Businesses and Sustainable Development Goal 12

This book investigates how businesses can transform their operations and global supply chains to advance Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12), emphasizing sustainable consumption and production patterns. Exploring the evolving role of companies as key development actors, this book bridges theoretical discourse with practical execution. It offers critical insights into contemporary business models and their inherent challenges, emphasizing the need for a shared regulatory and uniform reporting framework, to support companies in the redefinition of existing supply chain structures to align industry operations with global sustainability targets. Through detailed case studies in the food, electronics, and fashion sectors, the book illustrates practical applications of sustainability integration into business models. It examines how companies can measure, report, and improve their sustainability performance across the value chain and addresses the issue of greenwashing by evaluating corporate sustainability reports against existing metrics and regulations. The book concludes by advocating for unified regulatory frameworks and collaborative efforts among regulatory bodies, businesses, and civil society, highlighting the necessity of clear, mandatory and sector-specific reporting frameworks, to facilitate the transition to more regenerative and nature-positive production and consumption patterns.