Transparency at scale: Digital solutions for trust, resilience and sustainability: verifiable credentials in supply chains

otherProject Details

Domain	Trade Procedures Facilitation Domain
Project Identifier
Bureau Decision #
Project Proposal Status
Project Page	Transparency at scale digital solutions for trust, resilience and sustainability: verifiable credentials in supply chains
Supporting VC	Nurbek Maksutov
Project Lead	Steven Capell Ms. Susanne Guth-ORLOWSKI
HoD Support
Status
Version
Submitted date
Draft Development Completion
Publication Date

Relevant SDG targets:

As a framework for globally scalable supply chain transparency that supports any ESG criteria imposed on any product by either an ESG standard or a regulation, Recommendation 49 targets

• SDG 6 – Clean water and sanitation
• SDG 7 – Affordable & clean energy
• SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth
• SDG 11 – Sustainable cities and communities
• SDG 12 – Responsible consumption & production
• SDG 13 – Climate action
• SDG 14 – Life below water
• SDG 15 – Life on land

Project Purpose

 As regulatory and consumer pressures drive up demand (and justify premium prices) for sustainable goods, so the commercial incentive to make fake sustainability claims will increase.  

• EC investigation² : 59% of environmental claims had no evidence and 42% were deemed false or deceptive.
• Fast Company³: 68% of executives admit their company is guilty of greenwashing.
• Survey⁴: 78% of consumers believe that companies should be environmentally responsible and are willing to pay premiums for confidence in those claims.

At COP 27, Secretary General Guterres clearly stated that the UN has : “Zero Tolerance for Greenwashing”⁵.  There is already a significant difference between consumer expectation and market Behaviour.  There are two plausible pathways out:

The UN/CEFACT mission of “digital standards for sustainable supply chains” provides ideal positioning for this recommendation to nations that aims to make fake claims hard and therefore drive industry to compete in a “race to the top” where commercial motivations exist for stronger and strong evidence of sustainable products.

Building on UNECE Rec#46⁶ which defined standard processes and data structures for textile & leather traceability & transparency and guided by principles in the VC white paper⁷, this new recommendation will provide guidance for nations on scaling traceability, transparency and trust in supply chains so that unsustainable practices have nowhere to hide.

1. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_n7b.pdf
2. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_269
3. https://www.fastcompany.com/90740501/68-of-u-s-execs-admit-their-companies-are-guilty-of-greenwashing
4. https://blog.gitnux.com/greenwashing-statistics/
5. https://www.un.org/en/delegate/%E2%80%98zero-tolerance-greenwashing%E2%80%99-guterres-says-report-launch
6. https://unece.org/trade/traceability-sustainable-garment-and-footwear
7. https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/WhitePaper_VerifiableCredentials-CBT.pdf

Project Scope

Project Deliverables

Exit Criteria

Impact analysis

Regulators : Combat greenwashing and uplift export market access.

Industry: Meet supply chain due diligence obligations for you and your customers.

Certifiers : Provide digitally verifiable trust of ESG compliance.

Software Providers : Empower your customers to participate in sustainable digitised supply chains.

Successful impact is measured by uptake metrics by each of the stakeholder categories above. The recommendation will seek commitment via a sustainability pledge and then will track successful implementations via a self-service implementation test & verification tool. Uptake targets are based on existing 100+ sustainability pledges received for the textile & leather traceability program.

Project Team Membership and Required Functional Expertise

Geographical Focus

Beneficiaries

Initial Contributions

This project builds upon work already completed by UNECE and partner organisations.

• Rec 46 - https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/ECE-TRADE-463E.pdf
• T & L BRS - https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/BRS-Traceability-Transparency-TextileLeather-Part1-HLPDM_v1.pdf
• VC White paper - https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/WhitePaper_VerifiableCredentials-CBT.pdf
• BSP 22B based Supply chain JSON-LD vocabulary - https://vocabulary.uncefact.org/
• GS1 CBV & EPCIS 2.0 - https://www.gs1.org/standards/epcis
• ITC Standards mapping - https://standardsmap.org/en/identify
• UN/CEFACT Gitbub - https://github.com/uncefact

Resource Requirements

Project Proposal Files