By Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye
The United Nations Development Program’s staff blundered when they characterized environmental risks related to Bidco as “Moderate” and indicated that Bidco was a strong candidate for membership in Business Call to Action BCtA, Part of the Social and Environment Compliance Unit SECU report, faults staff for pursuing limited due-diligence approach while engaging with Bidco.
The United Nations Development Program’s staff blundered when they characterized environmental risks related to Bidco as “Moderate” and indicated that Bidco was a strong candidate for membership in Business Call to Action BCtA, Part of the Social and Environment Compliance Unit SECU report, faults staff for pursuing limited due-diligence approach while engaging with Bidco.
The UNDP form used while engaging Bidco for
membership in Business Call to Action BCtA,
contravened with the Risk Assessment Tool RAT
directive to provide details for the criticism against the Candidate Company as
well as obtaining public statement on how the candidate companies address the
issues raised and how the same scenarios are prevented from reoccurring.
Instead , the UNDP
form used to asses Bidco, requested for limited disclosure but still some relevant risks were listed by the UNDP
staff but they did not follow up on the
controversies in a satisfactory manner neither did they characterize them
accurately.
The Risk Assessment Tool
RAT controversies questions include the
questions on the community rights, labor, governance, and environment, product
relate ownership among others. But even when these were listed with limited details,
the UNDP staff went ahead to characterize
them as “moderate” since there was no
satisfactory follow ups
The RAT also demands
that the partner candidate should contribute not less than $100,000 when the
project is risky. However, Bidco did
not make any contribution to the effect yet its project activities were
considered risky. The UNDP policy considers
the growing of crops including palm oil and other monocultures as highly risky
therefore an extra careful approach was required by UNDP staff.
UNDP staff therefore did not include all exclusionary criteria
while conducting due diligence yet the evidence was relatively clearer that identified
controversies as greater significant and not just moderate as characterized by
the UNDP staff.
The Business Call to Action
Alliance BCtA, is a United Nations Development
Program which started in 2014 and is expected to end June 2017 with a budget of
over US $9,175,000. The project primary goal is to create global advocacy
platform providing public recognition for the private sectors’ contribution to development.
In May 2016 SECU conducted a field work
investigation in Uganda and Turkey following a complaint from the Bugala
Farmers Association which asserted that BCtA admission of Bidco contravenes
with the UNDP Social and environmental policy standards hence the processes
employed by UNDP to admit Bidco were not consistent with the policies
The Social and Environment Compliance Unit SECU investigation focused on the
adequacy of UNDPs’ due-diligence and other transparency related issues to BCtA
project
