UN Report explores link between climate change and human rights, and the role of companies

On 28 August 2024, the UN Secretary-General published a report exploring the links between the loss and damage [1] caused by climate change and human rights, and the role companies can play in remedying the negative consequences of climate change on people and the planet. The report provides clearer insights into the connections between the impacts of climate change on human rights, building on the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) which found that Switzerland had breached its human rights duties by not taking sufficient action to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Much like the ECtHR judgment, the report primarily focuses on the actions that states should consider to address the loss and damage caused by climate change. These actions may affect businesses down the line, such as the regulation of private sector involvement in loss and damage responses. It underlines the importance of companies’ climate and human rights teams working together to undertake integrated climate and human rights assessments, which can inform their approach to a just transition. 

What specific links does the report find between climate change and human rights?

The report identifies a broad range of human rights impacted by the negative effects of climate change, such as the rights to life, health, housing, food, culture, education, an adequate standard of living, development, work, water and sanitation, self-determination and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. For example, it notes that over 2 million deaths were caused by extreme weather between 1970 and 2021, and that 37% of heat-related deaths can be linked to climate change. 

Climate change also has the potential to negatively impact more vulnerable peoples’ rights: the report highlights harm caused to indigenous peoples in the Arctic, where thawing of permafrost and the lack of winter ice means their environment is threatened. This leads to the loss of their ancestral living space, requiring them to migrate which may lead to the loss of cultural, religious and traditional practices as well as linguistic diversity. 

 The report considers that companies should provide for remediation

A key takeaway for companies is that the UN report considers that compensation should be available and accessible to all people for human rights violations arising from loss or damage caused by a company’s involvement in climate change. It states that compensation should be given for economically assessable damage, and although non-economic loss and damage may be more difficult to quantify, this should not preclude compensation.

In this context, the report points to principle 22 of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which states that where companies have identified that they have caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts, they should provide for, or cooperate in, their remediation. The UN report recommends that companies undertake loss and damage-related assessments, which should be rights-based. These can inform policies, funding, remedies and the valuation of compensation, if necessary. This does of course raise questions around how to properly attribute loss and damage and establish causation between an impact and the actions that may have caused it, and by whom. 

 The CS3D will impose a framework for remediation that mirrors the UN report

Companies may consider the report’s observations in the context of their obligations under the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (“CS3D”). Under Article 12 CS3D, in-scope companies will be required to provide remediation where they have caused or jointly caused an actual adverse impact on the environment or on human rights (which are defined by reference to the specific list of rights, prohibitions and obligations set out in Annex I of the Directive). This requires in-scope companies to provide financial or non-financial compensation in order to restore the person, community or environment to the position they would have been in had the adverse impact not occurred (or to a position as close as possible to this). 

Once brought into the domestic law of EU member states, the CS3D will provide more direct routes to enforcement by rightsholders. The extent to which a company has carried out any remedial action will also be taken into account if national regulators bring an enforcement action for breach of obligations imposed by the CS3D. 

[1] For more about what loss and damage means in the context of climate change, see our blog on Climate Change “Loss and Damage”: what is it and will meaningful progress be made at COP27?