In this week’s newsletter, we will highlight a landmark decision in Belgium, where a case against TotalEnergies over its contribution to climate change has been admitted to court. In addition, the EU has published its Due Diligence Navigator for Partner Countries, providing resources and support for different stakeholders and the Competence Centre for Human Rights Due Diligence has been launched by global trade unions aiming to support a worker-based HREDD implementation.
In the UK, there is increasing pressure by businesses and NGOs on the government to implement necessary legislation aligned with the EUDR to prevent the import of products made with deforestation. Meanwhile, the scope of the EUDR is again being questioned with lobbying groups aiming for an exclusion of leather from the scope of the Regulation. At the same time, illegal deforestation in Brazil and a new study on reforestation successes demonstrate the need for legislation across the Bloc and the UK. Lastly, a lawsuit was filed in the US against Aqua Star on misleading costumers with their claims of sustainably and responsibly sourced seafood. As NGO investigations show, India-linked seafood supply chains are heavily tainted with forced labour and environmental pollution.
Lastly, given the recent World Water Day, we shed light on emerging challenges across different sectors and countries concerning the responsible corporate conduct on water, or corporate water stewardship.
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Announcements
Report Launch – A Day in the Life – State-imposed Forced Labour, Surveillance, and State Control in DPRK Overseas Labour Programmes
GRC, Beyond’s sister organisation, together with a local partner, spoke with DPRK nationals currently working in conditions of state-sponsored forced labour on construction sites across several Russian cities. Their experiences vary in detail, but the structure of control is the same. Those testimonies have been compiled in a report, reflecting patterns that repeat across sites, seasons and years. This narrative illustrates the systematic state-sponsored forced labour conditions faced by tens of thousands.
→ Click here to access the report.
Due Diligence Legislation
Updates:
In Belgium, the so-called Farmer Case, legal action brought against TotalEnergies regarding its climate liability, has been admitted to court. With the ruling, the judges recognise that victims of climate change can bring legal action against a company in their own country, regardless of where the business is based.
The court further decided to postpone its proceeding while awaiting the decision in the ongoing TotalEnergies climate trial in Paris. The case in France has been brought in 2020 by a coalition of NGOs against the company for failing to fulfil its obligations concerning climate action under the Loi de Vigilance Act.
These cases represent a wider trend in climate litigation holding companies accountable for their emissions. In 2025, a court in Germany had ruled that RWE, a major German energy company, could be held liable for the consequences of the climate crisis which it partly caused, offering a pathway to those impacted by climate change to ultimately hold polluters accountable.
The EU Due Diligence Navigator for Partner Countries has been launched by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and GIZ. It aims to support different actors from partnering countries with information on the CSDDD and its implications for those partner countries, provide an overview of relevant country-specific support and tailored information provided by an advisory team. The platform can be used both as a database as well as for outreach for support by government, business and civil society actors.
Last week, IndustriALL Global Union, UNI Global Union, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) launched the Competence Centre for Human Rights Due Diligence. It aims to achieve three objectives: to build unions’ capacity to use HRDD as a tool for the protection of workers’ rights, to support strategic interventions to enforce rights and to advocate for a worker-led implementation of the legislative pieces.
Notes/Further Reading:
The Living Income Community of Practice and Shift have published a practical guidance for agribusiness on Strengthening Meaningful Due Diligence for Living Income. The guidance showcases how to effectively apply a HRDD lens to living income efforts which many businesses are already working on. It aims to achieve this by detailing, how living income can be integrated into due diligence steps and practically applied across the risk management systems.
Deforestation Legislation
Updates:
Major chocolate producers of the UK Cocoa Coalition have joined NGOs in their calls for the implementation of the Forest Risk Commodities (FRC) Regulation in the UK. The Coalition calls for an end to the uncertainty over the implementation of the legislative instrument as soon as possible, to align it with the EU Deforestation Regulation and engage with all stakeholders in chocolate and cocoa supply chains in the implementation and reviewing stages of the law.
While Schedule 17 of the 2021 Environment Act already introduced core requirements on regulated businesses, secondary legislation is required to operationalise it. The preliminary requirements include a prohibition for businesses of using illegally produced forest risk commodities, establishing a due diligence system for the regulated commodities and annual reporting on due diligence measures.
Currently, the initial scope of the Environment Act covers soy, cocoa, palm oil and cattle products (excl. dairy), leaving out coffee, rubber and wood which are all covered in addition to those four commodities under the EUDR. As highlighted in the debrief earlier this year, the UK government has been heavily criticised for delaying the implementation of the secondary legislation needed – Global Witness uncovered that since 2021, 39,300ha of deforestation have been linked to UK imports.
According to Earthsight, there is a renewed lobbying push to exclude leather from the list of relevant commodities under the EUDR. The NGO details that sector lobbyists have been working closely with far-right parliamentarians to exclude leather from the Regulation’s scope with records showing meetings between the Italian tanning sector’s trade association UNIC and members of the European Parliament (MEPs).
NGOs have urged the European Commission (EC) to keep leather in the EUDR due to its links to deforestation driven by the cattle industry, a call that is echoed by the Investor Policy Dialogue on Deforestation (IPDD).
The German company Fraport AG, operator of the largest German airport, has been issued with a lawsuit due to “irregularities and illegalities” in relation with deforestation around Fortaleza Airport in Ceará, Brazil. The lawsuit alleges the deforestation to build a logistics warehouse violated the plan originally approved in the environmental licencing process.
Further Reading/Listening:
A new study by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden on drivers of deforestation among food commodities shows that beef production has driven 40% of global deforestation linked to agriculture. The data also shows that palm oil accounted for 9% of agriculture-linked deforestation, soybeans for 5% and maize and rice for 4% each.
The data is based on studying 184 agricultural commodities across 179 countries from 2001-2022 using combined satellite data and agricultural statistics. It also found that at a country level, Brazil is responsible for 32% of deforestation followed by Indonesia (9%) and China and the Democratic Republic of Congo at 6% each during the studied period.
Forced Labour Legislation
Updates:
In the U.S., Corporate Accountability Lab and Toxin Free USA have filed a lawsuit against the seafood company Aqua Star, alleging that the company falsely uses “responsibly sourced” and “sustainably sourced” claims for seafood products which are linked to exploitative labour conditions and environmental pollution. The lawsuit is filed under the Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA) and aims to raise costumer awareness of the violations.
In 2024, the Corporate Accountability Lab had conducted an investigation into India’s shrimp sector, where Aqua Star sources from, exposing exploitation of vulnerable workers, forced labour and dangerous and abusive conditions and environmental pollution prevalent in the sector.
Spotlight: World Water Day
March 22nd marked the 2026 UN World Water Day under the theme “Where water flows, equality grows”, exploring the relationship between water, women and gender equality and address persistent gender inequalities around water access and management. The backdrop of this year’s World Water Day is stark; in January, the UN released a report declaring the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy – a post-crisis condition in which irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines are the new reality.
It further highlights that 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and about 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month per year.
Both from a water user and a mHREDD perspective, responsible business conduct concerning water resources (corporate water stewardship) is central in this context. Yet, over-abstraction and pollution continue to reduce available water resources across industries. A recently published report on the fashion industry’s handling of water risk by the NGO Drip by Drip, highlights the many ways in which water is impacted in the sector.
It sheds light, among other things, on meaningful stakeholder engagement approaches to monitor environmental impacts on communities, highlights the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene in the context of climate change impacts and disproportionate adverse effects on the health of women workers, particularly pregnant women.
Communities across different regions also raise concerns about the impact of mining on water resources. In Indonesia, the NGO Satya Bumi has recently released a report highlighting, amongst other adverse impacts, the pollution of the Oko-oko and Mekongga watersheds caused by the construction of the Indonesia Pomalaa Industrial Park, a new nickel mining area, and the Kolaka Nickel Indonesia processing and refining plant. In Spain and Portugal, CSOs are raising concerns that the San Juan Mine, located within the River Rabaçal Basin which flows into protected areas in Portugal, does not meet transborder environmental impact assessment standards nor the required environmental compliance standards under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act.
The criticism grows as there is an increasing lobbying push by the mining sector within the EU to loosen water standards of the bloc’s Water Framework Directive in a bid to ramp up the extraction of rare metals and minerals needed for the expansion of green energy technology.
The construction of data centres draws also opposition by communities internationally over their use of water and impacts of pollution. In Thailand, 70 data centres are currently planned or under construction, often in water stressed areas criticised by experts and community members for a lack of transparency and community engagement, creating uncertainty about environmental safeguards. In Brazil, similar concerns are voiced over the projected water use of a new Microsoft AI centre which recent studies show could be much higher than disclosed.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for general informational purposes only. It does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice.