“The procurement community is an excellent and important influencer of emission reduction”

Sourcing Champions‘ Founder & Managing Director Robert Waalder participated as a panel speaker at the CLIFF: Climate Change and Fossil Fuels Conference last week.

The event is led by Prof. dr. Joyeeta Gupta, the Principal Investigator of CLIFF and a familiar voice at our Procurement Climate Council, whose research highlights the critical role of climate justice in shaping global climate responses.

Robert complemented this with a business-oriented procurement perspective, as he truly believes procurement have significant impact in reducing greenhouse gas emission.

“Around 70% of a company’s emissions come from its supply chain.” he quoted. “We must integrate climate-aligned practices into the sourcing and tender process to ensure procurement directly contributes to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.”

He acknowledges the strong progress procurement has made in cost and compliance, yet he believes our role must evolve. Instead of only adjusting to meet compliance, we should become true drivers of transformative change.

“I think as a procurement consultancy we can do a lot.” he noted, emphasizing that the way forward is to provide practical training and equip companies with the skills they need, not only to act, but to stay motivated in driving change.

It’s inspiring to see business voices represented in academic conversations, and we’re proud to contribute to this shared effort. We look forward to more opportunities to collaborate, exchange perspectives, and help close the gap between climate research and practical action in procurement.