Climate chains: a collaborative platform for understanding supply chain climate risk exposure (2699)
Food supply often follows a complex pathway from creation to consumption, navigating a system of growers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and consumers. The effective operation of this system is crucial for continued food security. However, food supply chains face increasing disruption from the impacts of climate change, such as reduced yields, disruptions to logistics and processing, increased health and safety risks for workers, and damage to infrastructure. All stages of the chain are at risk, with the potential for flow on effects between different stages. Effective adaptation to climate change will, therefore, require a whole-of-system approach that considers the climate risk exposure for all stages of the chain. Few tools are available that enable businesses to take this approach. Therefore, CSIRO has developed an online collaborative platform to assist Australian businesses evaluate the climate risk exposure of all stages across the food supply chain. Users of the Climate Chains tool are able to map their supply chain and provide information on the timing and severity of climate change and weather related impacts across each stage. The tool then produces a risk exposure summary based on this information to enable the visualisation of the impacts of climate change and weather variability for specific food products. The intent is that by using the collaborative tool to document climate risk exposure, businesses will be better able to plan and implement climate change adaptation strategies.