In the Absence of a Social Taxonomy

The Social Taxonomy has not yet been officially released. The non-binding guidance provided by the Platform on Sustainable Finance serves as the most authoritative interpretation of how the SFDR applies to funds with a social objective. While the standards for funds with environmental objectives are more developed and carry binding effect, they offer valuable insights for interpreting the framework for social funds.

Substantial Contribution Criteria

For a social taxonomy, we could consider three types of substantial contribution:‍

• Avoiding and addressing negative societal impact: Targeting high-risk sectors with documented human-rights and labour-rights abuses; and sectors that are usually not aligned with social standards.‍
• Enhancing the inherent positive impacts of social goods and services, as well as basic economic infrastructure:Includes sectors that provide goods or services for basic human needs; and basic economic infrastructure of direct relevance to the right to an adequate standard of living.‍
• Enabling activities: Economic activities which have the potential to enable substantial social risk reductions in other sectors.

To better illustrate these categories, here are some examples.

1. Firstly, activities which address and avoid negative impacts for workers, consumers and/or communities can make a substantial contribution to these objectives (for example, by improving OHS).
2. Secondly, there are activities with inherent social benefits for end-users, communities and societies, which by their very nature contribute to social objectives, such as providing affordable pharmaceuticals to certain groups of people.
3. Thirdly, there are enabling activities for all three objectives, for example, social auditing services which help to reduce negative impacts on value-chain workers. All three of these aspects are crucial for asocial taxonomy

Do No Significant Harm

The DNSH criteria ensure that when an activity makes a substantial contribution to one social objective, it does not harm the other social objectives. In other words, an activity that makes a substantial contribution to the objective on decent work should not harm end users, communities and societies.

For example, an economic activity such as broadband expansion in underserved areas makes a substantial contribution to the objective on inclusive and sustainable communities and societies. However, broadband expansion should not harm the rights of workers building the broadband infrastructure and the living standards and well-being of consumers using the internet services.

Similarly, lending activities to under-banked groups make a substantial contribution to the objective of inclusive societies, but must not harm the living standards and wellbeing of the end-users (for example, by using non-transparent and unfair lending practices).

Why should the Social DNSH criteria be different from the environmental one?

There are three features of the DNSH criteria which require emphasis because they differ from the environmental taxonomy. These features are set out in the paragraphs below.

1. To account for several layers of objectives

The first feature to emphasise is the need for more granular DNSH criteria. Given that the substantial-contribution criteria in a social taxonomy will be developed and assessed sub-objectives, it would be most logical to also develop DNSH criteria to that level of derail, taking into the account the practical difficulties this approach entails. This means that an economic activity could be assessed for both substantial contribution and DNSH under the same headline objective.

For example, an economic activity that makes a substantial contribution to living wages (thus promoting the decent-work objective) should not: (i) harm equal employment opportunities for women; (ii) undermine collective bargaining processes; or (iii) use child or forced labour in supply chains, etc. (all three of these are sub-objectives under the decent-work objective).

Moreover, there might be cases where economic activities assessed for substantial contribution might also need to demonstrate DNSH for the very same sub-objective to which they make the substantial contribution.

2. Because certain social topics cannot be developed as individual objectives

The second feature is that the DNSH criteria might also play an important role in some important social topics and sub-objectives for which it might be challenging to draw up substantial-contribution criteria, either because it would be difficult to meaningfully prioritise sectors or because it is not possible to link turnover or expenditure to these activities. Examples of topics that we discussed where no sector-selection methodology was found to be meaningful include collective bargaining and workforce-diversity aspects.

However, if a decision is reached that substantial-contribution criteria cannot be meaningfully drawn up, then the topics could still find a place in the taxonomy through the development of DNSH criteria. In that case, the social taxonomy would follow the example of the climate change-adaptation objective in the environmental taxonomy where DNSH criteria are drawn up for all sectors selected for the climate change-mitigation objective.

In a similar way, not all economic activities prioritised for the social taxonomy could be then assessed against these DNSH criteria. This case arises where neither turnover nor expenditures can meaningfully be linked to sub-objectives like freedom of association and taxation, both topics closely related to measures at the entity level. In this case, we suggest developing criteria under the minimum-safeguards.

3. Zero-tolerance objectives are more coherently tackled through DNSH

The third feature is that it is challenging to build a meaningful case for a substantial contribution for objectives like ‘avoiding and addressing’ child labour or forced labour. These issues are generally subject to zero-tolerance, import bans and exclusion criteria stemming from legal obligations. In these cases, it is yet to be seen if and how these objectives could be reasonably framed in substantial-contribution criteria. In our opinion, it would be more coherent to test all companies through DNSH criteria.

Minimum Environmental Safeguards

Just as social and governance-related minimum safeguards (UNGPs and OECD guidelines on multinationals) are part of the environmental taxonomy, minimum environmental safeguards should be part of the future social taxonomy.

Mirroring the minimum social safeguards for the environmental taxonomy, the social taxonomy should have minimum environmental safeguards, following the environmental part of the OECD guidelines and of the UNGPs.

Conclusion

The EC confirmed that social funds are free to use their own methodologies to identify and disclose their share of sustainable investments. In other words, there are no prescriptive thresholds or approach to assess the substantial contribution to social objectives. Thus, in light of the lack of regulatory guidance, funds are left with the freedom to patchwork their own methodologies.

Nevertheless, a Social EU Taxonomy would provide more visibility and recognition to social objectives, and it would apply the same terminology, thresholds and processes to all impact-driven companies and financial entities.

Interested in measuring social impacts or discussing further about the future of the EU Taxonomy? Feel free to reach out!