Broad di­a­logue on com­mod­ity trad­ing and human rights ini­ti­ated

Switzer­land is one of the world's lead­ing hubs for trade in agri­cul­tural com­modi­ties, oil, met­als and min­er­als. Around 900 com­pa­nies are ac­tive in com­mod­ity trad­ing, which in turn em­ploy around 10,000 peo­ple. The sec­tor is there­fore im­por­tant for the Swiss econ­omy. At the same time, com­mod­ity trad­ing has re­peat­edly been the sub­ject of crit­i­cism in Switzer­land. In par­tic­u­lar, the com­pa­nies con­cerned are ac­cused of a lack of trans­parency or dis­re­gard for human rights in po­lit­i­cally un­sta­ble coun­tries.

Work­shop with broad par­tic­i­pa­tion of Swiss com­mod­ity trad­ing sec­tor

To­gether with the In­sti­tute for Busi­ness Ethics at the Uni­ver­sity of St. Gallen and the Com­mod­ity Club Switzer­land, economiesu­isse there­fore in­ves­ti­gated how human rights due dili­gence is im­ple­mented in prac­tice. In a work­shop, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous com­mod­ity sec­tors were brought to­gether with ex­po­nents from sci­ence, ad­min­is­tra­tion and con­sult­ing. The in­clu­sion of all rel­e­vant ac­tors of the Swiss com­mod­ity mar­ket proved to be very valu­able.

Con­crete mea­sures within the frame­work of human rights due dili­gence

It was clearly ex­pressed in the dis­cus­sion that the com­mod­ity in­dus­try has al­ready made mea­sur­able progress in terms of re­spon­si­ble busi­ness con­duct. Many com­pa­nies have in­creased their ef­forts to iden­tify neg­a­tive im­pacts of their busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties on human rights and to ini­ti­ate pre­ven­tive mea­sures. Last year, for ex­am­ple, the Swiss cof­fee trade en­tered into a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship with the Sus­tain­able Trade Ini­tia­tive (IDH) and State Sec­re­tariat for Eco­nomic Af­fairs SECO to close in­come gaps for Colom­bian cof­fee farm­ers. In metal min­ing, too, proof of a well-de­vel­oped and ef­fi­cient so­cial man­age­ment sys­tem (in­clud­ing IRMA (Ini­tia­tive for Re­spon­si­ble Min­ing As­sur­ance) -cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) is in­creas­ingly re­quired.

Reg­u­la­tory de­vel­op­ments, but also stricter re­quire­ments from in­vestors

A re­think in the in­dus­try began years ago with spe­cific ini­tia­tives. This de­vel­op­ment was re­in­forced by na­tional and in­ter­na­tional rules. In ad­di­tion, in­vestors and clients are in­creas­ingly de­mand­ing more trans­parency. Fi­nally, media cov­er­age has also led com­pa­nies to im­prove their human rights prac­tices and re­port on them more trans­par­ently, as re­search by the Uni­ver­sity of St Gallen shows.

Chal­lenges must be ad­dressed

De­spite this progress, there are still sev­eral chal­lenges that need to be ad­dressed. For ex­am­ple, the local pop­u­la­tion should be bet­ter in­formed and in­volved in the pro­ject plans of com­mod­ity trad­ing com­pa­nies. The es­tab­lish­ment of griev­ance mech­a­nisms is also be­com­ing in­creas­ingly im­por­tant. In ad­di­tion, com­mod­ity trad­ing com­pa­nies should un­der­take more com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning that also iden­ti­fies and man­ages medium- and longer-term human rights im­pacts.

economiesu­isse wel­comes the fact that this work­shop was able to ini­ti­ate a broad di­a­logue on com­mod­ity trad­ing and human rights and is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing this di­a­logue in favour of a sus­tain­able com­mod­ity trad­ing sec­tor in Switzer­land.