Supply Chain Resilience Is Now About Designing Out Critical Chokepoints

Oliver Sawbridge

August 20, 2026 • 5 min read

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Over recent weeks, Iran’s weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz has hit home a clear message: the world’s most critical shipping chokepoints are tools of leverage, not just routes of trade. But alongside these shifting geopolitics changing the shape of trade and supply chain? Climate volatility. 

Facing worsening climate stress across traditional supply regions, Gulf states treat supply from abroad as a matter of national security. And so, as a recent European Council on Foreign Relations report details, they are involved in funding, or otherwise supporting, rival factions in Sudan to guarantee access to Sudan’s agricultural exports and Red Sea Ports. 

Where geopolitics and climate meet, disruption does not merely add up. It compounds. And a logistics plan that treats them separately will understate the true danger and underbake the resilience response. 

Straits Under Strain 

The Strait of Hormuz is not unique. The Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait each carry more than 20% of global seaborne trade. The Suez Canal carries about 15%. All are becoming more prone to shocks from both climate and geopolitics.  

Take the Panama Canal. It carries about 5% of global maritime trade and as other routes become less reliable, its importance grows. Yet drought has lowered water levels and cut the number of ships that can pass through. The transfer of contracts to run ports at either end of the canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate to European operators has angered China and prompted retaliation.

When primary routes fall under attack, exporters look for ways around. But alternatives bring their own dangers. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has pushed more oil toward Red Sea ports to avoid risks linked to the Strait of Hormuz, only to face heavy exposure from Houthi attacks. Meanwhile, China and South Korea are turning to the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route, where transit remains reliant on a single chokepoint – the Bering Strait – and a dependence on Russia’s dominant icebreaker fleet gives Moscow powerful leverage over passage. 

In short, a route chosen to cut exposure to one chokepoint can lead into a corridor where danger is fed by both geopolitics and climate-linked scarcity. The two risks simply cannot be hedged separately. So the stronger response is to change the structure of supply – more varied and more regional sources. 

Politics Makes the Weather Worse 

Zero100 analyzed six key shipping corridors – including the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Panama Canal – to track monthly activity against seasonal norms from 2019 to 2026, scoring climate and geopolitical stress on a common scale. 

Patterns in the data show stress appearing in a growing share of months, driven increasingly by geopolitics. Shipping lanes used to be shaped by variables firms could plan around: weather, water levels, or congestion. Increasingly, disruption stems from events that are harder to forecast: war, sanctions, attacks on ships. 

The data also points to a second, more important finding. When climate and geopolitical pressure hit the same lane at the same time, the impacts compound. A route already strained by low water or bad weather becomes far more vulnerable if a political shock strikes at the same moment. 

The practical question for supply chain leaders is therefore not: “How exposed am I to climate risk?” or “How exposed am I to geopolitical risk?” It is: “Where do my routes carry both risks at once, and what happens if they arrive together?” 

The answer starts with chokepoints. Leaders need to map the lanes, ports, and suppliers they cannot quickly replace. For example, one Zero100 member, anticipating Gulf disruptions, proactively found land bridge options and rerouted cargo away from all potentially vulnerable chokepoints. 

Supply chain leaders are already lining up alternative routes, holding more stock where it matters, and agreeing to flexible contracts before trouble starts, not during it. In addition, watch the warning signs: rising tension near a corridor, more attacks on shipping, and worsening climate stress on water-constrained routes such as Panama and the Danube. 

Regionalized Redundancy  

The broader case for regionalizing and diversifying supply is not that global supply chains should necessarily become local ones. It is that businesses need more than one region able to serve demand when a corridor, port, or supplier fails. Regionalization can reduce the need to move goods through the same climate- and geopolitical-prone chokepoints and offers optionality when a region is hit.  

A CPG company in the Zero100 community runs a highly distributed production footprint, with 100+ sites, many of them digitally linked. Proximity to customers matters. But beyond that, it spreads their network, managed with common data and site-level benchmarks. This can shift work, compare performance, and rebalance production through switching suppliers and moving inventory around their network to avoid a shock becoming a crisis. 

Global supply is still needed for inputs, products, and markets. But in a world where climate and geopolitics increasingly hit the same routes at the same time, regional depth is crucial. The aim now is not to find the safest lane but to make every lane less critical.