A Critical Perspective on Sustainability Regulations
Looking back at my 4 year old thesis introduction and the realization that it became even more relevant with the existing and coming sustainability regulations.
Today I re-read the introduction of my thesis from 2022. It was a wake-up call that gave me a sad smile and sarcastic laughter.
What I did:
I came up with a fictional news story for May 12th, 2025, about an incident similar to the Rana Plaza collapse. The difference being that this time around, the brands producing there could prove their innocence through various certificates and other data in dedicated software and platforms. The questions I posed: Who bears accountability? Who is responsible for fixing?
Why is it as relevant as it was 4 years ago?
We still cannot answer it, even though we have more data, more tech. We keep on talking about sustainability, resilience, fairness, and environmental protection, but lack the necessary foundation for the implementation of it all:
Dialogue on eye level with all parties involved
The Global North stepping down from its golden ladder, telling the world how it should run because we think we know it - we might know some parts, but we also screwed the world with our cultural concept of meritocracy1, and dependency on fossil fuels and rare earths.
The existing and coming sustainability regulations - focusing on the European ones, since I am situated in this area - like the digital product passport, corporate sustainability due diligence directive, corporate sustainability reporting directive, or the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, have good intentions. They do not answer the question of responsibility, though. They try to establish a data foundation, certain safety loops for suppliers, and a whole mountain of reporting work. Does that solve the issues?
I doubt it. It takes attention away from the people in the appropriate positions who can actually improve something in global supply chains, away from the actual work. Don’t get me wrong: No regulations also don’t make sense. That has been proven in the last few decades, because of no regulations, we are in the position we are in. I am just questioning the perspective these regulations take, the goals they set - if they even do - and, with that, their ability to ask the right questions.
What if they included more diverse perspectives? What if they started asking what actually matters to sustainability and the people affected by those regulations, like:
What problems are you actually suffering from?
How do you define sustainability?
What is your take on responsibility distribution along global supply chains?
How do you protect the planet and society already, and how can we as Regulators support you in that?
And then combine the answers to those questions with the scientific goals our society has to achieve to have a future worth living for? What if they would shift their perspectives away from defining and asking for proof that certain mechanisms, like a grievance mechanism or a corporate sustainability officer, have been established towards actual improvements, and leave it to a co-created/-designed system by all the companies in a supply chain, including suppliers in deeper tiers, even farmers, on how sustainable practices look like and are reached?
This kind of policy work would have the potential to tackle the actual structures and business models, like fast, linear consumption, that cause our society so many problems. But of course, this requires more balls than asking companies for regular PDF reports of their sustainability achievements…
I am not part of making regulations; I just see the outcomes of it, and they do not make it easy for anyone involved. It creates an environment in which everybody is overwhelmed, disliking sustainability more and more, not because of sustainability itself, but because of how it is requested to be implemented, which is shifting the workload on the individual and back into global supply chains to actors who are already doing the work for too little. I would love to know more about the perspectives of the minds developing those regulations and their thoughts, but also about the perspectives and thoughts of those who have to follow them.
Hope you enjoyed my perspective on my past writing. If you wanna know more about how I got them: In the following, I pasted the introduction of my thesis that I wrote four years ago. Still so proud of that achievement, writing a whole thesis - 26.6777 words - without ANY AI.
A news story on May 12th, 2025: Brands prove their innocence in factory collapse
Last night, a twelve-story factory building collapsed in Savar, near the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, burying hundreds of employees. Leading NGOs quickly went public with statements seeking responsibility from brands producing there. They referred to Rana Plaza, where the biggest disaster in the history of the textile industry occurred in 2013.
At the time, this tragedy triggered discussions about the desolate working and safety conditions throughout the textile, clothing, and footwear industries worldwide. To this day, the results of this controversy continue to impact the industry through intergovernmental regulations and supply chain laws. It had been hoped that such horrific accidents could be prevented in this way.
The firms, however, bear no responsibility this time. After all, the companies that had manufacturing operations at the collapsed factory were using blockchain-based supply chain transparency and sustainability management platforms. They implemented those to ensure that they have valid certificates for occupational safety and environmental standards at every step of their supply chains. But if the brands did everything in their power, who bears responsibility?
1. Introducing the work: What kind of world do we want to live in?
The news story is fictional. Nevertheless, it is still a story showing the relevance for this research because the technologies enabling transparent supply chains already exist (Roeck et al., 2020, para. 1). Through them, it will be possible to assign responsibilities and identify culprits (Kamilaris et al., 2019, p. 647). However, they do not necessarily address structural injustices (Abebe et al., 2020, p. 252). In the news story, we need to question how the valid certificates could have been issued. Did the issuing auditor examine everything accurately? If not, what were the reasons for it?
This case gives an insight into the complexity and multi-layered nature of Global Production Networks2. They are the backbone of our society and the basis of global trade (Siddiqui, 2020, p. 25). As the Literature Review of Latapí Agudelo et al. (2019) shows, companies pursued a micro-level perspective and therefore an “out of sight, out of mind mentality” concerning their Global ProductionNetworks. That leads them to disregard the negative impacts they create(d) and a simultaneous focus on their financial success and economic growth (Porter & Kramer, 2011, p. 64). The responsibility distribution is naturally affected by this: It ends where there is no financial control (Mares, 2010, pp. 38–39). The results are anonymous Global Production Networks in which those involved know at mosttheir direct supplier and customer (Giunipero et al., 2008, p. 82). This way of doing business has corresponding effects on the planet and society. The production of consumer goods has a significant impact on climate change and environmental pollution (UNEP, 2017, pp. 9–13), and we are presented with severe social issues (Nfa et al., 2005) since the Global North enjoys most of the benefits. In contrast, the Global South must live with the disadvantages of global trade (Odeh, 2010, pp. 346–347).3
By now, global corporations are aware of the burden they bear on society. They have been trying to better themselves and reverse their impact (World Economic Forum, 2015, pp. 6, 11–21). Many publish their attempts and measures in non-financial reports, so-called sustainability reports (Phillips & Caldwell, 2005, p. 253). Technology is an essential tool for that since the companies would not be able to assume their responsibility, measure their sustainability, make their efforts transparent and show their customers that they do as they say (Norton Rose Fulbrights, 2020). However, to become truly sustainable, there is no way around the fact that companies have to deal with their production networks. On the one hand, they enable anonymous global trade, which leads to the degradation of natural and social capital. On the other hand, they are connectors between the actors and could become catalysts in the transformation to a sustainable economy and society (Matthews et al., 2016, p. 82).
Although global corporations are aware of the potential inherent to their Global Production Networks and are starting to assume responsibility for them (Fashion Revolution, 2021, pp. 6–17), what remains unconsidered in their effort is the sustainabilization4 of their Global Production Networks. It is based on colonial power structures and thus goes hand in hand with sustainability imperialism. Pressured by their stakeholders to produce in social and planet-friendly ways, companies of the Global North apply corporate responsibility concepts to their Global Production Networks and expect the remaining stakeholders upstream to follow along (Touboulic & Ejodame, 2016, pp. 631–635). After the last decades of outsourcing to produce as cheaply as possible and exploiting suppliers and producers, forcing them to give up their traditional ways of living and working (Bartsch et al., 2017, pp. 11–12), this is another forced change by global companies to ensure sustainable production – at least in the understanding of sustainability of the Global North. In this context, the motivation and the approach of the Global North must be questioned: Are they open to equal partnerships, or do they want to command their will to protect their reputation? Is it possible to justify sustainable production in the eyes of the Global North if the journey towards it is unfair and forced?
I am not against meritocracy completely, just the form and toll that it takes on humans today.
Global Production Network is a concept that seeks to include every type of network with all relevant actors. It thus goes beyond the linear approach found in other concepts such as Global Commodity or Global Value Chain (Coeet al., 2008, p. 272).
2 The Global North/South divide is a concept that describes the inequality between rich and poor communities. It originates from the Brandt line – developed in the 1980s – which splits all countries into relatively richer and poorer according to their geographic position. Richer countries are mostly found in the northern hemisphere, poorer nations in the southern hemisphere. Since the world was and still is much more complex than this original definition suggests, I follow other researchers in using it to refer to poorer and richer communities and not necessarily countries (Royal Geographical Society, n.d.).
Sustainabilization as well as to sustainabilize is a neologism from me for this research. I use it to describe “making something sustainable”. I did not come across a term that includes this meaning and did not want to use this long, literary bulky description.