COP Shows Voluntary Corporate Goals Vital to Addressing Climate

• Author: Sally R.K. Fisk
• Position: Vice president & assistant general counsel of sustainability and environmental law at Pfizer Inc.
• Pages: 19-19

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 | 19

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, January/February 2022.

Copyright © 2022, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

The Business of Environment

While tremendous progress

was made at COP26,

the fact is that govern-

ments have not established the com-

mitments needed to meet the goals

of the 2015 Paris Agreement. is

means that voluntary corporate com-

mitments remain a signicant part of

the global response to climate change

and are necessary to encourage the

innovation needed to reach net-zero

by 2050.

In my last column, I explored the

topic of public-private partnerships as

a mechanism to leverage the positive

impact of private sustainability ini-

tiatives. ese can enable synergistic

eects and support

real, lasting change.

With COP26 now

behind us, the need

is even clearer for

private governance

initiatives and pub-

lic-private partner-

ship to bridge the gap between Paris’s

reliance on Nationally Determined

Contributions and the overall goals

of the agreement.

Although not a perfect example

because of its legislative origins, a

unique approach to public-private

engagement on climate can be found

at the United Kingdom’s National

Health Service. Health care accounts

for 4-5 percent of the UK’s carbon

footprint, and the NHS has recog-

nized the connection between in-

creased carbon emissions and adverse

human health consequences. us,

the service has made it a priority

to become net-zero. As part of this

strategy, NHS is leveraging its pro-

curement spending to drive net-zero

ambition and action across the UK

health care supply chain.

e needed authority comes from

two pieces of UK legislation: the Cli-

mate Change Act and the Social Value

Act. e laws enable all government

departments to explicitly evaluate

“social impact” and “carbon manage-

ment” in the tendering process.

After extensive consultation with

the private sector, the NHS recent-

ly published a timeline from 2023

through 2028 outlining its expecta-

tions for suppliers to establish carbon

reduction plans for direct and indi-

rect emissions; to establish the car-

bon footprint of their products; and

to publish progress reports.

NHS says it will establish the re-

quirements for carbon footprinting,

benchmarking, and reporting through

a collaborative process among regula-

tors and suppliers to develop the scope

and methodology, align with interna-

tional best practices,

and assure the qual-

ity and accuracy of

supplier responses.

is aspect of the ap-

proach is an example

of how a public-pri-

vate partnership can

be employed to better assure the suc-

cess of an initiative.

Ultimately, by 2030, the NHS

aims to only qualify suppliers for

contracts if they can demonstrate

their progress through published re-

ports and continued carbon report-

ing through the supplier framework.

e NHS approach raises several

issues and highlights opportunities

for rms, especially if it is more wide-

ly adopted by government procure-

ment agencies across the spectrum of

goods and services. And the success

of the approach may hinge on the

level of public-private partnership

in developing the necessary frame-

works.

First, there is a real risk of losing

market share if a company is unable

to meet the new requirements. e

other side of this risk is the great op-

portunity to secure and grow market

share for those rms that can meet

the regulator’s carbon reduction and

reporting requirements. For compa-

nies that have been hesitant to estab-

lish robust targets, this might be the

incentive they need.

Second, assuring the integrity of

data collection and reporting will

be critical to providing accurate in-

formation to the agency in ques-

tion, especially as it relates to carbon

footprinting — the concern is that

“greenwashing” may be increased.

ird, and perhaps most impor-

tant for both practitioners and for

the ability of the NHS approach to

stand up as a model of public-private

partnership, is the development of

approaches to footprinting and re-

porting. Companies would be wise to

consult NHS in creating their frame-

works and to use already-established

private governance frameworks that

are proven eective.

However, if a truly bespoke sys-

tem is developed by the UK health

service, and if other government pro-

curement agencies around the world

follow suit in developing their own

proprietary systems, it could create a

patchwork of requirements that will

raise a challenge for companies that

sell the same product in multiple ju-

risdictions and to multiple agencies

around the world.

e move by the NHS is bold and

applies the power of procurement

spending to drive behavior across a

segment of the UK’s national supply

chain. If successful, other agencies in

the UK and abroad might consider

adopting similar expectations for the

companies that supply them.

COP Shows Voluntary Corporate

Goals Vital to Addressing Climate

The UK’s National

Health Service shows

how to do public-

private partnerships

Sally R.K. Fisk i s vice president

& assistan t general counsel of sus tain-

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