Advisors or Enablers? Bringing Professional Service Providers into the Guiding Principles’ Fold

Ramasastry, Anita

doi:10.1017/bhj.2021.28

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The UNGPs are rooted in international human rights law, and are to date the most authoritative normative standard at the international level concerning the responsibilities of corporations, as recognized by various actors [20,[32][33][34][35]. This paper takes the view that, even though it is a soft law instrument, the unequivocally legal language and normative purpose of the UNGPs requires interpreting its content in the light of the legal categories it evokes-primarily those of international human rights law.…”

Section: Climate Due Diligence As An Inherent Dimension Of Human Rights Due Diligencementioning

confidence: 99%

Business, Human Rights and Climate Due Diligence: Understanding the Responsibility of Banks

Bernaz

Macchi

2021

Sustainability

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Under the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), banks, like all businesses, have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. Although climate due diligence is not explicitly included in the UNGPs, tackling an enterprise’s direct and indirect climate change impacts is arguably a dimension of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and should form part of the human rights due diligence process. At present, it is unclear how such responsibility applies to banks, whose contribution to climate change is mostly indirect. This article addresses the research question: how should the law be interpreted to form a coherent climate due diligence standard for banks? To address it, the article first maps out the climate responsibility of banks under international soft law standards and assesses privately developed guidance. It then elucidates the emerging concept of climate due diligence, reading climate change responsibilities into the now well-established corporate responsibility to respect human rights as authoritatively elaborated in the UNGPs. Finally, it explains how such normative standard applies to banks and unpacks the key elements that a bank’s climate due diligence process should include.

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Section: Climate Due Diligence As An Inherent Dimension Of Human Rights Due Diligencementioning

confidence: 99%

Business, Human Rights and Climate Due Diligence: Understanding the Responsibility of Banks

Bernaz

Macchi

2021

Sustainability

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“…Both authors reveal insider struggles and "shifting coalitions" (Farrell et al, 2012) vying for control over how relations with the environment, communities, workers, activists, and the state should proceed . Still, the operational realities of mining are not subjected to scrutiny by outsiders often enough, aside from through the privatised audit technologies that companies and their agents curate and control (Ramasastry, 2021).…”

Section: Inner Workings As a Focus For Social Scientific Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Responses to Community Grievance: Voluntarism and Pathologies of Practice

Owen

Kemp

2023

J Bus Ethics

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Grievance landscapes form in rapidly industrialising contexts where social and environmental impacts are inevitable. This paper focuses on the complex operational and organisational settings in which grievances arise and the industrial pathologies that form around resource development projects. The arguments draw on classic and contemporary literature on “grievance”, “right” and “entitlement”, and the authors’ own sustained engagement with global mining companies and local communities. Our contention is that the grievance landscape is far more critical to understanding environmental, human rights, and mining interactions than the managerial systems that companies construct to signal compliance with voluntary international norms. These managerial systems, or operational-level grievance mechanisms, map the procedural contours of how a local grievance would travel once it is made visible to the company. In practice, however, it is fiction, illegibility and invisibility that dominate. Across the pathologies, the common denominator is the corporate propensity to avoid recognising the legitimacy of a local grievance and the source of its cause.

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“…26 As service providers, MSIs' and TPCs' responsibility will typically arise from instances of contribution or being directly linked to human rights abuses. 27 A 'directly linked' scenario was found in the Bonsucro case, in view of the business relationship between the MSI and its members, which in turn linked it to the members' subsidiaries and the harm they caused. In these scenarios, companies are expected to use or increase leverage to seek to avoid harm.…”

Section: The Applicability Of Bonsucro Rationale To Tpcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the Wake of Bonsucro: Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and Third-Party Certifiers at the Test Bench of OECD National Contact Points

Corcione

2023

Bus. and hum. rights j.

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In January 2022, the UK National Contact Point (UK NCP) issued a final statement in a specific instance claim brought against Bonsucro, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) that aims to promote sustainable production of sugarcane. The claim alleged that Bonsucro had failed to comply with the OECD Guidelines because it had not carried out appropriate due diligence towards one of its members, accused of human rights abuses. While NCP complaints had been brought against MSIs and certifiers before, the UK NCP’s final statement is the first to recognize the leverage MSIs have over members due to their ability to deny membership and related reputational benefits to companies wishing to show sustainability logos, and to affirm their responsibility to use this leverage to avoid abuses. The statement sheds light on the accountability of actors involved in private voluntary sustainability standard systems, with possible impacts on other actors such as third-party certifiers.

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Advisors or Enablers? Bringing Professional Service Providers into the Guiding Principles’ Fold

Cited by 7 publications

References 5 publications

Business, Human Rights and Climate Due Diligence: Understanding the Responsibility of Banks

Business, Human Rights and Climate Due Diligence: Understanding the Responsibility of Banks

Corporate Responses to Community Grievance: Voluntarism and Pathologies of Practice

In the Wake of Bonsucro: Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and Third-Party Certifiers at the Test Bench of OECD National Contact Points

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