Transparency Will Make Global Trade and Supply Chains More Resilient, Socially Responsible.

We need to know more about who is involved and what is going on at all points in the supply chain process. Digitalization is key to helping us achieve this level of transparency.

There is already a distinct line that divides time before the COVID-19 pandemic and two years after it started. It is the line where COVID exposed our fragility, not only as a species vulnerable to disease but as a global culture reliant on a complex web of interactions.

We want to lessen that fragility going forward, both to better protect ourselves against new viruses and to strengthen our global infrastructure, making it is less vulnerable to any new crisis that comes along.

The pandemic highlighted that global trade and supply chains are the place to start shoring up our resilience. Before COVID-19, few consumers gave much thought to the global manufacturing and delivery system that brought them the goods on store shelves, at gas pumps, or stocked in hospitals and pharmacies.

Shortages of key medical goods early in the pandemic, followed by supply chain issues that have persisted across a range of items ever since, have left everyone hyper-aware of the importance of that key global system. Multiple problems facing people in their daily lives are being explained by “supply chain issues.”

Those responsible for the various industries that rely on or operate within global supply chains were already aware of the fragility of the system before the pandemic. Efforts to offset those deficiencies had been ongoing before the first case was recognized.

The spotlight that the pandemic shone on supply chains has added to the urgency of those efforts. It has given us the opportunity to raise awareness of the potential for improvements that could advance other vital issues as well. Now that we are on the other side of that line in time, the pandemic can be a marker for the moment we started to get serious about the list of challenges we need to face.

Many would rank climate change at the top of that list. A 2016 study by McKinsey estimated that more than 80% of greenhouse-gas emissions and more than 90% of the impact of the operations of consumer goods companies on air, land, water, biodiversity, and geological resources came from their supply chains.

It is clear that supply chains need to be the focus for any serious climate change alleviation. But other globally important issues need to be addressed through supply chains too. Better run and more transparent supply chains will help guarantee that unfair labor practices are weeded out of the global trading system, that gender equity exists in the workplace, and that poverty reduction is a side effect of growth.

All of this is possible and attainable. Improving supply chains is the first step in getting it done and the first step in that improvement is better knowledge about how they work.