The global supply chains of multinational companies such as BP, Coca-Cola and Walmart are responsible for nearly a fifth of climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new study. But the businesses outsource many of these emissions to poorer parts of the world by investing in production in developing countries, said researchers from University College London and China's Tianjin University. Dabo Guan, the study's co-author, called the work the "first quantitative evidence" on the investment flows and carbon footprints of multinational enterprises (MNEs). “The results were quite shocking. For many large companies, emissions from their supply chains … (are) larger than the emissions of many countries.” For example, emissions from the supply chain producing Coca-Cola products is almost equivalent to what China emits in its food sector to feed 1.3 billion people, he said. The study, which looked at data from 2005 to 2016, was published in the journal Nature Climate Change and said multinational companies’ foreign investments accounted for 18.7 per cent of total global carbon emissions in 2016.

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