Global supply chains face mounting risks from climate change, geopolitics, and economic volatility. While corporate resilience planning has grown since COVID-19, climate risk is still treated separately from supply chain management, creating gaps in preparedness. This report highlights how extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts, increasingly disrupt logistics and trade, with cascading impacts across industries. It reviews existing supply chain resilience frameworks, emphasizing visibility, flexibility, contingency, and collaboration, while noting the absence of climate-specific metrics and decision-useful disclosure tools. Barriers include data challenges, limited supplier transparency, and mismatched timelines between short-term operational planning and long-term climate assessments. The report calls for integrated approaches that align climate and supply chain practices, improved KPIs for resilience, and greater collaboration among businesses, policymakers, and researchers to safeguard continuity, competitiveness, and workforce health in a warming world.

Highlights

Rising Climate Threats to Supply Chains

Global supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to climate disruptions, with floods, droughts, and extreme weather events compounding geopolitical and economic risks. Businesses must integrate climate resilience into supply chain strategies to safeguard continuity, competitiveness, and long-term financial stability.

Gaps in Existing Resilience Frameworks

Current supply chain resilience frameworks emphasize visibility, flexibility, contingency, and collaboration but often overlook climate-specific risks. Companies need decision-useful metrics and tools that connect climate science with operational supply chain planning to better anticipate and withstand disruptions.

Barriers to Integration and Transparency

Barriers to integration include limited supplier transparency, poor data quality, and mismatched planning horizons—short-term logistics versus long-term climate risks. Overcoming these challenges requires new partnerships, innovative data use, and cross-disciplinary approaches that align climate and supply chain practices.

Climate as a Threat Multiplier

Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier,” magnifying existing vulnerabilities in supply chains. Incorporating adaptation and resilience into corporate strategies is vital, especially as overshoot beyond 1.5 degrees C makes disruptions more frequent, severe, and costly for global businesses and communities.