Abstract
The development of robust mechanisms for supply chain performance measurement have been identified as an integral step needed for the transition towards sustainable supply chain systems and a greener global economy. However, measuring the environmental performance of supply chains is a challenging task, due to several factors, such as the lack of standardised methodologies and the inherent multi-criteria nature of the problem. By leveraging the capability of a Multi-Regional Input–Output framework to handle the complex and global nature of supply chains, the current work presents a robust environmental sustainable performance measurement model underpinned by industrial lifecycle thinking.As a result, some theoretical insights are provided and an empirical application of the model to the Metal Products industry of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations undertaken in an attempt to address some of the methodological and applied measurement challenges. In particular, this allowed the modelling of carbon emissions trends within, and between the BRICS nations and with the Rest-of-the-World over a 20-year period (1992–2011) as well as providing an opportunity to hypothesis on their future carbon emissions performances. Specific analyses of the Metal Product industry showed that demand represents the main driver for the increasing carbon footprint. However, the overall decline in reported carbon footprint was due to improvements in emissions intensity and efficiency gains induced by technology. The study further assesses the effects of imports and economic growth on carbon footprint and discusses the implications of the study to sustainability transition processes in the BRICS nations.
Highlights
The transition towards sustainable supply chains (Ding et al, 2016) has encouraged businesses to align their operations to practices that are judged to be environmentally sustainable (Dey et al 2011; Hassini et al 2012, Jaehn, 2016)
This implies that the total carbon emissions of any of the BRICS nations is computed as the domestic carbon emissions produced in that BRICS nation plus the emissions embodied in goods and services that are consumed in that BRICS nation imported into that country
For Brazil, it can be seen that the most dominant sector to the footprint is the Agricultural industry. This is consistent with other findings that suggest that a vast majority of Brazil's carbon emissions is attributed to deforestation (Cerri et al, 2009)
Summary
The transition towards sustainable supply chains (Ding et al, 2016) has encouraged businesses to align their operations to practices that are judged to be environmentally sustainable (Dey et al 2011; Hassini et al 2012, Jaehn, 2016). The bottom-up process approach is based on LCA principles (Majeau-Bettez et al, 2011) and is consistent with the logic of lifecycle thinking (Hu and Bidanda, 2009), the IPCC (2001) explains that in the top-down modelling approach, economic theory and techniques are applied to historical data on consumption and prices in order to model the final demand for goods and services and their resultant environmental impacts To this end, we adopt a top-down modelling approach in this study since it addresses system complexity issues (Ewing et al, 2012) and system boundary completeness limitations (Ward et al, 2016) by providing a holistic perspective (Abbasi and Nilsson, 2012) whilst addressing the aforementioned key challenges related to industrial lifecycle thinking. The model used to assess the relationships and dependences within and among the industrial supply chains of the BRICS nations and with the Rest of the World (ROW) can be represented as shown in Figure 2, where each block represents the supply from the industries in the row nation to the use by the industries in the column nation
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