Values-Based Trade and Due Diligence Legislation

As a nation develops, with its physiological and safety needs satisfied, more attention is turned towards sustainability and values. Consequently, many economically developed nations are beginning to turn attention towards their complicity in undermining human rights within global supply chains.

One way some have sought to resolve this issue is through the introduction of due diligence legislation designed to encourage companies to address human/labour rights issues within their supply chains. This type of legislation presents a challenge to policymakers who must balance competing interests between the companies they wish to regulate and those companies’ competitiveness concerns. Moreover, as the progenitors of these frameworks — primarily western developed economies — decline in relative global economic importance, the effectiveness and potential negative impacts of due diligence legislation moves into the frame.

Rationale

This research collaboration with Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, and Edith Cowan University, Perth, seeks to map current and emerging regulatory approaches in key Western markets, develop a derivative taxonomy, and use it to determine the important considerations that should be engaged with when developing due-diligence legislation.

It is our contention that a failure to engage with these considerations runs the risk of producing ineffective legislation that will perpetuate already damaging global practices. 

Our Objectives

• Provide practical, evidence-based analysis of the current and emerging regulatory approaches towards due diligence in key Western markets.
• Analyse the economic and political impacts of the different approaches taken by each jurisdiction, on their own countries and on developing countries impacted by them.
• Develop proposals for policymakers regarding the considerations that should be made when developing their own due diligence legislation.

We gratefully acknowledge the funding support we received from Universities Australia and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that made this work possible.

Outputs and Related Materials