Lady Akissi and the Impact of a Mandatory EU Due Diligence Law
The adoption of a mandatory due diligence regulation at European level might not only be unable to ensure sustainable supply chains but even harm local communities.
Against this backdrop, in our recent Reflection Paper we advocate for a smart mix of measures to accompany a mandatory EU law on due diligence.
Watch the session “Environmental Protection & Human Rights in Supply Chains” at the European SDG Summit 2020
Register to the upcoming Webinar "Technologies for Due Diligence” on December 15 to explore how technology can help address the pressing issues in supply chain due diligence.
As COVID-19 has painfully demonstrated, supply chain sustainability is a key challenge to well-functioning economies and societies. The real name of the game is how to achieve positive impact and change: supply chain sustainability is not only about the environment and climate, but also about the respect for human rights, decent work and the advancement of livelihoods of people and communities. As stated by John Ruggie, former UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, the core purpose of supply chain due diligence is to trigger action and search for practical solutions. Therefore, every effort on supply chain sustainability should be measured against this purpose: does our effort really change the situation?
The question was answered very clearly at the plenary session “Environmental Protections and Human Rights” of the European SDG Summit 2020: no, our efforts are not having a positive impact on the ground.
Ms. Mariam Dao Gabala, Chairperson of the International Supervisory Board of Solidaridad, member of the Senate of Côte d’Ivoire, economist, development banker, and board member of various firms and banks, challenged companies and policymakers alike with the story of lady Akissi, a small cocoa farmer in Cote d’Ivoire.
Over the past 20 years, the income and living situation of lady Akissi did not improve despite the adoption of fair-trade certifications and CSR programmes of companies she was supplying.
“Complementary measures and policies need to be in place to support producers and producing countries. To make this work, we need an effective interplay between the EU, supply chain partners, producers, and consumers. Let’s work together to ensure that due diligence does what it is supposed to do in the first place: provide a better future for the producers of our daily food and other products we consume”, said Ms. Dabala.
As we updated our members regularly on the direction, merits, and demerits of different initiatives, CSR Europe has always emphasized the need for practical work on the ground to avoid mere compliance exercises within due diligence schemes. For this reason, over the last 10 months we engaged with companies, Members of European Parliament, the European Commission and a wide array of supply chain initiatives and sectors. The lessons learned from this intense dialogue have been now published in the Reflection Paper “For A Coherent and Integrated Approach to Due Diligence”. In the paper, we advocate for a smart mix of measures to accompany a mandatory EU law on due diligence: legislation alone will not be able to solve the complex human rights and environmental issues currently existing in many countries around the world. Accompanying measures include the incubation of a new generation of European Sector Dialogues & Alliances to promote our collective “duty to collaborate” to facilitate the development of sector guidelines and peer-to-peer learning within and across sectors. Within this dialogue, different groups of stakeholders will be able to scale-up their individual action and move beyond the polarized “pilot-project” approach that we witness too often.
Over the past year, CSR Europe has drastically intensified its engagement towards sustainable supply chains. Drive Sustainability, the automotive partnership facilitated by CSR Europe, launched a widened Common Strategy for a Circular and Sustainable Automotive Value Chain. To achieve positive impact and nurture change, Drive Sustainability will also work closely with Tier 1 suppliers and supplier associations in Drive+. In this platform, they will share learning with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and peers and make use of the Drive Sustainability toolbox. With the support of the German Development Agency (GIZ), we developed “Extractives for Development”, a project aimed at creating local sustainability networks for the sustainable mining of electric vehicle battery materials. Furthermore, 2020 was the year in which leading shippers and carriers started tackling one of Europe’s burning supply chains issues: the critical social conditions of European truck drivers.
In 2021, CSR Europe will further engage on supply chain sustainability with companies, sector initiatives and stakeholders to have a positive impact on the bottom end of the supply chain: the millions of smallholder farmers, small-scale miners, and workers who are still struggling to survive.
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