Carrefour

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
Carrefour discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Also, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets. Furthermore, the company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
Carrefour has a commitment to ensure zero conversion with time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. The company also discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains, and the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free.

GHG emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and reports progress against its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
Carrefour discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices. The company also has a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and reports progress against it.

Solid and air pollution
The company demonstrates commitment and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. It also discloses related quantitative data.

No leading practices were identified for the company in the social inclusion and community impact area.

Act ethically
Carrefour discloses a global tax strategy. Additionally, it has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and indicates the presence of a grievance mechanism in place for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption. Moreover, the company discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a policy statement, and reveals that it does not make political contributions.

Provide and promote decent work
Carrefour discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. Furthermore, the company ensures that the wages it pays enable employees to meet their basic needs and those of their families. Moreover, the company discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It reports data, including the proportion of women in its workforce for each employee category and the share of women on the board. The company has also set a target to achieve 35% female executives by 2025.

Respect human rights
Carrefour describes the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations and supply chain. It further outlines the process for assessing its human rights risks and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. Moreover, the company discloses a global system to take action to prevent, mitigate or remediate salient human rights issues This includes a description of how its global system applies to its supply chain. Furthermore, the company indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its engagement activities.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While Carrefour states that the board of directors has expertise in CSR skills and sustainability, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including nutrition, climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company is not committed to restoring ecosystems, and it does not disclose details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

GHG emissions
The company should reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and report against its scope 3 target. Crucially, its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
Carrefour is engaged in the Science Based Targets for Nature program and employs SBTN methodology to map its 2022 impacts on nature, both direct and indirect, in its operations and upstream business relationships. It also calculates its biodiversity footprint using the Corporate Biodiversity Footprint (CBF) tool and categorizes the level of impact as “Very High – High – Medium.” While these actions mark positive steps, the company has an opportunity to disclose complete assessment results and assess its dependency on nature within its own operations and upstream business relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
The company has an opportunity to disclose locations within or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity, both in its own operations and its supplier locations. It could also disclose existing species populations existing in or adjacent to both its own and its suppliers’ locations, as well as the conservation status of species identified at its own sites according to national and international lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose its inputs according to an international standard, and to report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance.

Solid and air pollution
The company does not disclose relevant information related to pollution in its operations or supply chains.

Water
The company does not disclose relevant information related to water, in its operations or supply chains.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not show if it is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights or land rights of local communities.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
While Carrefour currently engages in corruption risk mapping, there exists an opportunity for it to provide a comprehensive description of the process it employs to identify risks and impacts related to bribery and corruption. Additionally, the company has established a charter for controlling product suppliers, outlining stringent measures to prevent bribery and corruption, and delineating the consequences of violating this commitment. Nonetheless, there is room for clarification regarding whether these provisions extend to all suppliers, rather than being limited solely to controlled product suppliers.
Furthermore, the company is transparent about the funds disbursed to professional associations and other entities. However, there is a prospect for the company to enhance its transparency by disclosing its expenditures associated with lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
While Carrefour aims to preserve the health and safety of workers, it could formalize this commitment by using stronger language and including it in a public policy document. Relatedly, while the company expects its suppliers to adhere to well-defined protocols governing occupational health and safety, there is a need to clarify whether these expectations pertain to all suppliers or only a specific subset.
Furthermore, while the company pays all its workers a living wage, it has an opportunity to describe the process of determining a living wage for each region. Additionally, while the company has set expectations on the wages to be paid by its suppliers, it could stipulate a requirement for suppliers to pay a living wage, and elaborate on the mechanisms to support this payment.
Moreover, the company has an opportunity to enhance transparency through the reporting of data pertaining to the ratio of women’s basic salary and remuneration in comparison to that of men.

Respect human rights
Carrefour has a publicly available policy statement that aligns with its compliance with and promotion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that commits it to respecting specific workers’ rights. However, there exists an opportunity to incorporate all of the ILO fundamental rights at work and to utilise stronger language in order to transform the statements into a formal commitment. Along similar lines, the company has established comparable expectations for its suppliers to uphold specific workers’ rights, but it could also reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work, and clarify whether these expectations encompass all suppliers or only a specific subset.