Actions Speak Louder

Supply Chain Sustainability

Last week I had another pleasure to share my mind with esteemed panelist Pia Alina Lange of Trinasolar and Steven Xuereb of Kiwa PI Berlin and attentive audience during SolarPower Europe 's Solar Quality Summit 2024's "Implementing Supply Chain Sustainability Audits into Your Procurement Strategy" session that was moderated by Alexia Ruvoletto of Solar Stewardship Initiative (SSI) .

Solar Stewardship Initiative is a Multi-Stakeholder Initiative (MSI) which is a central pillar of the human rights strategies of many organisations and industries.

MSIs can perform a wide variety of functions as: awareness-raising, bringing various stakeholders together, creating mutual understanding, cross-sector learning, capacity-building, standard-setting, certification and verification of good practices and SSI ticks all the boxes for solar industry which is essential for energy transition. 2024 will the year of transparency through more validated data from SSI, trust enabled collaboration of stakeholders, joint-problem solving for eliminating concerns on solar value chain and accelerating capacity additions for reducing carbon emissions of fossil fuels.

If you are solar value chain stakeholder, for not hesitate to join SSI to get your voice heard!

EU's Forced Labour Ban

Last Friday, European Council adopted its position (negotiating mandate) on the regulation prohibiting products made with forced labour on the EU market. The mandate agreed formalises the Council’s negotiating position. It provides the Council presidency with a mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament, which adopted its position on 8 November 2023. Inter-institutional negotiations will start as soon as possible.

SolarPower Europe has been leading the sector's push for a more responsible, transparent, and sustainable solar value chain. To ensure that industries have the tools they need to swiftly demonstrate compliance with EU law, it is vital for industry for the specific recognition of multi-stakeholder initiatives

This is all the more important given that it is now confirmed that the CSDDD also includes the recognition of multi-stakeholder initiatives in its final text. We need that consistency between EU legislation for legal certainty for companies, who are essential to the climate and energy security goals of Europe.

Below the Line

Rung 1 | Lack of Awareness (Denial)

When people operate ‘below the line’, we see and hear low accountability ‘victim’ behaviours. People here often describe how things happen to them, and are often passive in accepting their influence on the outcome (I can’t/ I didn’t/ I won’t), or blame others. These behaviours often serve a purpose for the individual, so can be hard to change. Victims also require others to ignore, tolerate, collude with or even facilitate these behaviours.  Are you facilitating people to operate on the lower rungs of the ladder by holding on to too much accountability? Are you enabling a lack of accountability by taking back control when people choose this position?

It is interesting to note that the lowest level of accountability is ‘no one told me’, with ‘I didn’t know’ actually being slightly more accountable! ‘I didn’t know’ infers that the person could have chosen to find out, whereas ‘no one told me’ puts all the responsibility on others! In the next few rungs below the line, we may see evidence of some accountability, but it may be narrow and focused on the needs of that individual, not others. Blame may still occur. People may only go ‘above the line’ in relation to their own interests.

At the bottom rung of accountability is ‘I don’t know!” at this stage people simply don’t know that there is a problem. They are completely unaware that the problem exists or that something needs attention. We are surrounded by topics and situations we don’t know about – if we knew about them all we would likely have information overload. It makes sense then that we are all at this rung in some aspect of our lives – it’s up to you to identify it and decide if you want to take action.

This stage could be something simple as using an old process at work and saying “I did it because it’s what we’ve always done!” – when in reality the process is no longer fit for purpose. You may not have known it was an issue at the time, because you simply hadn’t taken a step back to consider the risks of taking the actions you did.

These are the people who are not even aware of the problem or there may even be a problem. For example, let's just say you have poor hygiene, but you have no clue about it. In fact, you think you smell like a flower. Other people can smell your stench or notice it, but you have no clue. this would be the unaware or unconscious level. I found this very similar approach to denial of an addict.

Example: “As a powerless person, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. Am I even involved? Does this even impact me? I don’t think I know anything about this situation.”

No accountability, person totally unaware of failures. These are business people, whether they be employees, managers, or entrepreneurs, who don’t have a clue about what is required or the devastation they leave behind. Usually, these people think they are doing a great job, and are totally oblivious to their unhappy customers or cash drain.

Our next stage “Blame Others.”

Be the Change: Should you have no teacher, instructor, or mentor to offer counsel, be that person. Guide, inspire, and motivate. Be the change in your own life and positive influence on others.