Human rights and environmental due diligence: The critical role of transnational civil society networks

The activities of multinational corporations have in many cases been linked to adverse human rights and environmental impacts in distant sites of production. Until recently, there have been few effective mechanisms at the national or international level to hold companies legally accountable for the adverse impacts caused by subsidiaries and suppliers. In recent years, governments in Europe have increasingly begun to adopt new laws building on a Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) approach. HREDD laws obligate companies to assess and address negative impacts caused by subsidiaries and suppliers, thereby promising to contribute to corporate accountability across national borders. Whereas previous research has analyzed the contested policymaking processes and the legal design of new regulations, the effectiveness of HREDD laws also depends on the uptake of such laws by different actors in producing sites. This paper discusses the role of civil society actors in pressuring companies to comply with their legal obligations and to improve their due diligence systems. Empirically, we focus on the cattle and soy supply chains from Brazil to Europe. These commodities have contributed to massive deforestation and human rights violations in Brazil. Civil society organizations in both Brazil and Western countries have been active in campaigns to generate awareness of such impacts. Based on empirical material collected during a three-months fieldwork in Brazil, we provide for an in-depth analysis of how civil society actors in Brazil perceive and have started to make use of European HREDD regulations to enhance corporate accountability. We show that Brazilian civil society organizations have increasingly collected data for linking impacts on the ground to specific multinational companies and have enhanced coalitions with European organizations to create awareness of HREDD regulations as well as to disseminate evidence of the negative impacts of business activities. Whereas it is too early to evaluate the results of these actions, we expect that the pressure from these emerging transnational civil society networks will contribute to improve companies’ due diligence systems and enhance corporate accountability. Based on our findings, we discuss how the capacity of transnational civil society networks can be strengthened and contribute to ongoing scholarly debates about the effectiveness of new regulations for enhancing the sustainability of global supply chains.