For decades, sustainability practitioners have worked to help organizations improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Companies have set targets, issued reports, reduced emissions, improved labour practices, and strengthened governance.
Yet many sustainability challenges continue.
Food waste. Climate resilience. Supply chain transparency. Biodiversity loss. Sustainable procurement. Circularity.
The reason may be simpler than we think.
Many sustainability challenges are not organizational problems.
No food processor can solve food waste alone.
No grower can solve supply chain resilience alone.
No retailer can solve sustainability verification alone.
Yet we continue to approach sustainability one organization at a time, even though the challenges themselves are created by interconnected decisions made across value chains and entire industry sectors.
These challenges require coordination among many actors who influence one another but rarely work together. And that is where industry associations become integral.
Industry associations occupy a unique place in the economy. They convene competitors. They provide education and guidance. They establish norms and standards. They engage regulators and policymakers. Most importantly, they can mobilize entire sectors.
Yet industry associations remain one of the most overlooked players in the sustainability movement.
A recent pilot project commissioned by the City of Vancouver offers an example of what becomes possible when associations are engaged intentionally (see Advancing Sustainability in the Food Value Chain).
Five industry associations representing different parts of the food value chain participated in a structured sustainability assessment and peer-learning process using the Canadian Standards Association's ESG Guidance for Associations (CSA SPE #116). The associations represented growers, produce marketers, food service organizations, tourism organizations, and food manufacturers.
The objective was straightforward: strengthen the sustainability capacity of the participating associations and explore how greater collaboration across the value chain could help address shared challenges such as food waste.
The participating associations represented different levels of sustainability maturity and capacity. Assessment scores ranged from 20 per cent to 54 per cent, with four associations achieving a pre-bronze level and one achieving a silver level. Participants found the CSA SPE #116 framework valuable for identifying strengths and gaps, structuring sustainability efforts, and creating a common platform for discussion. Perhaps most importantly, the process revealed how few opportunities typically exist for associations across the food value chain to engage with one another and how much insight can be gained when they do.
Participants discovered that sustainability pressures are increasingly cascading through value chains. Retailers, banks, institutional buyers, regulators, and customers are creating new expectations that move throughout the system, ultimately affecting organizations at every stage of production and delivery.
At the same time, participants identified a surprising lack of mechanisms that connect different parts of the food system.
Associations often understand the concerns of their own members but have limited visibility into the priorities, expectations, and challenges of organizations upstream and downstream in the value chain.
When the associations came together, they gained a broader perspective on the system as a whole.
They identified shared concerns around climate risk, supply chain resilience, sustainability standards, verification of ESG claims, and food waste. They recognized that many of these issues cannot be effectively addressed by individual organizations acting independently—that a common framework is needed.
CSA SPE #116 provides one such framework. Developed specifically for industry and professional associations, it offers a practical roadmap for assessing sustainability maturity, identifying priorities, strengthening ESG practices, and supporting members on their sustainability journey. Equally important, it creates a common language that can help associations learn from one another and collaborate across sectors and value chains.
Industry associations can help build sustainability literacy across sectors. They can help establish common standards and benchmarks. They can help identify sector-level risks and opportunities. And they can create the conditions for collaboration across value chains.
Governments also have a role to play.
The City of Vancouver's pilot demonstrated how public sector convening can bring together those who might not otherwise collaborate. By engaging industry associations as implementation partners rather than simply as stakeholders, governments can amplify the reach and impact of sustainability initiatives.
The implications extend far beyond food.
Every sector faces challenges that no single organization can solve alone. Manufacturing, construction, transportation, tourism, health care, technology, and finance all operate through interconnected systems where sustainability outcomes depend on collective action.
If sustainability challenges are systemic, then our solutions must become systemic as well.
If we want to accelerate sustainability, we need scalable mechanisms that reach beyond individual organizations.
The sustainability movement has spent decades helping organizations improve their performance. The next frontier is helping sectors improve theirs.
Industry associations have the reach, credibility, and convening power to accelerate sustainability across entire value chains. What is often missing are the frameworks, resources, and partnerships to activate them at scale.
If we are serious about tackling complex challenges such as food waste, climate resilience, circularity, biodiversity loss, and supply chain security, we need to move beyond organization-by-organization solutions and begin mobilizing sectors.
Every industry association should have a sustainability strategy. Every sector should understand its ESG risks and opportunities. And every value chain should have mechanisms for collaboration.
The question is not whether industry associations have a role to play in sustainability. The question is that, because we cannot achieve sustainability at scale without them, how do we mobilize industry sectors to play their part?
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Coro Strandberg is President of Strandberg Consulting, which provides strategy advice to companies and industry associations that seek to integrate social and environmental considerations into their purpose, governance, operations and supply chains to create business value and societal benefit.
Published Jun 17, 2026 5pm EDT / 2pm PDT / 10pm BST / 11pm CEST