UPL

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and states the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Furthermore, its stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company 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 and reports consistently against all its targets.

GHG emissions
The company has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company openly shares its efforts to enhance soil health and promote agrobiodiversity through its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company discloses the proportion of hazardous waste treated to reduce pollution, and the hazardous waste diverted from and to disposal.

Water
The company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas.

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

Act ethically
UPL shares its global tax strategy and maintains a policy against bribery and corruption. Furthermore, the company publicly commits to safeguarding personal data and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses within its contracts with direct business relationships.

To promote open communication, the company ensures accessibility for stakeholders to report bribery and corruption concerns through an email address, website, and phone number. This channel fosters anonymity or identification for complainants, as seen on its website. Additionally, the company articulates its lobbying and political engagement approach via a policy statement, reinforcing its commitment to ethical practices and transparency.

Provide and promote decent work
UPL publicly commits to prioritizing the health and safety of workers through its available policy statements. This commitment extends to both its own operations and its business relationships. It also mentions that designated agents, including third parties, engage in monitoring activities such as on-site inspections to ensure supplier compliance with its health and safety regulations.

Additionally, the company provides transparency by disclosing the proportion of women in various employee categories within its total direct operations workforce.

Respect human rights
UPL commits to respecting human rights and expects suppliers to adhere to ILO’s core labour rights, as articulated in its policy statement. In the past three years, the company engaged a third-party expert to conduct human rights assessments across a substantial portion of its locations, both domestically and internationally. The process encompassed meticulous pre-planning and scoping, extending even to suppliers to reinforce human rights along the value chain.

Furthermore, the company discloses its global system to take action to prevent, mitigate or remediate salient human rights issues, and this includes a description of how its global system applies to its supply chain. The company’s grievance mechanism further demonstrates its proactive approach by providing access to workers and external stakeholders who might be impacted.

Lobbying
While UPL discloses its partnerships and collaborations, it has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member for all jurisdictions in which it operates. Additionally, it has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and to report (potential) misalignments.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While UPL discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, social inclusion and water, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, it could link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. Lastly, the company could improve its performance by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
UPL does not disclose a commitment to minimise ecosystem conversion, or to ensure zero conversion. The company does not disclose activities to minimise ecosystem conversion, or to achieve conversion-free supply chains. The company does not have time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. Furthermore, 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
UPL should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against all its scope 1, 2 and 3 targets. Crucially, the company needs to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
UPL mentions that it undertakes risk assessments to gauge its operational impact on biodiversity. Despite this, the methodology or results of these assessments aren’t publicly disclosed. Moreover, the company remains silent on evaluating its impacts or dependencies 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
No evidence was found regarding UPL’s efforts to work towards a circular economy or which organisms it exploits. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

Solid and air pollution
UPL has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence related to plastic reduction and the use of sustainable packaging, including information on the amount of plastic waste it generates and the percentage directed to disposal. While the company discloses its SOx and NOx emissions for some of its operations, it has an opportunity to report this information at the group level and also set specific, time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain.

Water
The company has an opportunity to disclose reductions in water withdrawal, and set targets for water withdrawal across its operations. The company does not report relevant information on water pollution. The company has an opportunity to disclose relevant information on water withdrawal. The company does not disclose a commitment to respect the right to water. The company does not disclose its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

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
UPL has an opportunity to outline the procedure it employs to identify bribery and corruption risks in distinct locations or activities pertaining to its operations.

While the company’s publicly available policy statement indicates that political contributions can be made in adherence to regional policies, subject to management’s written approval, it could further provide evidence to confirm that political contributions are exceptional and that precise criteria for such contributions are clearly stated.

Additionally, the company could enhance transparency by disclosing its expenditures related to lobbying activities. It also has the potential to strengthen its ethical approach by revealing a requirement for third-party lobbyists to adhere to its established lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
UPL has the chance to enhance its disclosure by providing quantitative data on the health and safety of its workers, including types of injuries. While ensuring compliance with wage laws, it can strengthen its commitment by setting a time-bound target for paying a living wage. Disclosing the process for determining a living wage and requiring suppliers to do the same can further promote fair compensation.

The company also has an opportunity to demonstrate its dedication to gender equality and women’s empowerment through time-bound targets and increasing female board representation. Additionally, disclosing salary ratios by gender across employee categories can enhance transparency.

Respect human rights
UPL’s current disclosure highlights its commitment to certain workers’ rights. To fortify this stance, it could adopt more robust language that explicitly references all fundamental rights as defined by the ILO, encompassing crucial aspects like the right to collective bargaining. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to elaborate on its method of assessing and pinpointing its salient human rights concerns, further reinforcing its dedication to ethical practices.