The Trust Deficit: Reclaiming Power and Redefining the Table

The Trust Deficit: Reclaiming Power and Redefining the Table

09:00 ICT | 19 March 2025

Overview

Stakeholder engagement is a core element of corporate accountability frameworks, guiding businesses in identifying, mitigating, and addressing human rights and environmental risks. Frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) require companies to engage stakeholders effectively. Additionally, evolving disclosure standards, including the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), increasingly emphasize stakeholder engagement, though approaches and depth of integration vary.

Despite its prominence, meaningful engagement remains a persistent challenge. Many businesses recognize its importance, yet engagement efforts often reinforce existing power imbalances rather than address them. Decisions about who participates, how discussions are structured, and what input influences outcomes remain contentious. In Asia, where civic space is often constrained and rights-holders face barriers to voicing concerns, businesses encounter additional hurdles in ensuring engagement is both inclusive and impactful.

A significant issue is the widespread outsourcing of stakeholder engagement to consulting firms and external consultants, which often creates a disconnect between businesses and the communities directly affected by their operations. This practice can result in surface-level consultations rather than genuine dialogue with rights-holders, limiting meaningful engagement and accountability. Moving beyond this dynamic requires businesses to adopt engagement strategies that prioritize direct interaction, build trust, and ensure transparency.

This session provides a platform for businesses, investors, and civil society to explore effective and practical approaches to stakeholder engagement. It aims to foster open discussion on how companies can navigate regulatory expectations, address challenges, and implement engagement processes that drive real accountability. The session will highlight best practices and innovative approaches to ensuring stakeholder voices—especially those of affected communities—are not just heard but meaningfully integrated into decision-making, leading to measurable impact.

Format

This interactive plenary will feature rapid discussions allowing for concise interventions and active engagement with the audience. Panelists will address the practical realities of stakeholder engagement and explore ways businesses can balance short-term operational pressures with long-term trust-building and accountability. allowing for concise interventions and active engagement with the audience.

LEARN:

Regulatory and Business Imperatives: Understand how evolving frameworks mandate meaningful stakeholder engagement and why businesses cannot afford to approach it as a compliance exercise alone.
Power Dynamics in Engagement: Explore how businesses can shift from tokenistic consultations to inclusive engagement that challenges existing power imbalances and centers affected communities.
The Pitfalls of Outsourced Engagement: Examine why over-reliance on third-party consultants often leads to superficial consultations and how businesses can build internal capacities for direct and sustained dialogue.

ENGAGE:

From Consultation to Influence: Discuss practical ways for businesses to ensure that stakeholder input meaningfully informs decision-making rather than serving as a box-checking exercise.
Engaging in Restricted Civic Spaces: Explore how companies can create safe, inclusive, and transparent engagement mechanisms in contexts where rights-holders face barriers to participation.
Innovative Models of Stakeholder Dialogue: Hear from leaders across sectors on new approaches to engagement that foster accountability, build trust, and lead to tangible outcomes.

CONNECT:

Rebuilding Trust through Direct Engagement: Identify opportunities for businesses to strengthen direct relationships with stakeholders rather than relying on intermediaries.
Investor-Business Collaboration on Engagement: Explore how investors can push for more meaningful engagement practices and align expectations with businesses and rights-holders.
Strengthening Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: Learn how businesses, civil society, and workers can collaborate on engagement strategies that drive accountability and shared value.

SESSION SPEAKERS

GHISLAINE NADAUD

Director Sustainable Investing, Robeco

Ghislaine Nadaud is Director Sustainable Investing at Robeco in Singapore, leading programs focused on human rights, biodiversity, and Just Transition in Asia. She supports the investment and sales teams in sustainable and transition investment strategies in the region. Previously, she headed the Asia Pacific ESG Solutions team at SMBC. Ghislaine has expertise in sustainable finance and investments policy, ESG risk management and stewardship. She completed the Prince of Wales’ Business and Sustainability Programme at Cambridge and is a visiting researcher at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and the National University of Singapore.

ROBIE HALIP

Coordinator, Rights Energy Partnership with Indigenous Peoples

Robie Halip, from the Kalanguya and Kankanaey Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, is the interim Executive Director of the Right Energy Partnership with Indigenous Peoples (REP) and coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development. REP is an indigenous-led, multi-stakeholder partnership with the goal of increasing renewable energy systems that respect human rights and leveraging the leadership of Indigenous communities in the transition to renewable energy in ways that are consistent with their self-determined needs and development aspirations.

JAMES EKFORD

Business and Human Rights Consultant, Embode

James Eckford is a business and human rights consultant at Embode. Under Embode’s Ganapati Initiative—a practical, collaborative, and consultative approach to supplier capacity building—James leads projects supporting supply chain businesses in South East Asia to enhance their management systems and technical capacity for human rights due diligence. With nearly a decade of experience in human rights, child rights, migrant worker protection and private sector engagement, he has worked across grassroots and policy levels, collaborating with worker communities, employers, SMEs, international brands, and civil society to address human rights challenges.

HARPREET KAUR

Business and Human Rights Specialist, UNDP

Harpreet Kaur is a Business and Human Rights Specialist at the UNDP’s Regional Bureau of Asia and the Pacific, where she oversees a regional project aiming at promoting responsible business practices through partnerships in Asia. She provides technical and advisory support to governments and businesses on how to mitigate and address human rights risks and impacts in operations and supply chains in Asia. Previously, Harpreet led Genpact Centre for Women’s Leadership at Ashoka University where she steered the Women, Workplace & Rights agenda and designed cutting-edge programs that enabled women to lead with equality and dignity. At Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Harpreet highlighted corporates’ human rights impacts through her research and writing. In her early years, Harpreet lead governance projects in the conflict-ridden Jammu and Kashmir in India using media and communication and supported the track-II diplomacy processes. Harpreet serves as a Council Member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Human Rights. Harpreet has presented at various national, regional and international forums and published both in national & international media. Harpreet has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Delhi, India and a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Rights Law, National Law School, India. She is a certified SA 8000 Auditor.