Mapping, Matching and Money: How Philanthropy Can Advance People-Centered Supply Chains

​Session Partner

​What if the biggest risk to net-zero supply chains is not ambition—but underinvestment in the people and SMEs expected to deliver it?

​Climate change risk has prompted companies of all sizes to set sustainability targets. Large corporates increasingly look to their small- and medium-sized enterprise (“SME”) suppliers to help them reduce Scope 3 emissions and to achieve net zero goals. Concurrently, SMEs recognize that demonstrating best-in-class sustainability practices can help open doors to new contracts and grow their business. However, gaps in SME workers’ skills and access to the funding needed to fill those voids often preclude their ability to meet the sustainability requirements imposed on them. If left ignored, this blind spot can lead to canceled supplier contracts that disrupt global supply chains and put people out of jobs, both of which counter economic well-being. When this happens, companies, workers and consumers find themselves between a proverbial rock and a hard place, having to choose between people, planet and progress.

“Mapping, Matching and Money” – a soon-to-be launched initiative of the Ares Foundation in partnership with World Resources Institute, Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and Pagitsas Advisors that will focus on the textile and automotive sectors – seeks to solve for these challenges by uniting corporates and SMEs to future-proof workers with in-demand skills. It will examine the need to help businesses identify and address their human capital vulnerabilities in attaining sustainability targets, which both necessitates and facilitates access to capital. Doing so will help companies reduce margin pressure and invest in the people who comprise their supply chains to ward against potential disruptions, to boost bottom lines and to achieve sustainability targets.