The global demand for raw materials and agricultural products leads to unsustainable consequences for working conditions and the environment, particularly in countries of the Global South. Previous efforts to change this were mainly limited to self-regulation by the economy in the form of voluntary certification systems and auditing processes.
The first binding regulations on the sustainability of global value chains have only been issued in Europe since the mid-2010s. Examples include the French Loi de Vigilance enacted in 2017, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), which came into force in 2023, and the draft EU Supply Chain Directive (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) presented in 2022. The consequences of such regulations are still largely unexplored: for the companies concerned, the governance structures of global value chains, innovation-friendliness and technology sovereignty, interactions with private sector standards and international law, and above all regarding sustainability in the production countries, but also in Germany. Due to their complexity and their enormous geographical expanse, global value chains (GVCs) represent a major challenge.
The main motivation for the research consortium lies in the strategic development of this increasingly socially charged and scientifically relevant topic area through the interdisciplinary bundling of the different competences of the three Lower Saxony universities of Lüneburg (in the lead), Oldenburg and Osnabrück with a cooperative relationship in the Hamburg metropolitan region with the Leibniz Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) there. Based on existing cooperative relationships, the aims of the WR are to develop excellent research and prepare a proposal for a coordinated DFG format, derive recommendations for action for politics and business, develop comprehensive courses and further training programmes for companies, authorities and the liberal professions. The aim is to understand the effects, potential and limits of the Sustainability Governance of GVC by analysing socio-technical implementation options and the actual effects of supply chain laws and related regulations and developing alternative design proposals. This project thus complements the technically orientated research on production management at the Institute for Factory Systems and Logistics at Leibniz University in Hanover.