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Search On 26th April, more than 80 representatives from politics, business and civil society came together to discuss challenges and opportunities for collaborative action towards sustainable global supply chains. This important, multi-sectoral event, “Follow-up Dialogue to G7-Declaration ‘Action for Fair Production’”, was jointly organised by The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
In 2015, under the German G7 presidency, the G7 ministers for labour and development cooperation adopted the declaration “Action for Fair Production”. In the declaration they call for stronger cooperation of all stakeholders to make global supply chains more sustainable. The Board of the Consumer Goods Forum had sent a letter to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015 to express the industry’s support to work together on improving human rights and labour conditions in global supply chains. The BMZ and CGF, therefore, joined forces to deepen this dialogue, help implement the G7 agenda and identify success factors for public-private collaboration.
The event aimed at promoting dialogue between the private sector and governments on how to make global supply chains more sustainable. In the discussions, participants exchanged experiences and views on capacity building approaches, collaborations in multi-stakeholder fora and the nexus of voluntary company commitments and state legislation. A key question all sessions addressed was on how to define success factors for successful collaboration and potential areas to make future cooperation more efficient.
Participants agreed that in order to implement the ambitious goals of the declaration, collaboration among different actors and stakeholders will be key. During the event, the following success factors for collaboration were identified:
- Select the most appropriate forms of collaboration depending on the problem that should be tackled;
- Build on existing efforts and tools for more efficiency and to avoid duplication;
- Gain alignment and coordination between existing initiatives at a national and international level to avoid duplication of efforts and to send a common message to the market;
- Find smart ways to combine private engagement and tools with public regulatory approaches (“smart mix”);
- Define a concrete added value for all actors involved;
- Provide clear focus, goals and key performance indicators (KPIs);
- Take time to build trust between actors;
- Clarify roles and processes and set-up concrete action plans;
- Share successes: frontrunners help to showcase success (best practises) and can act as a source of inspiration;
- Be agile, flexible and able to adapt to a changing environment;
- Measure and report on initiative’s progress and results, and make sure the collaboration is on track with its action plan.
