The baseline standards (the “why” behind due diligence in sustainability)

Human Rights Due Diligence in the widely recognised international framework the UN Guiding Principles, which emphasises sustainability as the quality of decision-making and governance. In other words, whether the company has a credible process for making responsible choices under uncertainty.

The UNGPs are based on the severity assessment in which negative human rights impacts are assessed based on scope, scale and irremediability of human rights impacts. The idea is that companies should do no harm to human rights. Environmental due diligence is linked to similar conceptual assessment but has different metrics as to understanding companies’ negative environmental harm. Here companies should do no significant harm to the environment.