As consumer pressure, retail strategies and foreign policy increasingly evolve to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change, South African fruit and wine producers and exporters face potential business risk.
The CCC initiative was conceptualised by the South African fruit and wine industry in 2008, to enable South African growers and service providers to measure their carbon footprint, identify 'carbon hotspots', develop creative solutions to reduce CO2 emissions, and manage the perceptions of buyers and policy makers in order to secure the long-term viability of the industry.
The CCC carbon footprinting tool has been independently audited by the Carbon Trust, and has been endorsed as a reliable and credible resource for measuring the carbon footprint of South African wine and fruit-related products.
A steering committee provides strategic guidance to the project, and includes representatives from the fruit and wine industry, the Western Cape Department of Agriculture (WC DoA), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-SA), in addition to a number of independent climate and energy experts.
The project has been managed by Blue North Sustainability since 2011, on behalf of the steering committee.
To date, the project's historical funding bodies include the WC DoA; the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (for the first three years); and various fruit and wine industry bodies.