The European Union has identified human rights and environmental due diligence as a key element in achieving its economic and sustainability objectives. The DiliCHANCE project, a Horizon Europe project funded by the European Commission, runs from 2024-2027. It will provide practical, field-tested tools, models, guidance, and engagement opportunities on due diligence for minerals sector businesses active in the European market. Particular sectors of focus include the renewable energy, mobility and electronics sectors. DiliCHANCE will also provide a one-stop-shop (help desk) for minerals sector due diligence.
Levin Sources is a core partner in a multi-stakeholder consortium carrying out the DiliCHANCE project, working alongside Vienna University’s Institute for Managing Sustainability, EIT Raw Materials, the World Resources Forum, Statik, Solidaridad, WWF, KPMG Austria, the French Geological Survey (BGRM), and the Association of Women in Mining in Africa.
A key thread running through the entire project’s design is the centrality of affected people and environments in due diligence efforts. At each project stage, the perspectives of affected people, and insights from circumstances in affected environments, will be considered and integrated, including through work in a small selection of minerals-producing countries.
Project at-a-glance and Levin Sources’ role
Levin Sources is leading and/or contributing to all workstreams in the DiliCHANCE project. The workstreams include the development of the one-stop-shop (help desk) for due diligence, testing current tools and approaches to due diligence used in the sector, working with key stakeholders to developed improved tools and approaches for due diligence, and improving assurance models for due diligence. The project includes extensive activities for stakeholder engagement and outreach, and dissemination of materials.
The work package Levin Sources is primarily responsible for designing and carrying out is focused on identifying improved models for assurance of businesses’ due diligence measures.
Bringing a people-centric approach to meaningful assurance of due diligence
The assurance and verification of businesses’ due diligence measures play an increasingly decisive role in businesses’ determination of which measures they undertake and where they focus their investment of resources for due diligence. While assurance and verification are part of due diligence as defined in international normative frameworks (the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises for Responsible Business Conduct), their outsize influence in due diligence implementation is largely driven by a historical intra-industry compliance mindset in due diligence (particularly in the minerals sector), as well as by the understandable necessity of verifying due diligence efforts as part of compliance with due diligence regulations.
Current evidence looking back at over a decade of practice indicates that existing approaches to assurance and verification of human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), particularly in minerals value chains, have not significantly advanced positive outcomes of that due diligence for affected people and environments. Traditional assurance and verification practices in minerals value chains have focused primarily on the existence of policies and procedures, with limited examination of actual “performance” – meaning the assurance has not tended to tell users much about the impact of those policies and procedures on the people and environments they are meant to respect.
Affected people have tended to play a minimal – if any – role in assurance and verification processes, despite strong evidence indicating their participation is critical for accurate findings and resultant corrective actions. Major governmental and industry bodies have held regular exchanges over several years about the lack of efficacy and quality of assurance and verification in minerals value chains (see further discussion of this and recent examples here). However, at this time, an alternative pathway to more impactful assurance and verification that would further the aims of due diligence remains a work in progress.
The purpose of the work package on assurance led by Levin Sources is to advance thinking and practice on those pathways. Our key activities will include:
- critical analysis of existing practices
- examination of nascent promising approaches to identify pathways to potentially scale and further develop
- development of a means to ensure the centrality of affected people and environments in assurance and verification (the alternative/improved model)
- delivery of capacity building on this improved model for the increasingly large community of assurance practitioners providing services in due diligence.
Join us
DiliCHANCE will be informed by insights, testing feedback and co-creation with a range of stakeholders. If you’re interested in contributing or finding out more about the support DiliCHANCE will provide, please be in touch.
