Environmental risks

An environmental risk assessment starts with one question: where in your supply chain are the risks most likely to occur? The Due Diligence Dashboard gives you a separate risk score for each commodity in each country.

The dashboard covers 7 environmental risk themes for 9 agricultural commodities in 34 countries, based on Life Cycle Assessment and spatial analysis. Every risk is scored from 0 (no risk at all) to 5 (very high risk). For biodiversity loss, deforestation and water stress, scores are also available at subnational level, so you can compare sourcing regions within the same country. Together this shows you which origins carry the highest risk for the commodities you source, and where a company-specific, in-depth assessment is needed.


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7 environmental risk themes

The full dashboard shows and benchmarks environmental risks for 9 commodities across 34 countries:

  • Acidification
  • Biodiversity loss*
  • Climate change
  • Deforestation*
  • Ecotoxicity
  • Eutrophication: fresh water & marine
  • Water stress*

* Subnational risk scores are also available, depending on data availability.

Would you like to see the complete list of available countries and commodities? Visit our catalogue of available countries and commodities. To learn how the scores were calculated, please visit the methodology page.

Why subnational and sector-specific data matters

Understanding the nuances of environmental risks across different regions and products is vital for effective action. Our dashboard provides product-specific scores at national and subnational level reflecting the difference between regions. For example, in Brazil, deforestation is more prevalent in the Amazone area compared to regions in the south of Brazil. Our subnational disaggregation empower organisations to pinpoint those regional differences directly in order to address and mitigate the most salient risks in their supply chain effectively. We are currently running a pilot to obtain the four categories with national sector specific information and extend them to the subnational level.

Unlock more environmental risk scores, some scores are for free:


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FAQ

Dashboard coverage

What are the environmental risk scores covered by the dashboard? For environmental risks, we assess 7 different risks:
  • Acidification
  • Biodiversity loss
  • Climate change
  • Deforestation
  • Ecotoxicity
  • Eutrophication: fresh water & marine
  • Water stress

Which agricultural commodities are covered by the dashboard? The environmental risks dashboard currently covers 9 commodities across 34 countries: cocoa, coffee, cotton, maize, palm oil, rice, rubber, soy, and wheat. Please visit our catalogue page to view the available country-commodity combinations.

Which countries are covered by the dashboard? The environmental risks dashboard currently covers 34 countries. Please visit our catalogue page to view the available country-commodity combinations.

Does the dashboard also cover human rights risks? Yes, the Due Diligence Dashboard also provides insights into 8 human rights risk themes:
  • Access to land and material resources
  • Child labour
  • Discrimination
  • Forced labour
  • Freedom of association and collective bargaining
  • Insufficient remuneration
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Violence and harassment

Sign up for free to view scores on all human rights and environmental risk themes specific to the cocoa and cotton sector in Cameroon.

How can I access more environmental risk scores? You can access more environmental risk scores by signing up for the free dashboard. After signing up you immediately have access to 7 environmental risk scores and 8 human rights risk scores, specific to the cocoa and cotton industries in Cameroon.

For more countries and/or commodities, explore our premium dashboard.


Methodology

How are the environmental risk scores calculated? We assess deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water stress using a spatial analysis, which uses the spatial patterns in production areas and combines them with spatial maps related to each theme. Climate change, eutrophication, acidification, ecotoxicity, and water use are assessed using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). All scores range from 0 (no risk) to 5 (high risk). For more details, please see the methodology page.

Legislative compliance & next steps

What is an environmental risk assessment? An environmental risk assessment is a high-level assessment of the most salient risks - based on criteria of severity and likelihood - that companies may encounter within their supply chains. This concerns either their own business operations, their direct suppliers, or their indirect suppliers. An environmental risk assessment typically consists out of three levels of assessment:
  • A high-level risk assessment, that identifies key risks within a specific geography, sector, and product. This assessment, combined with enterprise-specific risks enables a first prioritisation of risks to be used as input for deeper risk assessment. The environmental risk scores are intended for this purpose.
  • An in-depth risk and impact assessment is the next step. This is an assessment of company-specific risks by assessing prioritised Responsible Business Conduct risks and prioritised operations, suppliers, or other business relationships. This second step provides a company-specific basis to address, prevent, mitigate, and remediate (potential) adverse impacts.
  • An event-based risk assessment, which is an incidental risk assessment, based on the occurrence of specific changes. It can be triggered, for example, by changes in business activities, by new substantiated knowledge such as reporting on incidents, or by changes in the operating environment, whether actual or expected, such as societal tensions.

What does the EU supply chain legislation imply for my organisation? Several pieces of EU legislation have a due diligence component, including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the Forced Labour Regulation, and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). All these pieces of legislation require companies to take concrete steps, although their exact requirements differ, to systematically identify, assess and address human rights or environmental risks in their operations and supply chains, and prove that they have done so through documented, risk-based due diligence processes.

The adopted Omnibus package (2025), meant to simplify and reduce the regulatory burden, has revised some of the thresholds, timing and scope of EU supply chain legislation, delaying the implementation of various pieces of legislation and decreasing their scope and requirements.

The OECD Guidelines and UNGPs play a central role as a reference framework for many of the EU’s due diligence laws. As such, they provide a useful starting point for establishing a harmonised framework for broader due diligence compliance.

What does the CSDDD imply for my organisation? The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD, Directive 2024/1760) requires large companies to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for adverse human rights and environmental impacts in their own operations, their subsidiaries and their chain of activities. Companies in scope must set up a due diligence process, take appropriate measures on the risks they find, track whether those measures work, and report publicly on what they do.

The directive entered into force on 25 July 2024 and was substantially amended by the EU's Omnibus I reforms, which entered into force on 18 March 2026. Omnibus I narrowed the scope considerably: the obligations now apply to a much smaller group of very large companies, phased in by size. Member States must adopt and publish national transposition measures by 26 July 2028, and the first measures apply from 26 July 2029.

Whether your organisation falls within scope depends on the thresholds in the amended directive. Many companies that are not directly in scope might still receive due diligence requests from customers who are.

How do the risk scores help my organisation to be compliant with the EU CSDDD legislation? The EU CSDDD requires companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how actual and potential adverse impacts are addressed. The directive allows for the prioritisation of topics to be addressed. The risk scores can be used for this step. Please note that relatively low risk scores still require further assessment to determine if any company-specific adverse impacts may be at play.

The CSDDD doesn’t apply to me, why should I still care? While other EU supply chain legislation might still be relevant from a legal compliance perspective, many companies and countries have committed themselves to adhere to the principles of the OECD Guidelines and UNGPs. There are more reasons to engage in a risk-based assessment:
  • An ethical pledge to adhere to social and environmental standards
  • A practical tool for screening new sourcing locations
  • A starting point to make concrete contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • A necessary way to guarantee the future viability of specific supply chains


What are the next steps I can take based on these risk scores? Organisations can use the risk scores directly as input for a prioritisation of risks for the second level of risk analysis: a company-specific in-depth risk and impact assessment. Following the OECD guidelines, the user is expected to combine these risk scores with an enterprise-specific risk assessment as a basis for prioritisation. This involves high-level scoping of a company’s areas of operation and type of business relationships.

The user combines these two assessments to prioritise human rights risks and specific operations, suppliers, or business operations as input for a company-specific risk assessment. Countries, regions, and/or commodity sectors with higher levels of risk and prioritised operations, suppliers, or business relationships could be the first ones to be tackled by a companies’ measures aimed at e.g. the prevention or remediation of (potential) adverse impacts.

Based on the risk scores, companies take steps in areas such as:
  • Strategy and policy development: Gaining clarity on the major risks within the company's chain of activities to prioritise risks and impact areas, engage internal stakeholders, and develop policies to manage these risks.
  • Being compliant with CSDDD: Comprehending the steps required for compliance, including the obligation of risk identification, and conducting thorough investigations into major risks to formulate action plans for their mitigation.
  • Determining the right KPIs when developing an improvement programme, and monitoring, benchmarking, and communicating results.
  • R&D development: Learning from other areas where certain risks are lower or decreasing, including benchmarking.


Support

Can I access the scores offline? Yes. Environmental risk scores and visualisations can be downloaded for offline use. Data tables are available in Excel format, while overviews can be saved as PDF or PNG files.

What if I have a question about the dashboard and the scores? Our environmental specialists, including Life Cycle Assessment and spatial analysis experts, are available to answer questions about the environmental risk scores and methodology. We are happy to discuss specific use cases and support organisations in interpreting the results. Please get in touch via our contact form.