Funded Projects on Corporate Due Diligence

Project description

Gender inequality has long been a pervasive issue in both national and local contexts in Colombia, with consequences that often go unnoticed at the social and family levels. In certain coffee-growing families, children engage in activities inherent to their coffee-centric upbringing, posing potential risks to their physical development and educational processes. The absence of social security and labor risks affecting coffee farm workers puts them in a vulnerable situation. Additionally, consuming contaminated water can threaten their health, which consequently negatively affects their labor activities and education. In this sense, the project seeks to sensitize children, school communities, and families about the importance of children’s rights.
 

The project’s objective is to enhance sustainability in the coffee supply chain, encompassing all its stages. Coffee communities shall benefit from improved living conditions. The project promotes gender equality and the fulfillment of human rights while providing access to long-term coffee markets that comply with due diligence regulations.
 

The project actively promotes gender equity by targeting women's associative groups, empowering women, and redefining their roles within both family and societal contexts. The project will empower women to take on leadership roles in specific coffee processes, such as wet grinding, and will provide them with tools to manage their coffee businesses or farms. Training sessions are designed to deepen the understanding of children’s rights and human rights on a broader scale. In addition, water filters will be installed for families and schools to considerably reduce health risks from consumption of contaminated water.
 

Project description

In Egypt, Worlée’s risk analysis has identified issues like safety concerns and child labor. Notably, there is a significant risk of discrimination against women. Sexual harassment and violence against women are widespread in rural Egypt. Vulnerable groups are often unable to stand up for their rights themselves due to dependencies and unequal power relations.
 

The project aims to create and test a scalable risk assessment methodology, specifically focusing on identifying real risks within agricultural supply chains. Subsequently, preventive and remedial measures will be developed to safeguard human rights and empower women.
 

To do so, a potential risk analysis with a focus on women’s and workers’ rights will be conducted, incorporating desk research, in-depth interviews with the supplier management, employees and farmers, and workshops with employees. Together with rights holders, NGOs, Worlée and its supplier, an action plan regarding preventive and remedial measures will be derived. This is followed by the implementation of the developed measures by Worlée’s supplier with monitoring and support from the NGO on site. Continuous dialogue with rights holders will verify the effectiveness of the implemented measures. As a final step, the project foresees to disseminate the methodology, tools and lessons learned within other supply chains of Worlée and within the sector.
 

Project description

Sierra Leone’s cocoa sector faces elevated risks of human rights violations and environmental concerns, particularly in the areas of gender rights, child rights, labor rights, living income, and climate change. Sierra Leone grapples with a severe level of food insecurity, stemming from heavy reliance on food imports, coupled with a high inflation rate and currency depreciation in recent years. Furthermore, the country ranks 110 out of 180 in the corruption perceptions index for 2022, which requires special attention to anti-corruption measures.
 

The overall project objective is to contribute to a corporate mechanism by dm and Maestrani to continuously assess and manage human rights and environmental risks along high-risk cocoa supply chains in Sierra Leone. Building on this, the responsible purchasing practices of dm via Maestrani and the sourcing supplier Tradin Organic are strengthened as cocoa is directly sourced from the two cooperatives 100 % segregated on Fairtrade terms.
 

As part of the project, a mechanism will be piloted to empower farmers to directly voice grievances to dm and Maestrani, enhancing accountability. The project will partner with national institutions in Sierra Leone to sensitize and help strengthen existing internal mechanisms to facilitate the development of anti-corruption reporting, whistleblowing, and complaint mechanisms by cooperative members. Cooperatives are supported in building capacity around the issue of deforestation. This helps them to monitor and to report on deforestation activities, aligning with the Fairtrade Cocoa Standard, the EU regulation on deforestation-free products and their own environmental policies. This includes particularly mapping the farms for better traceability. Additionally, the project aims to assist cocoa farmers in avoiding deforestation by promoting good agricultural practices through sensitization. This will enable them to achieve higher yields, increased income from existing fields, and diversification of income sources. These measures can further help decrease the need to encroach upon primary forests. The project seeks to pilot a living income strategy that focuses on diversifying livelihoods, improving bean quality, enhancing food security and increasing yields.
 

Project description

The Indian cotton sector is marked by a complex first mile supply chain and an informal upstream cotton supply chain system. Raw cotton flows from farms to gins often through intermediaries such as middlemen, agents, and markets. This poses multiple barriers to visibility from downstream clients, wishing to conduct upstream due diligence in their supply chains and assessing potential human rights and/or environmental violations. Additionally, India is considered at higher risk when it comes to labor practices in the cotton sector, which further drives Better Cotton’s traceability mission in the area.
 

The project aims to enhance corporate due diligence by improving transparency in the upstream Better Cotton supply chains in India. By doing so, the project is contributing to further strengthening Better Cotton supply chains and paving the way for traceability back to farmer and farmer group level. The project will pilot first-mile traceability between farms and gins, whilst contributing to the roll-out of Better Cotton’s new global traceability solution from gin to end retailer/brand in India. The project will also help lay the foundations for traceability to generate impact at the farm level as tracing cotton back to the farmer level is a pre-condition to ensure farmers get rewarded for better environmental and social practices.
 

The activities encompass researching the farm-to-gin link in the project states, designing and implementing process improvements for the 2023/2024 harvest season, and piloting a first-mile traceability solution on a small scale to gather learnings. Furthermore, farmers, intermediaries, and ginners will be involved and trained through gender inclusive workshops and field visits. Measures for gin-to-end retailer/ brand traceability include the roll-out of Better Cotton’s new Chain of Custody standard in India. This will be done through trainings and workshops and by building supply and demand of traceable cotton from India through engagement with suppliers. Furthermore, a new claims framework for traceable Better Cotton as well as monitoring and verification processes for traceability will be developed.
 

Project description

Botanicals play a crucial role in the livelihoods of many smallholder farmers and contribute significantly to local biodiversity. However, farming and harvesting practices often do not pay attention to biodiversity, and revenues from these crops may not provide farmers and workers with decent living conditions. Certain supply chains encounter challenges related to deforestation and human rights, including child protection. Women make up a large proportion of the farmers and farm workers who face the risk of poor working conditions. In both India and Egypt there are private sector efforts to assess and address risks of unsustainable harvesting and collection practices of botanicals, but these are limited in scope and a wider sector approach would be beneficial.
 

UEBT and Symrise aim to enhance the positive impacts of due diligence and risk mitigation on both people and the environment within botanical supply chains. The project focuses on crucial Egyptian and Indian botanical supply chains commonly utilized in fragrances for the beauty and personal care sectors. Moreover, the project aims to promote inclusive and practical tools for responsible purchasing practices, including a) conducting participatory risk assessments with local stakeholders in sourcing regions in India and Egypt, b) defining possible mitigation strategies, and c) publishing sector guidance and raising awareness.
 

To achieve this, responsible sourcing risk assessments will be established, and a collaborative definition of joint action will be developed among fragrance sector players to address risks. Additionally, a due diligence working group with Symrise and other leading IFRA members will be established. Another key activity involves raising awareness of due diligence requirements and sourcing risks among German beauty and personal care industries, as well as UEBT and IFRA members.
 

Project description

Although businesses collect ample data in international supply chains to adhere to new regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation or the German Act on Supply Chain Due Diligence, there is a deficiency in suitable tools to manage and integrate this data. Therefore, EU-based companies might not be able to do proper due diligence, with the risk of them avoiding certain production areas. For farmers, losing exports would mean sliding back or further into poverty with social and environmental deterioration. Even if export continues, inadequate due diligence means that risks and adverse impacts at origin might not be identified and thus not remedied.
 

Tradin Organic and Fairfood aim to develop an open-source, supply chain-focused data integration tool and dashboard. Through that, EU-buyers are enabled to establish comprehensive due diligence to improve the social and environmental conditions in the production countries, ideally rewarding the farmers for sharing their data.
 

The tool will be tested with multiple datasets from various sourcing projects of Tradin Organic and its partners’ supply chains. The datasets will be presented in a dashboard to selected clients so they can meet their due diligence requirements. The selected clients will also be incentivized with ways to compensate/reward farmers for providing data beyond compliance. Compensation/rewards can 1) improve data quality, 2) improve the farmers’ actual situation on the ground, and 3) give brands and retailers at the end of the value chain a powerful, data-based, and truthful product story to present to consumers. The project’s conclusion involves identifying opportunities for scaling up the tool and promoting its adoption in other supply chains.  

Project description

There is currently no certified organic agriculture in Malawi and therefore also no Malawian organic groundnuts supply chain that informs about the source of groundnuts and living conditions of farmers. In the past there have been significant barriers for importers to collaborate on transparency needed for identifying and managing human rights and environmental due diligence. 

The objective of the project is to demonstrate a sustainable, scalable, single-tier, certified organic groundnuts value chain with smallholder farmers, of which 50% are female. The focus is on ensuring a living wage and regular employment which shall lead to a 300% increase in income and a self-sufficient socio-economic communal development, while building the soil, reducing the environmental impact and creating the first certified organic agriculture in Malawi.  

The value chain is to be monitored by a digital platform that collects data on farming activity and thereby ensures transparency and compliance across the whole chain. In this way, the project partners intend to scale the supply chain to 1300 farmers within 5 years. The development and scaling process is to be supported by ongoing participatory learning and action process among the farming community. This will serve as an incubator and assurance for successful project implementation and scaling. Furthermore, the project will digitize farming through the app Grown ERP which helps to analyze and optimize farming costs and operations and share the data transparently to buyers. Additionally, a diversified cultivation system and regenerative agricultural practices will be implemented to reduce the CO2 footprint. On top of that, the Grown Farm Incubator model will be implemented. The model is an end-to-end service delivery model for farmers developed and practiced by aQysta, where farmers are provided with a complete package of services in the value chain, particularly targeted at enabling marginalized smallholder farmers and prioritizing women.

Project description

The textile sector has one of the most complex value chains in the global economy, with a multitude of intertwined sub-sectors. The cotton supply chain in Pakistan is a vivid example of this complexity. There, raw cotton is traded from farms to processing facilities, which are usually 100 to 150 km away from the production areas. Often, multiple intermediaries and markets are involved in this process, which makes the supply chain very opaque, also due to a lack of infrastructure. This means downstream traders and customers encounter a number of difficulties in exercising the due diligence to verify exactly where their cotton is actually sourced from.
 

The project aims to improve the traceability of cotton at the beginning of the supply chain. The goal is to trace the cotton supply chain from the farms to the processing facilities and from the gins to the spinning mills, and thus to make it more transparent. For this purpose, a traceability system is to be developed and implemented together with all relevant actors.
 

Workshops will be conducted with all project participants as part of project implementation. The purpose is to impart skills and knowledge in the areas of sorting, recording, use of bale identification materials, technical solutions for data tracking and recording, and use of the Better Cotton Platform. After that, the cotton bales will be marked at the gins with unique codes to enable subsequent traceability. In addition, suppliers will be asked to comply with the Better Cotton CoC standard for cotton segregation. The project participants will receive ongoing support from Better Cotton. The system offers companies the opportunity to better understand the individual stages of cotton and to exercise human rights and environmental due diligence along the cotton supply chain. The partnership hopes to be able to further improve and expand this cotton traceability system.
 

Project description

Human rights violations such as child labour, hazardous and exploitative work, etc. continue to occur in coca growing communities. Women and other vulnerable groups in particular often have less agency to influence the system they live in, among other things because of their limited economic means. Consequently, their voices and choices are significantly restricted. Although more and more companies have grievance mechanisms in place, they have so far not put a particular focus on smallholder farming households. As a result, many grievance mechanisms mostly address employees of the company and do not reach rights holders at the start of the value chain.
 

In order to examine which criteria must be met so that a cross-company grievance mechanism can be successfully implemented in the Ivorian cocoa sector, a feasibility study will be carried out together with partner organisations in Côte d’Ivoire. A possible future grievance mechanism should be specifically tailored to the needs of affected people in smallholder communities and will be developed in collaboration with rights holders in cocoa farming communities. For this purpose, cocoa farmers will take part in interviews and workshops as part of the feasibility study.
 

If the criteria can be met, an approach for the implementation of a grievance mechanism could be developed on that basis and implemented accordingly in a second pilot phase. The mechanism will be designed in a way that the complaint will be forwarded directly to the companies upon first notification. In addition, the grievance mechanism is to be monitored by an independent organisation/institution to ensure that appropriate follow-up measures are implemented.
 

Project description

In the Karamoja region, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from severe and acute malnutrition due to rising food prices and severe droughts. A neglected source of income is Gum Arabic, which is traditionally harvested by women from the Acacia Senegal trees growing in the region. Local monopsony power favours extremely low prices and unfair trading practices. Poor harvesting practices lower prices further and threaten the long-term health of the trees. Despite its great potential, harvesting Gum Arabic has so far remained unattractive.
 

Norevo GmbH and Native Seeds Moyo aim to jointly establish a sustainable Gum Arabic value chain in Karamoja. The aim of the project is to train local women's groups on the harvesting and processing of Gum Arabic. This is intended to improve the quality of the Gum Arabic for sale to Norevo, which should enable women to obtain significantly higher prices.
 

In the training courses, the women will learn how to select the right trees, how to tap them sustainably, how to estimate the optimal drying and harvest time and how to clean the Gum Arabic correctly. In addition, a place for processing the Gum Arabic will be established and the transport to the collection point in Uganda and on to Germany will be organised. Quality inspections will be carried out regularly to ensure that the quality of the Gum Arabic meets market demands. A grievance mechanism is to be put in place to prevent intermediaries from pushing prices down and thus ensure long-term fair incomes for the target group.
 

Project description

Brazil has a legislative framework in place to protect labour rights which also applies to the Brazilian coffee supply chain. Despite this framework, informality persists, particularly in the form of temporary labour arrangements in rural regions. These (temporary) workers are more vulnerable to labour rights violations.
 

The partners pursue two goals with this project. They aim to develop recommendations outlining how a basic grievance mechanism can be adapted to the local Brazilian context. It should be transparent and tailored to rights holders in the coffee supply chain. The project partners also aim to examine how grievance cases can be jointly managed by a grievance management body on a pre-competitive level and/or what preventive measures can be taken.
 

To this end, the project partners have carried out a field study to assess the degree of compliance with human rights-related and environmental risks in accordance with the German Due Diligence Act (LkSG). Based on these empirical results and consultations with key stakeholders from the Brazilian coffee sector, recommendations on how the grievance procedure can be adapted to the needs of vulnerable groups will be developed. This is intended to a) enable an efficient joint grievance mechanism, b) gather insights on how to safeguard the accessibility, practicability, transparency, and legitimacy of these mechanisms, c) identify root causes of human rights violations and environmental offences, thus optimising regular risk analyses, and d) develop joint preventive measures. The results will be made publicly available and disseminated in the coffee sector of the project regions, Brazil and, where appropriate, beyond.
 

Project description

Botanicals are often an important source of income for local communities and can provide a strong incentive to conserve natural habitats. For companies involved in the procurement of agricultural commodities, including niche products such as botanicals, supply chain risk assessments are an important part of due diligence. However, information on human rights and environmental risks in the cultivation and processing of botanicals is scarce because production volumes are often low. Detailed risk assessments in such supply chains are therefore often complex and time-consuming. However, they are crucial for deciding on mitigation or prevention measures.
 

UEBT and Mast Jägermeister SE have together implemented a seven-month project to identify the human rights and environmental risks in the sourcing areas of botanical ingredients used by Jägermeister and to use these risk assessments to define possible follow-up risk mitigation activities. To support this, Jägermeister partnered with UEBT in developing a risk database which is part of a larger due diligence platform that UEBT has established. The database includes general country risks as well as specific risks related to cultivation, wild collection and local processing of botanical ingredients such as herbs and spices.
 

Risk assessments were carried out for 18 Jägermeister botanical supply chains from 11 countries. This provided an opportunity to further integrate risk information on these botanicals into a leading risk database for botanicals. The information can now be accessed by a multitude of companies in the beauty, food & beverage, natural pharmaceutical and herbs & spices sectors. Jägermeister also used the UEBT due diligence platform and assessed all supply chains in the scope of this project. As a result, full risk information for 18 botanical ingredients is now available on a supply chain level, country level and sectoral level. On the basis of this project, Jägermeister will now set up an internal due diligence process and take action with its suppliers.
 

Project description

In Côte d'Ivoire, numerous cashew farming households lack awareness of their labor and social rights, as well as corporate due diligence obligations. Consequently, the partnership between Nutwork Handelsgesellschaft mbH and Nitidæ focuses on training smallholder households and workers on both aspects. This empowers them to assert their human rights and advocate for the fulfilment of due diligence obligations in the future. The focus is on establishing and equipping a cashew cooperative. This cooperative is to include a women harvesters' association which aims to promote the representation of women and girls. To this end, women are to be trained, especially in the management of associations. Another goal is to secure official representation of the association within the cooperative. The members of the cashew cooperative will be offered training to raise awareness of human rights due diligence obligations and equal rights for women.
 

The restoration of satellite warehouses aims to preserve the quality of nuts by providing optimal storage conditions. These warehouses also serve as a meeting place for members of the cooperative and will include an office for administrative operations. Simultaneously, the installation of a hand-operated water well aims to alleviate the burden, especially on women and girls who often travel long distances to obtain the necessary water supply. Furthermore, a recently initiated school loan program aims to mitigate the risk of child labor in cashew production. The program specifies that households repay the school loan using income earned from the 2024 harvest.