NILAS Research Seminar – Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence: Power, participation and proof in Critical Mineral Supply Chains

The accelerating demand for critical raw materials has increased mineral extraction across Latin America. At the same time, European Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) regulations seek to strengthen corporate accountability across beyond the EU borders. These transnational regulations require companies to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts and to engage with rightsholders affected by their business activities. Yet we still know relatively little about how HREDD is implemented in producer countries and whether it contributes to improving the socio-environmental situation on the ground. In this seminar, we share findings from ten months of fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru, including more than 100 interviews with companies, public authorities, civil society organizations and affected communities. We explore how HREDD is unfolding in different national and local contexts, and how these transnational rules interact with existing institutional and political dynamics in producing countries. We show how the implementation of HREDD is shaped by existing domestic accountability regimes and discuss whether and under what conditions these transnational rules strengthen accountability to affected rightsholders.

Presenters:

Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Senior lecturer, Associate professor, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University.

Julia Stefanello Pires, Postdoctoral Researcher, Chair of International Business, Society and Sustainability, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

Mariano Novas, Guest Researcher, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), and Postdoctoral Fellow at CONICET/Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM).

All three researchers are involved in the Corporate Accountability in Global Supply Chains research project. The research has been carried out in collaboration with Almut Schilling-Vacaflor at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.