Integrating Human Rights and the Environment in Supply Chain Regulations

Abstract

To address the negative externalities associated with global trade, countries in the Global North have increasingly adopted supply chain regulations. While global supply chains cause or contribute to interconnected environmental and human rights impacts, I show that supply chain regulations often exclusively target one policy domain. Furthermore, an analysis of the first experiences with the implementation of the French Duty of Vigilance law, which covers and gives equal weight to environmental and human rights risks, reveals that the inclusion of environmental and human rights standards in legal norms is not sufficient to ensure policy integration. The empirical focus here is on the soy and beef supply chains from Brazil to the European Union (EU), and the findings rely on an analysis of legal norms and company reports, field research at producing sites in Brazil and semi-structured interviews with civil society, business and state actors. For analyzing the data, I draw on the literature on environmental policy integration (EPI) and apply a framework that distinguishes between institutional, political and cognitive factors to discuss advances and challenges for integrating human rights and the environment in sustainability governance. The study concludes that more integrated approaches for regulating global supply chains would be needed to enable ‘just sustainability’.

An integrated approach to corporate due diligence from a human rights, environmental, and TWAIL perspective

“…The consequence of this is a fragmented approach to due diligence in which companies may selectively address specific human rights and environmental issues while neglecting others. As Schilling‐Vacaflor notes from the vigilance plans of four French companies involved with soy and beef supply chains from Brazil, companies prioritized certain human rights and environmental impacts such as deforestation or labor rights, while neglecting others such as biodiversity loss and rights to water, health, or food (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021, p. 10). Those impacts that had been prioritized by companies were high on the global agenda and prominent in the environmental discourse of Global North states, while those impacts which were neglected were those that were of concern to local communities in Brazil (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021, p. 10).…”

“…As Schilling‐Vacaflor notes from the vigilance plans of four French companies involved with soy and beef supply chains from Brazil, companies prioritized certain human rights and environmental impacts such as deforestation or labor rights, while neglecting others such as biodiversity loss and rights to water, health, or food (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021, p. 10). Those impacts that had been prioritized by companies were high on the global agenda and prominent in the environmental discourse of Global North states, while those impacts which were neglected were those that were of concern to local communities in Brazil (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021, p. 10). The adoption of such a cherry‐picking approach to due diligence here reflects “asymmetric power relationships that have [disfavoured] actors from the Global South with comparatively little voice and purchasing power” (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021, p. 10) and illustrates the need for both an integrated approach to impacts covered, and clarity in defining these impacts.…”

“…Most notably, the UN Human Rights Council's and General Assembly's landmark Resolutions which recognized the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (UNGA, 2022; UNHRC, 2021). We are also witnessing increasing efforts toward the integration of environmental issues in the business and human rights field, accompanied by calls for the development of a comprehensive framework which accommodates both (Bright & Buhmann, 2021; Macchi, 2022; Martin‐Ortega et al, 2022; Morgera, 2020; Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021; Seck, 2018; Turner, 2021).…”

The politics of supply chain regulations: Towards foreign corporate accountability in the area of human rights and the environment?

“…There has been an increasing recognition that environmental and human rights impacts are often intrinsically linked and therefore cannot be effectively addressed in isolation from each other (see Dehbi & Martin‐Ortega, 2023). Previous research on regulations with an exclusive environmental focus, such as the EUTR or the EU‐RED, highlighted that compliance with the laws can lead to negative unintended effects in the field of human rights (Ituarte‐Lima et al, 2019; Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021b). Comprehensive regulations are more likely to establish broader accountability relationships that could help to overcome trade‐offs and contradictions between different policy fields.…”

The devil is in the detail—The need for a decolonizing turn and better environmental accountability in global supply chain regulations: A comment

“…However, as noted by Gustafsson et al (2023b), there remains a fundamental disjuncture between the economic realities of transnationally operating companies and national law, which tends to govern exclusively the separate legal entities operating in each jurisdiction. Although recent due diligence laws tend to be more comprehensive and cross‐sectoral (Schilling‐Vacaflor, 2021), the institutional structure for monitoring, controlling, and sanctioning companies has so far remained underdeveloped.…”