Digital Infrastructures of Sustainability Regulation (DigiChain)
Project setup
The adoption of the landmark EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is the latest evidence of a turn to ‘due diligence’ as a central pillar of EU sustainability regulation. It requires large companies to identify, prevent and mitigate sustainability risks across their value chains. The DigiChain project illustrates that the practice of due diligence especially under the CSDDD will be digital, in the sense that companies and regulators use digital technologies, foremost AI-driven, to reach and evaluate compliance with the new rules. Digital technologies and data analysis provide the infrastructure that shapes the due diligence process and determines its effectiveness.
The DigiChain project explores interconnections between regulatory and technological developments, identifies the features of these emerging ‘techno-legalities’ and how they are assembled into a new governance regime for the global economy. Towards this, the project team (1.) maps existing technological tools and relates them to the different stages of the due diligence process, (2.) examines how the data input, evaluation and presentation underlying leading tools allows compliance with the EU CSDDD, and (3.) draws initial recommendations to regulators and business on the use of digital due diligence tools.
Project Outreach
The team is currently setting up practice workshops with digital tool providers and public policy stakeholders. Please get in touch via email if you would like to know more or get involved.
The project group has served as expert consultant towards and/or exchanged with the European Commission, the UN OHCHR, as well as national governments, NGOs, tool providers and other stakeholders on the question of digital tools in sustainability regulation.
The project builds on a week-long professional training and Spring Academy on ‘Technologies of sustainability due diligence’ at the Asser Institute hosted by team members Antoine Duval (Asser Institute) and Klaas Eller (UvA Law School) in April 2024. With 20+ speakers from tech providers, NGOs, government, business, law firms and academia, the program explored legal, technological, regulatory and management angles on digital tools in value chains. The full program is available here.
The Spring Academy will go into another edition in 2025 – please check here for details on the programme and the registration.
Project Publications
Antoine Duval and Klaas Hendrik Eller, A ‘digital turn’ for sustainability due diligence? Digital tools and the CSDDD, Business and Human Rights Research Center Blog (2024), available here
Klaas Hendrik Eller & Antoine Duval, Im Sog der Bürokratierhetorik. Lieferketten- und Nachhaltigkeitsregulierung zwischen Bürokratie und Good Private Governance, Verfassungsblog, 10 January 2025, available here
Already in 2023, the Asser Institute released a first-of-its-kind report on the ‘Potential of Big Data Technologies for the Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Process’, commissioned by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
DigiChain Project Team
The project brings together scholars with a background in law, economics and business, as well as informatics for an integrated analysis of digitalized due diligence and value chain governance
The project and its different pillars are funded by the University of Amsterdam (Seed Grant Responsible Digital Transformations), the Asser Institute and the NWO.
