Golden Triangle Partnership among Government，Business & Civil Society to Enhance Emergency Response and Disaster Relief Capabilities
By Jiantao Zhang，Vice President of the Coca-Cola Company，Greater China，Korea and Mongolia
COVID-19 has been a major test to China’s emergency response and disaster relief capabilities. Thanks to the effective measures adopted by the government，the achievements have been very encouraging. The WHO（World Health Organization）-China Joint Mission estimates that the truly all-of government and all-of-society approach that has been taken in China has averted or at least delayed hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 cases in the country. By extension，the reduction that has been achieved in the COVID-19 infection in China has also played a significant role in protecting the global community and creating a stronger first line of defense against international spread.[1]
Reflecting on the “all of society” battle against the virus，people applauded the effective partnership between government，business enterprises and civil society in responding to COVID-19 in Wuhan，a city with over 10 million population and providing medical relief and everyday support across the entire province，which has been centrally orchestrated by the government to enable each party to bring into full play their own expertise.
To provide drinking water for medical workers at the frontline，The Coca-Cola Company（hereafter referred to as TCCC）activated “Clean Water 24”，a disaster relief drinking water mechanism on the first day after the Chinese New Year in Wuhan：One Foundation and their local partner YB Rescue first appraised the demand of drinking water in a number of hospitals before they dispatched trucks with volunteers to fetch the water from the warehouse of TCCC’s Wuhan Bottling Plant，where people on duty had put the water outside the factory premises，as previously agreed，to be picked up by volunteers and delivered to a safety zone outside the hospitals，with no human touch in the entire process. This operation ensures drinking water supply for medical workers without taking up any resources or bandwidth of the government.
1 The concept of golden triangle partnership
Inspired by years of partnering with both government and civil society to address challenges of sustainable development，former Chairman and CEO of TCCC，Muhtar Kent put forward the concept of Golden Triangle Partnership and launched Golden Triangle Fund in 2013 within the Coca-Cola Foundation. According to Mr. Kent，“Given the scale and complexity of today’s issues，it is challenging for one business or even one industry to make a material difference on its own. Instead we must rely on partnership that connects across what I call the Golden Triangle of business，governments and civil society.”
Under the innovative Golden Triangle Partnership，business brings in technology，funding，products and business models and civil society looks after volunteer recruiting and training while the government plays the role of guiding supervisor，in charge of product and service procurement and building and optimizing the policy environment. The three-party partnership brings out the full market tested efficiency of business and flexibility of civil society to enable the parties to complement each other to effectively address the challenges and promote the building of a harmonious society.
A very good example of Golden Triangle Partnership is when non-profit organization ColaLife worked with the public health authority of Zambia to prevent dysentery in remote rural area，where infrastructure is very primitive. It is a challenge to deliver medicine to the remote countryside. The founder of ColaLife Simon Berry noticed in his earlier years of volunteering in Africa that even in the most remote corners there are Coca-Cola beverages everywhere. Why not free load the distribution network of Coca-Cola to deliver medicine？Berry posted his idea in the social space in 2008 and very soon BBC and other British media picked up the idea. The Coca-Cola Company was ready to assist. After Coca-Cola agreed to pilot his idea，Berry and his wife established ColaLife，an NGO fully dedicated to bringing dysentery medicine to poor children in rural Africa. Barry designed a small packet that could be put between Coca-Cola bottles in the beverage cases，delivering medicine to the rural population，thus solving the problem of the last mile. Within a year after this program was launched，over 45% of children in the remote area were covered，more than what WHO and UNICEF achieved after years of working in the country.
It has been the consensus between the academia in public administration and the governments that strategic cooperation under Golden Triangle Partnership could effectively drive innovation in sustainability and public service. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations stated that in order to realize the sustainable development goals of 2030，we should encourage and promote effective public，public-private and civil society partnerships，building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.[2]
2 Golden triangle partnership best practice：clean water 24 disaster relief mechanism
Drinking water is one of the most needed supplies in disaster relief. In the traditional disaster relief process，procurement and transportation only starts after a disaster has stricken and it is very difficult to provide sufficient drinking water in time. To solve this problem，Coca-Cola China and One Foundation launched Clean Water 24 disaster relief mechanism，pledging to deliver bottled water to the disaster victims and relief workers within 24 hours of the disaster.
The Golden Triangle Partnership connects the originally independent business operation network，civil society network and local governments in such a way that all parties could work together，each bringing out the full potential of their competitive advantages to launch very effective disaster relief efforts.
Under this partnership，TCCC China，the bottling partners and bottling plants across the country reached an alignment to set up a very effective mechanism that involves both people and finance management. The mechanism is automatically activated once a disaster strikes to switch the business ecosystem of Coca-Cola into an emergency response and disaster relief network.
All partners of Clean Water 24 could activate the mechanism. A taskforce consisting of people from TCCC China Sustainability and Social Impact team，One Foundation and external partners will first assess the needs for drinking water and the transportation conditions before they work out a plan. If necessary，they will file a report with the local government agency in charge of orchestrating the emergency responses. The taskforce will then get in touch with the local bottler，which will allocate bottled water from the nearest fulfillment center or even retail outlets and arrange for the most suitable vehicle and people to dispatch the drinking water to the disaster area.
Under Clean Water 24，One Foundation and their local partners help deliver the clean drinking water provided by the Coca-Cola system to the frontline of disaster relief. Bottling plants also have the option to recruit local NGOs and government agencies to support. Since the launch，Clean Water 24 has been activated for 224 natural disasters，bringing 18.75 million bottles of water to 2.22 million people. More than 200 local governments，NGOs and 4，000 volunteers have helped in the efforts.
Clean water 24 won the Board of Directors Special Award and The Coca-Cola Foundation has been promoting the practice to other countries.
3 Calls for innovation in disaster relief. Golden Triangle Partnership has a lot to offer.
Contributions of business enterprises and civil society to disaster relief efforts have been highly recognized by both governments and the general public all over the world. The 13th Five-Year Plan of China also called for building a full cycle emergency response and disaster relief mechanism that is compatible with public security risks and encourages full participation of different actors of the society. The aim is to build a mechanism guided by the government with very active participation from both business enterprises and civil society.
Professor Xue Lan，President of Schwartzman College of Tsinghua University and a leading expert in public administration，sits on the National Advisory Committee against COVID-19. In an interview conducted in March[3]，Professor Xue Lan pointed out the outbreak is a moment of enlightenment in risk management. According to him，preventing and minimizing risks requires the active participation of the government，civil society and market actors. It is crucial to recruit the partnership and participation of the civil society.
“The grassroot communities of China have developed very strong self-consciousness. We should mobilize such actors to play a more active role in emergency responses. The Communiqué of The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Party Congress called for the establishment of a social governance mechanism where everybody is accountable，everybody makes their contributions and enjoys the benefits. This is very important and should be the guideline to encourage social organizations to participate in emergency responses.”
According to Xue Lan，market economy connects personal motivation and maximizing social benefits. There should be a market for social well-being to connect different actors of the society to motivate them to contribute to social good. Besides driving their own self-interest people also want to help and benefit others. The self-serving aspects could be looked after by the invisible hand of the market economy while the need to benefit and help others could be looked after by a market mechanism of social well-being. If we could create a “market mechanism” where people’s need to do good and help others could be harnessed，we could create great complementary for the risk mitigation mechanism. Other countries have been exploring in this space. After the 2005 hurricane Katrina，FEMA（Federal Emergency Management Agency）of the US set up a department to look after private public partnership in emergency responses. Japan has a special bureau in the government looking after partnership with small and medium business in disaster relief and aid.
We anticipate that in the future business enterprises and non-profit organizations can play a more important and impactful role in emergency response and disaster relief，charity and driving social progress working with the government. Mechanisms like Golden Triangle that has proven effective in unleashing the great prowess of business and civil society would be a source of inspiration and reference.
4 Leveraging golden triangle partnership to enhance emergency response capabilities
Inspired by experience of TCCC China working with a range of partners on sustainability and social impact initiatives and based on our reflections about the experience of fighting COVID-19 in close partnership，we would like to put forward the following proposals on how to further develop and strengthen Golden Triangle Partnership and enhance China’s emergency response and disaster relief capabilities.
（1）Set up virtual warehouse and preemptive stockpile.
Local governments can sign agreements with business enterprises that produce supplies for disaster relief to set up virtual warehouse，where the enterprises could keep the products covered in the agreements in their ecosystem of distribution and retail. Once an emergency strikes，the virtual stockpile can be dispatched for disaster relief purposes.
The flexibility of this partnership helps the government to avoid the trouble of setting up and managing disaster relief supplies and all the work and the capital investment needed. Besides regular stockpile has very limited coverage and when disaster strikes it could well be that the stockpile far away takes too long to help solve the problems in real time. By setting up virtual warehouse and stockpile，local governments emergency response authorities do not have to worry about tracking the shelf life to replenish the supply on a regular basis. Virtual stockpile could fully leverage the country’s well-developed business ecosystem of distribution that reaches the very grassroot communities where business enterprises and NGOs could bring their initiatives into a full play to ensure efficient and timely supply of disaster relief products.
（2）Division of labor improves efficiency.
When disaster strikes，under the coordination of the governments，both business and civil society could be mobilized to work together and do their best to assist while the government could maximize their focus on piloting the boat，so to speak，and avoid wasting their energy and bandwidth paddling the oars. Such Golden Triangle Partnership could fully mobilize the capabilities of business enterprises and NGOs of producing and distributing products and services，which has been tested and optimized in their everyday operation.
In the fight against COVID-19，a daunting task is to ensure that all disaster relief products are sorted and distributed in a timely manner. Quite a few business enterprises have done a great job. For an instance，JD.com，which operates over 700 fulfillment centers across the country，has their most hi-tech equipped Warehouse Asia One in cities including Wuhan. They engineered automated sorting and delivery process leveraging smart vehicles，robots and drones. On February 4th，the fulfillment team of JD.com delivered 100 oxygen generators to hospitals in Hankou that Professor Zhong Nanshan’s team donated. Professor Zhong hand wrote the team a letter of appreciation. From January 20th to February 28th JD.com delivered over 220 million parcels of over 290，000 tons of daily supplies，among which 50 million health emergency products[4].
The pledge of “stabilizing price，quality and supply” launched by the market supervision authorities on January 29th is a good example of how the government could mobilize the business community. Within a month over 7，000 enterprises have committed their support，among them e-commerce platforms，shopping malls and supermarkets，covering over 200，000 chain convenient stores in both big cities and small and medium cities and the countryside. Over half of the companies are large food and beverage companies with an annual output above 20 million RMB. Under their leadership and inspiration，the food and beverage sector gradually reopened，which ensured market and social stability.[5]
（3）Enhance civil society and volunteer capability building.
We would like to propose encouraging the development of NGOs focused on regional issues，niche issues or demographic groups and business enterprises affiliated foundations. We would also like to propose that China set up a volunteer talent pool and leverage the Internet platform and technologies to rollout regular training and sharing to help enhance the capabilities of people from different organizations and their abilities to coordinate and work together.
One Foundation boasts a national network of emergency response and disaster relief alliance with local NGOs around the country. In the year 2017，One Foundation and its partners participated in the relief efforts for 90 disasters. Out of those 90 operations，One Foundation employees were present onsite for 5 of them. Most of the disaster relief efforts were conducted with One Foundation’s assistance by local NGOs that One Foundation has sponsored or supported. Under the guidance of National Disaster Mitigation Commission，Ministry of Civil Affairs and their local branches，this network has enabled orderly and efficient operations where highly segmented taskforces will undertake different challenges. “Only by working in this way can we offer to help without causing any problems or disruptions，” Secretary General Li Hong of One Foundation confirmed in an interview.[6]
COVID-19 has been a major test of China’s capabilities of emergency response and disaster relief. As the first international consumer brand to have returned to the Chinese Mainland，TCCC China has played a very active role in the disaster relief efforts and we witnessed the solidarity and wisdom of the government and the ordinary people. We are also deeply touched by the spirits of helping others displayed by the general public，as highly applauded by the senior advisor Bruce Aylward of WHO. It is our sincere hope that our proposal would inspire more innovative ideas and we can all work together to build a better China.
Summary of contributions by the Coca-Cola system in China’s battle against COVID-19
Till March 1st，The Coca-Cola China System has contributed 4.5 million RMB to assist the efforts fighting the virus and provided some 1.26 million bottles of beverage via Clean Water 24，a disaster relief mechanism aiming to bring clean drinking water to disaster victims within 24 hours.
The Coca-Cola Foundation has donated half a million US dollars and another half a million US dollar worth of medical protective supplies，including 1.5 million masks and 40，000 protective gowns.
[1] Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019（COVID-19），released by WHO on Feb 24th，2020.
[2] Transforming Our World：The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development，A/RES/70/1，UN General Assembly. Goal 17.
[3] Caijing Magazine，March 11th，2020，Xue Lan：This is a Moment of Enlightenment in Risk Management.
[4] Beijing Youth Daily，Page 5，March 4th，2020，JD.com Hardcore Technologies Contributing to the Battle against COVID-19.
[5] www.Chinanews.com，Feb 27th，2020，Stable Prices and Orderly Supplies under Three Stabilizing Pledge to Assist the Fight against Virus.
[6] Social Welfare Times，Page 6，Issue of October 24th，2017. More Hub Platforms Needed for Disaster Relief.