Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p>How traceability, measurement, and standardization might tame an unwieldy web</jats:p>

<jats:p>The Physical Internet would move goods the way its namesake moves data.</jats:p>

<jats:p>A commercial port town on the East China Sea, a bustling manufacturing city in Ireland, and a scenic city on the Mediterranean coast—what ties together these regions and their people, economies, and environments? They could be part of a product's supply chain. Because the global economy rests on the maintenance of such chains, there needs to be a shift in perspective, from considering supply chains as isolated parts to optimizing them as sustainable wholes. The good news is that academia, industry, government, and civil society organizations recognize this and are seeking ways to work together to achieve sustainability across supply chains.</jats:p>

<jats:p>In the modern economy, international value chains—production, use, and disposal of goods—have global environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to track these impacts and assess them from a systems perspective, identifying strategies for improvement without burden shifting. We review recent developments in LCA, including existing and emerging applications aimed at supporting environmentally informed decisions in policy-making, product development and procurement, and consumer choices. LCA constitutes a viable screening tool that can pinpoint environmental hotspots in complex value chains, but we also caution that completeness in scope comes at the price of simplifications and uncertainties. Future advances of LCA in enhancing regional detail and accuracy as well as broadening the assessment to economic and social aspects will make it more relevant for producers and consumers alike.</jats:p>

<jats:p>The recent 70% decline in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon suggests that it is possible to manage the advance of a vast agricultural frontier. Enforcement of laws, interventions in soy and beef supply chains, restrictions on access to credit, and expansion of protected areas appear to have contributed to this decline, as did a decline in the demand for new deforestation. The supply chain interventions that fed into this deceleration are precariously dependent on corporate risk management, and public policies have relied excessively on punitive measures. Systems for delivering positive incentives for farmers to forgo deforestation have been designed but not fully implemented. Territorial approaches to deforestation have been effective and could consolidate progress in slowing deforestation while providing a framework for addressing other important dimensions of sustainable development.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Recent advances in the science and technology of global supply chain management offer near–real-time demand-response systems for decision-makers across production networks. Technology is helping propel “fast fashion” and “lean manufacturing,” so that companies are better able to deliver products consumers want most. Yet companies know much less about the environmental and social impacts of their production networks. The failure to measure and manage these impacts can be explained in part by limitations in the science of sustainability measurement, as well as by weaknesses in systems to translate data into information that can be used by decision-makers inside corporations and government agencies. There also remain continued disincentives for firms to measure and pay the full costs of their supply chain impacts. I discuss the current state of monitoring, measuring, and analyzing information related to supply chain sustainability, as well as progress that has been made in translating this information into systems to advance more sustainable practices by corporations and consumers. Better data, decision-support tools, and incentives will be needed to move from simply managing supply chains for costs, compliance, and risk reduction to predicting and preventing unsustainable practices.</jats:p>