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6 years ago

Social and environmental standards for achieving SDGs

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As declared in the SDG-2030 Agenda, the transformation of society entails many changes in organizational responsibilities and services to the citizens. Both the public and private sectors have recently taken different initiatives in their transformation process aligned to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). But huge gaps are found in the delivery of services at many organizations having commitments on environmental and social responsibilities. Sometimes the exact instruments are absent, or are not used for measuring output and ensuring necessary check and balance in social and environmental commitments. In contrast, the average people or institutions hold a wrong perception about cost-effectiveness of projects regardless of the return to their activities for fulfilling social and environmental commitments.

However, the monitoring of environmental and social standards and related progress has not been started by many organizations and individuals. The process may have been deliberately avoided by them for upholding their self-interest instead of focusing on the SDG targets. As we know, the government is liable to encourage the 'transitional companies' to pursue sustainable practices in regular activities, and integrate sustainability in the reporting cycle owned by the companies (SDG 12.6). However, considering some particular SDG targets, different government bodies, business organisations, academia and NGOs may adopt some legal instruments on the social and environmental standards that can lead towards SDG achievements.

Over the past few years, debates arose from the perspective of human rights violations on environmental and social benefits the organizations have committed to deliver. It is sometimes misinterpreted that only some specialised companies (e.g. pollution-based industries, environment organizations etc.) would be managing their social and environmental responsibilities. But the SDGs cannot allow only a group of organizations for the maintenance of standard services, as a wider participation by all types of organizations is required in the joint enforcement towards implementing the SDG strategy in the respective services and/or productions. For example, human rights violations of labour and pollution-related matters are main concerns in the textile industries of Bangladesh. So the human rights violations in this sector should be monitored and settled by legally-binding rules on social and environmental standards, and this could be executed by ensuring the participation of all relevant stakeholders.

Many cases can be explored in different ways under the SDG-framework. Specifically, the common citizens are being frequently affected by the social and environmental violations caused by the irresponsible practices of relevant organizations. Either a regulatory gap is found, or implementation of respective rules and regulation is bypassed in the mainstream development plans initiated by different public and private bodies. An individual organization taking legal action when its economic rights are violated is a common scenario in Bangladesh. But they do not take similar steps when the social and environmental rights of their employees are similarly violated.

Human rights violations are found in many situations like land/water-body grabbing, food adulteration, industrial pollution, deforestation, over-harvesting etc. In such violations, the accountability, judgments and punishments are usually absent among all the parties irrespective of the victims or offenders. So, the corporate bodies need to have a legal space considering the social and environmental bindings in respective violations. In many cases, we ignore these violations at individual level because people are unaware about their rights. The corporate bodies may use private tribunals to sue all the functional public bodies and consider the environmental and social standards in their returns on investment.

Until now, very few organizations have proposed new legal rights and instruments that can help the citizens whose social and environmental rights are being continually affected. Many frameworks related to this task have been framed, which might be agreed upon by different parties. Different agreements may be conceptualised having the following elements: a) Defining the concrete responsibilities and liabilities, and the organizational culture to be adopted in the pathway to achieving SDG targets for the particular products or services; b) the supply chain of a company's services should measure the human rights risks of their stakeholders, and the impact assessment report should be prepared continually; c) the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms at both local and international levels should be enforced; d) inter-governmental cooperation is very much needed for examining and enforcing judgments; e) extra-territorial obligations may be identified and settled for participating organizations, states etc; and, f) clarification of agreements is needed, especially on the issues of human rights violations under social and environmental commitments.

The challenges to human rights violations have been discussed to devise legal instruments, so that any organization can accomplish its commitments on the path towards achieving SDGs, especially through legally binding social and environmental responsibilities. In typical cases, we have witnessed habitually poor execution of environmental and social responsibilities in many organizations. The SDGs also do not clarify many issues regarding these particular areas of human rights violations. It is true that relying on mere self-interest would not yield desired results. We should opt for both public and private enforcements and include a broader vision for monitoring outcomes in achieving social and environmental targets of SDGs. The laws should be strengthened, providing broader scope for individual citizens to initiate actions for legal rights violations. Overall, the private sector must play a key role in the ownership of the SDG-driven strategic plan. At the same time, public awareness of human rights violations in some particular sectors should be more publicised through both private and public representatives.

Polin Kumar Saha is a Senior Research Associate and Sustainability Professional at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division.

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