Navigating the sustainability-resilience nexus

This report reflects the results of these efforts, and is intended to serve as guidance to help both the public and private sectors understand and address the sustainability-resilience nexus. Recognizing the opportunity to better integrate sustainability and resilience, a team of ARISE-US3 experts researched and analyzed current gaps, barriers, and opportunities associated with the sustainability resilience nexus from the local to the global scales. In doing so, the team conducted interviews with several businesses, including both members of ARISE-US and non-members.

This report offers a number of recommendations for the path forward, some of them listed below. 

• Companies should consider adopting definitions - such as those provided in this report - for sustainability, resilience, and climate adaptation in order to facilitate strategy development and integration of sustainability and resilience goals.
• Rather than viewing sustainability and resilience as separate or competing priorities, companies should aim to integrate them into a unified long-term strategy. To this end, they should establish a single point of accountability, ideally within the C-suite, for the governance of the resilience and sustainability.
• Companies should strive to embed resilience and sustainability considerations into their core business processes, including planning, design, procurement, manufacturing, marketing, and supply chain management.
• For purposes of strategic planning and investment decisions, companies should move beyond compliance with existing standards. They should actively explore the likely future trajectories of their markets and supply chains, and position themselves to continuously improve their resilience and sustainability in the face of increasing turbulence.
• Global supply chains are particularly vulnerable to sudden disruptions, driven by the rising occurrence of both natural and human-caused disasters.