In the world of specialty coffee, there is an important acronym called HREDD. What it is and how it affects coffee-related workflows, we will consider in this article.
HREDD stands for Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence. It is based on another acronym: CSDDD, which stands for “Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive”. Both terms are related to initiatives aimed at strengthening corporate responsibility for human rights violations and environmental harm in the global supply chains of various products, including specialty coffee.
With the help of HREDD, companies identify, prevent and report on how they eliminate adverse human rights and environmental impacts caused directly or indirectly by their activities, products or services, including their supply chains. In the world of coffee, reports are made on work processes at all stages of coffee production: growing, processing, transportation and sale.
The key aspects of HREDD are:
1. Identification of human rights and environmental risks.
2. Description of procedures to prevent and mitigate adverse impacts.
3. Monitoring the effectiveness of measures taken.
4. Communication of efforts and results, accessible to all involved and interested parties.
HREDD was created in line with international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs, 2011) and the OECD Recommendations for Multinational Enterprises.
In turn, the CSDDD is a legislative initiative of the European Union aimed at implementing mandatory HREDD requirements for companies. That is, the CSDDD is the basis for implementing HREDD in practice.
The CSDDD aims to ensure that large companies operating in the EU implement mandatory HREDD procedures, increasing their own business responsibility. This includes identifying human rights violations (e.g. child labor, unsafe working conditions) and environmental damage (e.g. deforestation, pollution) and minimizing or eliminating them. HREDDs are mandatory for companies with 500+ employees and 150+ million euros in annual turnover. Companies that fail to comply with the rules can face fines.
A secondary goal of HREDD is to align companies' business operations with the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement (an agreement to cap global temperature increases by 2030, signed by 195 countries in 2015).
The HREDD principles also take into account Fairtrade standards. The issue of social responsibility of commercial companies and organizations is central to the work and impact of Fairtrade. Fairtrade standards (including standards for smallholder coffee organizations) are designed to deepen HREDD.
Fairtrade today works primarily with agricultural and textile supply chains. The main human rights areas on which these efforts focus include:
• a living minimum wage
• freedom from child labor, forced labor and gender-based violence
• working to eliminate discrimination based on gender, ethnicity or other grounds
• freedom of association and freedom to form unions
• decent working conditions
• environmental rights.
Other interesting and useful initiatives in the world of agricultural production today include:
• ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance. ESG provides a framework for evaluating companies in terms of their performance in these three areas. ESG reporting reflects a company’s impact on the environment, its employees and other stakeholders, and assesses the transparency of its management. ESG can be another source of information about a company that is useful for potential investors who want to invest in sustainable and responsible businesses.
• UNGP: UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights 2011. Contains 31 principles in three main areas (State obligations to protect human rights, corporate responsibility to respect human rights and access to redress for victims of human rights abuses by business). It is a non-binding, advisory instrument.
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