I HAVE JUST COME BACK FROM CANADA, where I was staying at an eco lodge on the shore of Hudson Bay. I spent my time trekking across the tundra, on the trail of polar bears who gather at the seashore in the autumn, waiting for the ice to form so that they get to seal hunting grounds. But at the time of my visit, there was no ice: temperatures were 10⁰C higher than the seasonal average.
This wasn’t simply a blip. According to the Polar Bears International website: “The main threat to polar bears today is the loss of their icy habitat due to climate change. Polar bears depend on the sea ice for hunting, breeding, and in some cases to den. The summer ice loss in the Arctic is now equal to an area the size of Alaska, Texas, and the state of Washington combined.” (For those of you whose grasp of US geography is a little shaky, that’s about one-third the size of Australia.)
First-hand view
I realise not everybody believes in manmade or anthropogenic climate change, but I do, and seeing this environmental impact at first hand has made me even more interested in what we can do individually and collectively to counter the adverse affects of our lifestyles. Global leaders regularly meet to debate the problem – as at December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen – with varying results.
Arguments about funding, concerns about upsetting powerful political factions and a continuing tendency to blame developing nations rather than looking closer to home for solutions all prevent governments from developing radical plans. With a general election looming in the UK, politicians will be unwilling to propose any climate change measures that could increase public spending or add to voters’ tax bills, especially as the public at large appear to be in a state of denial about the causes of climate change.
A recent poll, reported in The Times in the UK, found that 60 per cent of the population does not accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is largely man-made. In reality, the weight of scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the link between human activity and climate change, but this message is not palatable to a recession-weary public who do not see the need to make sacrifices themselves.
Politicians need to show leadership but if we look to them to give us all the answers before we take substantive action ourselves, it may be too late. Scientists have identified nine potential tipping points beyond which the effects of climate change will be irreversible.
“Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global Climate changes is an area where procurement can show leadership and make a lasting difference. So I would like to call on all CPOs to action with some suggested areas where they can make an impact now change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic [man-made] climate change,” they report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Procurement leadership
We need to ensure we take action ourselves today. This is an area where procurement can show leadership and make a lasting difference. So I would like to call all CPOs to action with some suggested areas where they can make an impact now:
• Set a carbon “budget” for your company’s third-party activities on a whole-life costs basis, including transportation and other associated costs.
• Set improvement targets.
• Collaborate with suppliers to reduce environmental impacts.
• Train your procurement and supply chain teams on carbon management.
• Make carbon emissions a mandatory evaluation criteria on all of your procurement activities.
• Educate internal stakeholders on the carbon footprint of the goods and services they use so that they can see and understand the impact of their actions.
These steps are not only good for the environment, but are also good for organisational performance. Carbon budgeting can have a triple whammy effect of reducing emissions, reducing costs and improving brand reputation.
In my next column I will highlight some case studies where focusing on the environment has brought tangible financial benefit. If you have a carbon-busting story you would like to tell, let me know at meryl@merylbushell.com
Meryl Bushell (meryl@merylbushell.com) is a business coach and consultant, and former CPO at British Telecom
