Global supply chains in the pandemic.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Bonadio B
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8633421 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Global supply chains play a critical role in many of the most pressing environmental stresses and social struggles identified by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Responding to calls from the global community, companies are adopting a variety of voluntary practices to improve the environmental and/or social management of their suppliers' activities. We develop a global survey of 449 publicly listed companies in the food, textile, and wood-products sectors with annual reports in English to provide insight into how the private sector contributes to advancing the SDGs via such sustainable-sourcing practices. We find that while 52% of companies use at least one sustainable-sourcing practice, these practices are limited in scope; 71% relates to only one or a few input materials and 60.5% apply to only first-tier suppliers. We also find that sustainable-sourcing practices typically address a small subset of the sustainability challenges laid out by the SDGs, primarily focusing on labor rights and compliance with national laws. Consistent with existing hypotheses, companies that face consumer and civil society pressure are associated with a significantly higher probability of adopting sustainable-sourcing practices. Our findings highlight the opportunities and limitations of corporate sustainable-sourcing practices in addressing the myriad sustainability challenges facing our world today.
| S-EPMC5834693 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We quantify the criticality of the world's 1300 most important ports for global supply chains by predicting the allocation of trade flows on the global maritime transport network, which we link to a global supply-chain database to evaluate the importance of ports for the economy. We find that 50% of global trade in value terms is maritime, with low-income countries and small islands being 1.5 and 2.0 times more reliant on their ports compared to the global average. The five largest ports globally handle goods that embody >1.4% of global output, while 40 ports add >10% of domestic output of the economies they serve, predominantly small islands. We identify critical cross-border infrastructure dependencies for some landlocked and island countries that rely on specific ports outside their jurisdiction. Our results pave the way for developing new strategies to enhance the resilience and sustainability of port infrastructure and maritime trade.
| S-EPMC9327979 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Ensuring a more equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide is an effective strategy to control global pandemics and support economic recovery. We analyze the socioeconomic effects - defined as health gains, lockdown-easing effect, and supply-chain rebuilding benefit - of a set of idealized COVID-19 vaccine distribution scenarios. We find that an equitable vaccine distribution across the world would increase global economic benefits by 11.7% ($950 billion per year), compared to a scenario focusing on vaccinating the entire population within vaccine-producing countries first and then distributing vaccines to non-vaccine-producing countries. With limited doses among low-income countries, prioritizing the elderly who are at high risk of dying, together with the key front-line workforce who are at high risk of exposure is projected to be economically beneficial (e.g., 0.9%~3.4% annual GDP in India). Our results reveal how equitable distributions would cascade more protection of vaccines to people and ways to improve vaccine equity and accessibility globally through international collaboration.
| S-EPMC10030081 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This chapter examines the integration of GS1 standards with the functional components of blockchain technology as an approach to realize a coherent standardized framework of industry-based tools for successful food supply chains (FSCs) transformation. The globalization of food systems has engendered significant changes to the operation and structure of FSCs. Alongside increasing consumer demands for safe and sustainable food products, FSCs are challenged with issues related to information transparency and consumer trust. Uncertainty in matters of transparency and trust arises from the growing information asymmetry between food producers and food consumers, in particular, how and where food is cultivated, harvested, processed, and under what conditions. FSCs are tasked with guaranteeing the highest standards in food quality and food safety—ensuring the use of safe and authentic ingredients, limiting product perishability, and mitigating the risk of opportunism, such as quality cheating or falsification of information. A sustainable, food-secure world will require multidirectional sharing of information and enhanced information symmetry between food producers and food consumers. The need for information symmetry will drive transformational changes in FSCs methods of practice and will require a coherent standardized framework of best practice recommendations to manage logistic units in the food chain. A standardized framework will enhance food traceability, drive FSC efficiencies, enable data interoperability, improve data governance practices, and set supply chain identification standards for products and assets (what), exchange parties (who), locations (where), business processes (why), and sequence (when).
| S-EPMC7561516 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This paper tries to examine how the COVID-19 shock affects different countries through their regional integration and their exposure to Global Value Chains (GVCs). Using input-output tables from the EORA dataset, our contribution is threefold. First, we conceptually revise the approache to analyse input-output relationships and underline the difference between the bilateral flow of value added and trade and distinguish between the producers and consumers of value-added. Second, we distinguish between the supply and demand channels through which these countries can be affected by the disruptions in GVCs. Third, we apply this empirical exercise on an understudied region, namely the Mediterranean region that is characterised by its involvement in several trade agreements that might boost their integration into GVCs. Our main findings show that, first, most of the countries have relatively larger backward GVC linkages than forward ones. Second, in the Northern shore of the Mediterranean, Italy and France are net suppliers of value added since they produce more value-added absorbed abroad than the foreign value-added they consume. Third, our results highlight also the limited integration between Southern shore partners, whose integration is almost completely driven by linkages with Southern European developed countries.
| S-EPMC8242751 | biostudies-literature
Project description:PurposeThis paper explores the issue of fairness in global supply chains. Taking the Western European clothing supply chain as a case study, we demonstrate how applying a normative indicator in Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) can contribute academic and practical insights into debates on fairness. To do so, we develop a new indicator that addresses some of the limitations of the living wage for SLCA.MethodsWe extend the standard form of living wage available for developing countries to include income tax and social security contributions. We call this extension 'living labour compensation'. Using publically available data, we estimate net living wages, gross living wages, and living labour compensation rates for Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) in 2005. We then integrate living labour compensation rates into an input-output framework, which we use to compare living labour compensation and actual labour compensation in the BRIC countries in the Western European clothing supply chain in 2005.Results and discussionWe find that in 2005, actual labour compensation in the Western European clothing supply chain was around half of the living labour compensation level, with the greatest difference being in the Agricultural sector. Therefore, we argue that BRIC pay in the Western European clothing supply chain was unfair. Furthermore, our living labour compensation estimates for BRIC in 2005 are ~ 35% higher than standard living wage estimates. Indeed, adding income taxes and employee social security contributions alone increases the living wage by ~ 10%. Consequently, we argue there is a risk that investigations based on living wages are not using a representative measure of fairness from the employee's perspective and are substantially underestimating the cost of living wages from an employer's perspective. Finally, we discuss implications for retailers and living wage advocacy groups.ConclusionsLiving labour compensation extends the living wage, maintaining its strengths and addressing key weaknesses. It can be estimated for multiple countries from publically available data and can be applied in an input-output framework. Therefore, it is able to provide a normative assessment of fairness in complex global supply chains. Applying it to the Western European clothing supply chain, we were able to show that pay for workers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China is unfair, and draw substantive conclusions for practice.
| S-EPMC6428394 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC7281713 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The seafood supply chain is often long and fragmented, and slavery is a tenacious problem. The vast majority of workers are engaged in the early stages of production and often employed through subcontracts or brokers. We hypothesized that food companies could identify risks and implement improvements by adding a labor safety dimension to their tracking and traceability systems. We designed a five-point framework-the Labor Safe Screen-and tested it for 118 products. The framework combines the use of technology in existing platforms with the collection of industry data and authoritative human rights data. Eighteen food companies used three or more components of the framework and systematically documented their supply chains, engaged suppliers, and cross-checked results. The companies were able to identify areas where working conditions met minimum principles, were unknown, or were inadequate. Three companies also incorporated direct worker feedback to focus resources and improve working conditions. We conclude that food companies can effectively and efficiently assess and reduce risks of forced labor in seafood supply chains-not to claim "no slavery" but to greatly improve their awareness of the labor conditions in the making of the products they trade and to identify feasible targets for further diligence and remedies.
| S-EPMC6059758 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Kidney failure is a worldwide scourge, made more lethal by the shortage of transplants. We propose a way to organize kidney exchange chains internationally between middle-income countries with financial barriers to transplantation and high-income countries with many hard to match patients and patient-donor pairs facing lengthy dialysis. The proposal involves chains of exchange that begin in the middle-income country and end in the high-income country. We also propose a way of financing such chains using savings to US health care payers.
| S-EPMC8433556 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The on-going COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdowns cast significant impacts on global economy in the short run. Their impact on stability of global electric vehicles (EVs) supply chain and thus our climate ambition in the long run, however, remains hitherto largely unexplored. We aim to address this gap based on an integrated model framework, including assessing supply risks of 17 selected core commodities throughout the EV supply chain and further applying the supply constraints to project future EV sales until 2030. Our model results under three pandemic development scenarios indicate that if the pandemic is effectively contained before 2024, the global EV industry will recover without fundamentally scathed and thus can maintain the same growth trend as in the no-pandemic scenario by 2030. We suggest that fiscal stimulus in the postpandemic era should be directed more toward upgrading the quality of battery products, rather than expanding the production capacity.
| S-EPMC8837477 | biostudies-literature