at the intersection of climate change and social issues, including women’s empowerment, are new topics for business, over the last few years we’ve seen companies step up to tackle the challenge, recognizing how it’s a win-win-win for business, society, and women.  

Mondelez International, recognizing that increasing resilience of farmers and communities is necessary to maintain sourcing of one of their crucial commodities, has developed The Cocoa Life Program. The program increases women’s access to farm inputs and land ownership, supports young women by ensuring participation in youth-oriented programming, and helps women improve their livelihoods through access to finance, entrepreneurial skills, and more. 

Business has a role to play here not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes pure business sense. By addressing these barriers through the provision of basic human rights, access to education, finance and decision-making, and the removal of discriminatory laws, it enhances the resilience of women so that they can be better positioned and able to lead.  

More specifically, companies can:  

• ACT to put women at the center of all internal climate change approaches and solutions. In particular, they can provide women in their operations 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 change solutions.  
• INFLUENCE underlying inequalities such as the lack of decision-making power or access to financial resources that exacerbate the disproportionate negative impacts for women in the context of a changing climate. 

While undoubtedly women are disproportionately affected by climate change due to the various social, economic, political, cultural and economic barriers they face, women are far from the vulnerable victims as often depicted. Given the opportunity, women can be great leaders that will help to catapult society forward while tackling the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced.  

While there are few examples of corporate solutions that aim to put women at the center of their climate change solutions, many are beginning to see the opportunity of expanding their women’s empowerment and climate change programs to intersect. The business case for opportunity is clear to put women at the center of climate solutions.  
 

To learn more about business can act at the intersection of climate change and women’s empowerment, read BSR’s report, Climate and Women: The Business Case for Action. As an official partner of the Women Deliver Conference, which will take place from June 3-6 in Vancouver, Canada, BSR will also co-host three sessions on women and climate, exploring how to finance a “just” transition to a low-carbon economy and why empowering women and girls is key to addressing climate change. For more information, please contact us.  

Blog | Friday March 15, 2019

Three Ways for Companies to Promote Women’s Leadership across the Supply Chain

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More than 90 guests joined BSR's HERproject, The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., Nordstrom, UGG, and Williams-Sonoma, Inc. for a special event on women’s leadership on the eve of International Women’s Day last Thursday, March 7, 2019. In two engaging panels, leaders from business, politics, development, and media explored the challenges and opportunities for empowering women to progress as leaders.  

For companies, three clear opportunities emerged.  

Companies Can Act to Demonstrate They Value Women’s Leadership 

All brand speakers emphasized the importance of walking the talk at the corporate level. From Pottery Barn, whose CEO is a woman and whose overseas leadership is 67 percent women, to The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., which this year enacted a 20-week parental leave policy for men and women in the United States, panelists emphasized the need for companies to live their values and demonstrate a belief in women as leaders.  

This also extends to how leaders promote and nurture women within their organizations. Andrea O’Donnell, President, Fashion Lifestyle, Deckers Brands (UGG), pointed out that “our responsibility is to allow women to find their voice and their confidence, and be active mentors and cheerleaders for them”—a sentiment shared by Nancy Mahon, Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability at The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., who highlighted the need for women to “throw the ladder back down.”  
 

Systems Need to Be Changed to Enable Women to Succeed 

While individual leaders and companies have significant roles to play, panelists also highlighted the many barriers that might stand in the way of women becoming leaders—or prevent them from fulfilling their potential once in leadership positions. Citing her own experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, Penny Abeywardena, Commissioner for International Affairs at the New York City Mayor’s Office, commented on the inadequacy of existing structures: “Women make up more than half of the American workforce, but the policies that dictate our experience in the workforce are from 50 years ago.”  

For Maria May, Program Officer at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, these challenges affect how women progress into leadership: “The balancing that women have to do, and how silently they do it a lot of the time, leads women to evaluate opportunities differently and require different kinds of support.” And Jenny Hollander, Deputy Editor at marieclaire.com, highlighted the complacency that may develop as women achieve leadership roles: “People assume that the problem goes away when you put women and minorities into positions where they should be. I think you also need to make sure you are giving them the tools to succeed, because otherwise you are dooming them to fail.”  

For companies, it is therefore critical to maintain a focus on the specific challenges that women may face once in leadership positions, such as time poverty, lack of voice, and social norms that hinder career progress.  

Companies Can Influence Peers and Partners for Greater Impact 

Beyond the corporate office and across the supply chain, barriers to women’s leadership are greater still. Latha Ramakrishnan, an expert on women’s empowerment programs in India, highlighted the situation of many low-income women workers in India: “A woman faces limited access to the outside world and to education, and she has a limited voice. A girl has always to be under the shadow of a male person: her parents, then her husband, then her son.” This discrimination has knock-on effects, with girls and women less likely to acquire critical skills, more likely to accept low positions in business, and less likely to believe in their own abilities.  

Panelists, however, felt that change was possible through partnerships. Abeywardena highlighted how “the private sector has a beautiful opportunity to partner with governments to help develop and shape policies” and asked: “What does it look like if we work as a collective to move it for the entire community?” Mandy Seidel, Vice President, Global Sourcing at Pottery Barn, explained that through partnerships with suppliers and local experts within HERproject, Pottery Barn has created a happier and more stable workforce: “One of our largest manufacturers has run HERproject. They wrote to me and said that because of the investment we have made and that they have made in the workforce, they saw 100 percent worker retention rate after Chinese New Year, versus 80 percent in previous years.”  

Despite the ongoing challenges, panelists were optimistic about the future of leadership for and by women. Through individual and collective action, companies have the chance not just to promote women as leaders but to become leaders on women’s empowerment—and there has never been a better time to do so. As Hollander put it, “there is huge opportunity in this space where everything is changing so dramatically.” 

If you would like to find out more about how your company can empower women across your supply chain, please contact our team of experts.  
 

Blog | Thursday March 14, 2019

Access to Modern Family Planning Products: Time to Address Social Stigma

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In Kenya, HERproject has been working with global brands to increase use of family planning. Our program employs supply-side strategy, which involves facilitating healthcare linkages from the workplace to external service providers to improve healthcare access for low-income women and men, as well as demand-side strategy, which involves reducing the barriers to access and participation. Our experiences support the widespread view that addressing both demand-side and supply-side barriers concurrently is critical to improving access to modern family planning products for women workers in global supply chains.

According to the most recent Step-Up Kenya report released by the Population Council, UK Aid, and the African Population Health and Resource Center (APHRC), over 40 percent of pregnancies in Kenya are unintended—either mistimed or unwanted. The average Kenyan woman has a fertility rate of 4.6 children; meanwhile, the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics estimates that if women were to achieve their ideal family size, the rate would drop to 3.4 children per woman. Unplanned pregnancies stem largely from an unmet need for contraceptives: one in four married women in Kenya want to stop or delay childbearing but are not using a family planning product. And control over sexual and reproductive health and rights is a prerequisite for women to reach their full potential.

Access to healthcare is about more than geographic availability: it's about ensuring that necessary health products and services are available, accessible, affordable, and acceptable to people.

Family planning initiatives that focus on ensuring access to modern family planning, reducing the distance required to access these products, and educating women and girls on the benefits of family planning can have (and have had) positive impacts. However, addressing social norms that both women and men hold, as well as enhancing men’s awareness and support for their partner’s health, are essential to improving access and use of family planning products.

Access to healthcare is about more than geographic availability: it’s about ensuring that necessary health products and services are available, accessible, affordable, and acceptable to people. In the context of family planning, this means that modern family planning products such as male or female condoms, intra-uterine devices (IUD), or injectables should be in stock, within geographic reach, at a price that people can afford, and socially and culturally acceptable.  

In four agricultural workplaces in Kenya, HERproject asked low-income women workers about their access to modern family planning products. On the supply side of the equation, of the women workers surveyed:

• 97 percent of women reported that family planning products and services were available, with 82 percent reporting that modern family planning products were within walking distance.
• 96 percent of women reported that family planning products were affordable.
• 76 percent of women reported using family planning products.

Yet of those not using modern family planning products, nearly 20 percent said that they would want to use it. So what is holding them back?

Social norms and attitudes that reinforce inequality can act as a barrier to women accessing family planning products. 

We found that the “acceptability” dimension of access is key to understanding women workers’ demand for family planning products. Our data suggest that family planning remains a taboo topic for many Kenyan women. Take the women who are not currently using family planning products. As noted above, 20 percent explicitly said they would want to use it, and 10 percent said they would not want to. Yet nearly 70 percent declined to answer the question, which may well indicate pressure and fear surrounding women’s use of family planning products.

In addition, HERproject seeks to understand the extent to which women have decision-making power and control over use of health products and services. Lack of this decision-making power is likely a barrier for women to use family planning products, even when they wish to delay childbearing.  

In the same four workplaces, we presented workers and managers with the statement: “I think family planning decisions should be made by the man.” Twenty-two percent of women and 19 percent of men—around one in five people surveyed—agreed with this statement.

Together, these data suggest that social norms and attitudes that reinforce inequality can act as a barrier to women accessing family planning products.

HERproject works to improve access and use of modern family planning by addressing stigmas that women and men hold about family planning products during workplace training. We empower women workers to address family planning questions with their partners. We also include male workers in awareness-raising sessions to reinforce the role men can play in promoting the health of their partners and the benefits of this approach for the whole family.

This is an important area that demands comprehensive planning and local expertise to address sensitive topics. We believe that applying a gender lens to access to healthcare and family planning products requires more attention from practitioners, healthcare providers, and employers alike. We invite companies with supply chains in Kenya, as well as healthcare companies, to contact our team to learn more.  

Blog | Thursday March 7, 2019

Three Changes for Women and Business Coming in 2019

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We celebrate International Women’s Day this year, as ever, with the launch of a wealth of new initiatives and commitments from companies, governments, and civil society organizations. And yet, the pace of change is still too slow: The most recent World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap report found that it will take another 200 years to achieve parity in the workforce. This serves as a stark reminder to all of us to continue to push ourselves to do more.

At BSR, this past year was focused on deepening and expanding our work, including efforts in new industries, the development of influential guidance on gender and supply chain management, and the launch of a refreshed HERproject strategy. As we look ahead, we are closely tracking three events in 2019 that have the potential to alter how business influences women’s empowerment.

Understanding What the Future of Work Means for Women

The debates rage on as to what the impact of automation and new technologies, dubbed the “Future of Work,” will have on entire industries, overall employment, and current social policies. Amidst this, BSR will partner with Women Deliver to explore these challenges through a gender lens. At the Women Deliver Global Conference, the world’s largest global conference on the health, rights, and well-being of girls, BSR will host a private sector pre-conference, How Business Can Build a Future of Work That Works for Women. The event will bring together companies and experts to explore whether the “Future of Work” will erase gains in employment and work quality women have made and/or potentially contribute toward improvements in women’s workforce participation based on new skills and increased flexibility that can benefit women workers.

The Women Deliver Global Conference, which convenes only once every three years, will gather nearly 7,000 participants in Vancouver June 3-6, providing an ideal opportunity to connect global businesses committed to gender equality with grassroots women leaders and organizations from over 177 different countries. In addition to the private sector pre-conference, the BSR team will be on the ground highlighting HERproject’s work on the advancement of female workers in global supply chains, Business Action for Women’s work in providing a platform for collaboration and knowledge-sharing, and the need to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on women.

Applying a Gender Lens to Human Rights

There is a growing realization that women often experience business-related human rights abuses in a distinct and disproportionate way in various situations such as discrimination in hiring and pay, challenges with labor rights due to the nature of women’s roles in global supply chains, and increased instances of harassment and violence. In response to this, a new set of recommendations and findings related to these and other challenges will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council this June.

BSR’s Human Rights and Women’s Empowerment teams are partnering to create a series of tools and resources to assist companies in better integrating gender into their human rights due diligence.

The project is being led by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and seeks to effectively apply a “gender lens” to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The work emerged following the recognition that the business and human rights field has not fully captured the differentiated impacts of “business-related human rights abuses on women” and the additional challenges women face when trying to access effective remedies. The goal is to provide guidance to both governments and businesses on “how to adopt a gender lens in implementing the UNGPs,” including by making the case for the importance of doing so, developing guidance, and bringing together experts to collaborate on solutions. BSR’s Human Rights and Women’s Empowerment teams are partnering to create a series of tools and resources to assist companies in better integrating gender into their human rights due diligence.

Eliminating Gender-Based Violence

As part of their due diligence, companies will need to examine their impacts and policies on workplace harassment and violence more closely. The public momentum behind #MeToo will be brought directly to companies as they will be required to consider their support and response to not only the new gender lens of the UNGP’s recommendations, but a new binding International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on violence and harassment at work as well. Given the global operating context in which 59 countries still do not have laws protecting against sexual harassment at work, a new ILO Convention can provide the necessary internationally-accepted standard to prevent and respond to harassment and violence at work. BSR will be exploring the forthcoming convention, opportunities for companies to support it, and more in a webinar on April 17.

Accelerating the pace of change in workplace gender equality efforts will require the types of multi-stakeholder efforts represented in each of the initiatives listed above. Civil society organizations help to identify systemic realities facing women, international standards help to define what good looks like, and business can implement and scale solutions to reach wide numbers of women. This year, BSR will be paying close attention to the three issues listed above as we continue to pursue a future in which women achieve equity and empowerment in all settings, including the workplace.

If you’d like to take part in empowering women in the workplace with BSR, please contact us to learn more.