Private sector actors are paying more attention to their negative impacts on climate, nature, and biodiversity. CCSI engages with private sector initiatives, frameworks, and benchmarks in this area to ensure the core corporate responsibility to respect human rights is prioritized and addressed.
As part of this work, in March and April 2022, CCSI submitted comments to and engaged with the World Benchmarking Alliance on their Draft Methodology for their Nature and Biodiversity Benchmark. The World Benchmarking Alliance is a leading multi-stakeholder organization which creates benchmarks to publicly assess and rank the world's most influential companies on their contributions to the SDGs using the best available science and existing international norms and standards. As a WBA Ally interested in strengthening private sector benchmarks and standards and ensuring that they, at a minimum, promote the expectation that companies respect internationally-recognized human rights, CCSI welcomed the opportunity to submit comments on WBA's Nature Benchmark as part of their public consultation.
Subsequently, WBA published their final Nature Benchmark Methodology, which addressed many of the points raised by CCSI. The Methodology now: (1) includes strong international human rights-aligned language on free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and Indigenous peoples' rights; (2) scrutinizes companies who commit to FPIC, but undermine that commitment in their own disclosure; and (3) includes an indicator on company respect for the rights of environmental and human rights defenders.
Read CCSI's Consolidated Feedback on the WBA Draft Nature Benchmark Methodology.
Comments on the WBA Draft Methodology were submitted as part of ALIGN, funded by UK Aid from the UK Government.