Society

RIAA's Nature Working Group is an initiative to support members in their stewardship responsibilities to protect nature and biodiversity in their business operations and their portfolio of companies.

Join us for our last meeting of 2024 which will open with a presentation from Sam Jones, president and co-founder of Heartland Initiative, where he leads the development of methodologies, tools, and guidance to assist investors in the prevention and mitigation of human rights harms across their portfolios. Sam will speak to the working group about the recently released paper, “The Saliency Materiality Nexus: Addressing systemic risks to people and portfolios in a turbulent world” by Heartland Initiative, Schroders Asset Management, and Wespath Benefits & Investments​. The paper describes the saliency-materiality nexus as a practical, rights-based framework that can focus investors’ analytical and engagement efforts on identifying and addressing the most severe and systemic social risks in their portfolios. Sam has over 25 years of experience in conflict-sensitive research, analysis, and programming, international humanitarian and human rights law, and multi-stakeholder engagement in public and private spheres. Before co-founding Heartland Initiative, Sam worked as Associate Director of the Human Rights Program at The Carter Center, where he managed programs in the Middle East and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including those focused on corporate accountability for human rights harms in industrial mining and the protection of human rights defenders. Sam previously served as regional representative for Asia/Near East for Counterpart International, managing humanitarian and development programs in Iraq and Jordan and leading assessment missions to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. This will then be followed by the standard HRWG meeting including updates from the subgroups and RIAA’s policy and advocacy work.

Join us at the next Human Rights Working Group meeting for the opportunity to hear from the New South Wales’ first Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dr James Cockayne. He will discuss modern slavery statements, challenges with scalable modern slavery data, and explore the significance of these issues, covering the responsibility to protect, moving towards a value creation exercise, and examples of specific supply chains. This will be followed by the standard agenda items, including a series of industry updates as well as updates from our subgroups. We will then have the opportunity to reflect on our work plan as well as receive updates from RIAA’s Head of Policy and Advocacy.

This meeting will start with a discussion on mandating due diligence in the EU, key takeaways on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and insights on mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (mHREDD). To help us explore this topic, we are excited to welcome Rebecca DeWinter-Schmitt, Associate Director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights who focuses on connecting institutional investors and their allies with the tools and strategies to promote human rights and responsible business conduct. This will then be followed by a series of industry updates and insights from the group’s subgroups including an update on the AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Human Rights Investor Toolkit and the Conflict subgroup. This will also provide the opportunity for discussion and input on what the working group should be focusing on for the next workplan. We will also hear a brief update about RIAA’s Policy work.

Building on the last working group meeting of 2023, working group members had the opportunity to hear from speakers to understand more about regulatory changes in relation to labour rights and the workplace. In December 2022, a new positive duty to eradicate instances of sex discrimination and harassment within the workplace was introduced through the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022 (Cth) (the Act), an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. What steps can investors take to respond to these changes? The group was lucky enough to hear from the Australian Human Rights Commission, Samantha Ramsay (Senior Lawyer, Positive Duty, Compliance & Enforcement Team) and Dr Meredith Nash (Director – Sexual Harassment & Gendered Violence and is KPMG’s national lead for Respect@Work) about these changes. Please note this session was not recorded as mentioned in pre-event communications.