The Need for Improved Public Transparency in the Era of Due Diligence Regulations

ABSTRACT To address environmental and human rights issues in global commodity supply chains, governments increasingly require information from companies on their sourcing, as part of due‐diligence regulations (DDRs). This shift towards accountability to the regulator rather than to the public calls into question the role left for public transparency. In this perspective piece, we argue that public transparency is actually complementary to DDRs—addressing their incomplete coverage of global supply chains and sustainability issues—and corrective to DDRs—mitigating their undesirable side effects. We illustrate these points with data on West African cocoa supply chains. Public transparency thus remains crucial for supply chain sustainability governance in a DDR era, and we encourage stakeholders to keep demanding its improvement.