All people have the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This right has been in consideration since 1972 when the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment declared that people have “the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”.

The right to a healthy environment endorses the (near) global recognition of the link between environmental harm and human rights. Regional and national case law has argued that many human rights, including the right to life, health, property, and water, depend on a healthy environment to be upheld. Even though there is no universally agreed definition and no universally applicable threshold for a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, it is understood to encompass the following elements:

• A safe and stable climate: Climate change is creating a progressively unstable environment, where the wellbeing and safety of future generations is at risk. We are already seeing the effects of an unstable climate, as extreme weather events like floods, droughts and heatwaves cause devastating environmental damage. Ensuring a safe and stable climate means having a ‘predictable environment where people can plan for the future with confidence’, such as for crops and agriculture or housing and safety. It is a crucial element of the right to a healthy environment and is considered essential to maintaining human life on earth.
• Clean air: Current industrial practices are relied upon to heat household and ambient air through the burning of fossil fuels, as they are used for energy and heating. Exposure to such air pollution causes a range of health issues, including respiratory illnesses, cancer, heart disease and negative birth outcomes. It also damages agricultural productivity, causing food insecurity, and impacts biological diversity and ecosystems.
• Access to safe and sufficient water and sanitation: The ability to access clean water is fundamental to sustaining life on earth. It is essential for drinking, cooking, cleaning, sanitation, and growing food. Aquatic ecosystems also contribute to maintaining life, including by purifying polluted water and shielding erosion. It is therefore an essential component to the right to a healthy environment. Additionally, safe, sufficient water and healthy aquatic ecosystems are crucial for protecting health, ending poverty, and achieving food security.
• Healthy and sustainably produced food: Just as water is fundamental to life, so is food. However, the current agrifood systems are not sustainable due to intensive, monoculture-based farming which has a high dependency on external inputs, such as chemical fertilizers, and the heavy use of pesticides. They are major drivers in environmental damage, including climate change, soil degradation, biodiversity issues, and ‘the rising risk of infectious diseases that spill into humans from wildlife and livestock’. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the world produces 0.3 billion metrics of food more than is required to feed the world’s population. However, much of this is wasted, used as livestock feed or to manufacture non-food products like biofuels. At the same time approximately 2 billion people lack adequate access to healthy and nutritious food, with daily hunger levels between 720 and 811 million. Food is also a vital component of the economy, as livelihoods rely upon the jobs it creates. Ensuring healthy and sustainably produced food will not only ensure life, but also protect livelihoods and the rights to food, health and water.
• Non-toxic environments in which to live, work, play, and study: The various processes involved in fossil fuel use, pollution resulting from industrial production, and the unsound management of chemicals and waste, all create an environment which makes it difficult for people to go about their normal lives. Globally, toxic environments cause at least 9 million premature deaths each year, double the number of COVID-19 pandemic deaths inflicted during its first 18 months. Many workers including child labourers are frequently exposed to hazardous activities, like mining and tanning. Some communities are now living in areas being classified as “sacrifice zones” – extremely hazardous places where local communities are exposed to toxic contamination and extreme levels of pollution, such as the Niger Delta, considered to be the most polluted place in the world, or the Quintero-Puchuncaví sacrifice zone in Chile. Furthermore, the Bhopal area discussed above was never decontaminated. Fundamentally, peoples’ rights to life and health are at risk from toxic environments.
• Healthy ecosystems and biodiversity: Many of the issues discussed above also depend on a healthy biosphere, including clean air, safe water and nutritious food. Plants produce oxygen, healthy ecosystems regulate earth’s climate, wetlands remove pollutants, and many medicines are derived from nature; the destruction of the biosphere risks all of this. A damaged ecosystem also increases the risk and impact of natural disasters – the number of deaths during a cyclone in India in 1999 was significantly higher in areas where mangroves had been removed, than those that were protected by healthy mangrove forests. Biodiversity is an important determinant for human health, as it reduces the risk of emerging infectious diseases affecting humans. the preservation of ecosystem services is crucial for human health as they provide for clean water, air and soil. The loss of ecosystem functionality might lead to environmental degradation and thus negatively impact human health. Furthermore, the ongoing expansion of human activities into wildlife spaces, increases the risks of zoonosis (animal-borne diseases).

It is important to note that this list is not exhaustive. It is also generally accepted that the right to a healthy environment applies to both present and future generations and is a specific right to ensuring people have a clean, healthy and sustainable environment to live in.

Although States have a positive obligation to protect present and future generations, in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, businesses should also be accountable for the realization of this right as they can have a huge impact on the environment, resulting in a restriction of the right to a healthy environment.

Since the adoption of the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, the right to a healthy environment has been appearing in national constitutions, regional legislation and policy documents. This right was legally recognised in more than 80% of UN Member States before the UN General Assembly recognised it in 2022.

UN Resolution

In July 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution recognising the human right to a healthy environment. This is the first international formal text to recognise this right. However, it is important to note that this resolution is not a legally binding resolution and calls upon States to implement regional and domestic legislation.

The Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its overarching goal is to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”.

ILO Declaration

The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work considers a safe and healthy working environment a fundamental principle and right at work. The International Labour Organization (ILO) added this principle as its fifth principle in June 2022. This means occupational safety and health can no longer be considered an optional extra. It seeks to ensure the protection of workers from work-related injury, sickness, or disease. It is considered one means of realizing the right of everyone to “life, liberty and security of person” as referred to in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR. This principle is particularly relevant to the prevention of toxic working environments in the context of the right to a healthy environment. Also relevant to this principle is the increasing necessity to prevent the occupational hazard of heat stress as a consequence of the climate crisis.

Other Legal Instruments

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) set the global standard regarding the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights in their operations and across their value chains. The Guiding Principles call upon States to consider a smart mix of measures — national and international, mandatory and voluntary — to foster business respect for human rights. Businesses should consider the UNGPs in their operational and supply chain decisions, and when following national legislation.

Regional and Domestic Legislation

The first UN global environmental conference was held in Stockholm in 1972 at which States adopted the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment. The first principle of this declaration states that all persons have “the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being”. Since then, an increasing number of States have included the right to a healthy environment in national legislation. For example, in in 1976 Portugal recognised this right in its Constitution and Spain and Peru followed suit in 1978 and 1979 respectively.

Regional legislation affirming the right to a healthy environment includes the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 1981, Arab Charter of Human Rights 2004, the San Salvador Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights 1988, the American Convention on Human Rights, the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights and the Escazú Agreement 2018. The European Convention on Human Rights does not currently enshrine this right explicitly but it is recognised by the jurisprudence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in relation to the right to life (article 2 of ECHR), right to respect for private and family life (article 8 of ECHR) and the protection of property (article 1 of Protocol 1, ECHR). Furthermore, as part of the EU Green Deal, the EU Deforestation Regulation 2023 aims prohibits the import, export, and sale of products on the European Market, which have been wholly or partly produced through illegal deforestation or forest degradation. It attempts to curb the illegal deforestation that is contributing to environmental damage and restricting peoples’ rights.

Companies are also increasingly subject to non-financial reporting requirements and due diligence obligations in the jurisdictions in which they operate. There are several high-profile examples of national legislation that specifically mandate human rights-related reporting and other positive legal duties, such as due diligence, including the French Corporate Duty of Vigilance Law 2017, and the Norwegian Transparency Act 2022. The German Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains 2023 also contains human rights and environmental due diligence obligations. Section 2(2) no. 9 references the right to a healthy environment by prohibiting environmental harm and pollution which may impact food, water, access to sanitary facilities or health. Section 2(3) refers to specific environmental obligations in relation to mercury, persistent organic pollutants, and hazardous and other waste.

Furthermore, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) 2024 will make human rights and environmental due diligence mandatory for larger companies across the EU. It will apply to companies of different sizes in stages between 2027 and 2029. Similar to the German Supply Chain Act 2021, the CSDDD references the right to a healthy environment. It prohibits causing any measurable environmental degradation that substantially impairs societal needs, including food, clean water, sanitary facilities, ecosystem services and access to land. Additionally, the CSDDD takes recourse to eleven international environmental conventions and requires companies to design and produce a transition plan for climate change mitigation, which outlines how the company is achieving its Paris Agreement goals by transitioning to a sustainable economy and limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) 2023 replaces the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive 2017. It covers environmental topics, ranging from climate change, environmental pollution, water and marine resources, biodiversity and ecosystems, to resource use and circular economy.

These mandatory due diligence and disclosure laws require companies to publicly communicate their efforts to address actual and potential human rights impacts, including environmental impacts on human rights, as well as environmental impacts as such. Failure to comply with these obligations leads to real legal risk for companies.

Environmental damage caused by corporate activities can often arise to such an extent that it impacts human rights. First and foremost, companies have a responsibility to take responsibility for their own environmental and human rights impacts. There are certain risk factors that increase the likelihood of environmental damage caused by corporate being severe enough to impact human rights.

Key risk factors include:

• Climate change and climate-related disasters increase the risks of displacement, poverty, food and water insecurity, and disease. This makes it far more likely for peoples’ rights to life, home, health, property, and the self-determination of indigenous people to be restricted.
• Lack of access to justice due to poorly funded or corrupt judiciaries. This prevents affected victims from accessing remedy when environmental damage has occurred. This restricts the procedural rights of individuals and prevents the possibility of redress and to those impacted by the environmental damage.
• Poorly enforced domestic environmental laws allow companies to operate with impunity. This increases the likelihood and severity of violations, placing the rights of impacted people at greater risk. Poor enforcement often relates to corruption and companies may use poor governance structures to economically benefit from not having to abide by environmental (and other) laws.
• Few environmental protections permit companies to damage the environment to such an extent that it restricts peoples’ human rights. For example, Bangladesh does not require the assurance that factories and mines are not harming the health of people or the planet.
• Resource rich areas open the door for some governments or administrations to provide resource extraction licenses to companies to drive the economy. Such administrators are likely to prioritise their economy over the environment, and by extension the rights of local communities. This increases the risk of environmental damage as companies can operate with greater impunity, particularly as resource extraction often leads to severe environmental damage. Lack of proper consultation, consideration of local communities, and free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples creates additional risks to their right to a healthy environment.
• Poverty exacerbates the effects communities feel from environmental damage. For example, a poor, rural community whose local water source is polluted by toxic wastewater will be unlikely to have the funds to fix the damage, may not have access to local healthcare to resolve any resulting health issues, and may have challenges accessing necessary legal  protections or representation. Furthermore, such a community relies more heavily on their local water source for cooking, cleaning, and even potentially their income, such as fishing and agriculture.
• Conflict increases the chances of a violation of the right to a healthy environment as conflict itself can damage the environment by consuming vast amounts of local resources, destroying land, creating increased emissions in localized areas, and polluting the environment – sometimes irreversibly. Communities in conflict zones therefore face a higher risk of their rights being restricted.

The UN Resolution for the Right to a Healthy Environment specifically mentions the following vulnerable groups to be considered:

• Indigenous and traditional communities face increased pressure from governments and companies seeking to exploit resources on their ancestral lands. These lands are materially and culturally significant to these communities, and their connection to the land is intrinsically linked to their rights. Such communities are frequently marginalized from decision-making processes – thus restricting their procedural rights under the right to a healthy environment, and risking the violation of their substantive rights. Furthermore, indigenous communities are more vulnerable and less resilient towards adverse environmental impacts because they are disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination and marginalization. They are therefore at greater risk of carrying out dangerous work or being in precarious employment.
• Children are uniquely vulnerable to environmental pressures. Their mental and physical health can be disproportionately impacted by pollution as their bodies, immune systems and organs are still developing, for example suffering from malnourishment and stunted growth; this can also impact a child’s further development. Children are also more susceptible to vector-borne and infectious diseases, increased by rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. Furthermore, legally employed youth workers face health risks from polluted working environments;
• Older Persons are at increased risk of harm due to climate change and air pollution. Diseases, heat stress (both exposure to extreme heat and cold), and the increasing intensity and frequency of disasters all impact their physical and mental health of older persons. Age discrimination means older persons are often neglected in policy decisions and programmes meant to address the effects of the triple planetary crisis. They are also more vulnerable to toxins, as their thinner skin increases the risk of dermal contact poisoning, and their livers and kidneys take longer to remove toxins.
• Persons with disabilities suffer from disproportionality higher rates of diseases and mortality due to climate change. They are also frequently overlooked during the development of climate-related emergency actions, for example people who are deaf may not be able to hear warning alerts. Exposure to air pollution puts persons with disabilities at greater risk of further health issues, who already face difficulty accessing healthcare.
• Women and girls are often more susceptible to environmental impacts as in most households they have poorer access to food, water and healthcare due to gender discrimination. They also face stronger effects of pollution and toxins due to biological factors, such as thinner skin, smaller weight, smaller percentage of muscle mass, and different effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Furthermore, where water sources are polluted, they have to travel further and are deprived of educational and economic opportunities. This exposes them to increased risks of gender-based violence, as climate change exacerbates existing conflicts, inequalities, and vulnerabilities.
• Environmental defenders also face excessive abuse and often find their rights to life, liberty, freedom, prohibition of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment violated by businesses and security guards. Such violations include arbitrary arrest, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, other forms of mental and physical abuse, and manslaughter/murder. In some cases, companies may collude with State security forces or paramilitary organisations. For example, in April 2024, environmental rights defenders were arrested by security forces, and one was abducted, for displaying banners which denounced the mistreatment of the environment by the Plantation et Huilerie du Congo company in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Whilst restrictions on the right to a healthy environment are present in many industries, from the transport industry to the technology and construction industries, the following industries present particularly significant levels of risk. To identify potential risks to the right to a healthy environment for other industries, companies can access the CSR Risk Check.

Agriculture, especially convention large-scale farming, can have harmful impacts on the environment and on neighbouring communities. Agriculture and aquaculture is often carried out with agrochemicals, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Agriculture’s contribution to biodiversity loss, water overconsumption, soil degradation and greenhouse gas emissions continues to place the right to a healthy environment at considerable risk.

Agriculture-specific risk factors include the following:

• Biodiversity and habitat loss: 86% of global species at risk of extinction can be attributed to agriculture. It is the largest threat to biodiversity loss, and the majority of this loss is driven by the clearing of lands for agriculture through the use of damaging techniques and deforestation. Our farming and agricultural practices are accelerating biodiversity loss, including the decline in the abundance and diversity of pollinating insects. For example, in 2017, researchers demonstrated that the biomass of flying insects in selected protected areas in Germany has decreased by more than 75% since 2017. Such biodiversity loss leads to greater food insecurity and risks the livelihoods and health of communities. Furthermore, many products are toxic to crucial pollinators, such as bees, leading to their decline. This risks the loss of plant species due to inadequate numbers of pollinators, which in turn endangers ecosystems as a whole.
• Agrochemical Pollution: Farmers are increasingly turning to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (which include fungicides and herbicides) to increase crop yields. There are approximately 11,000 farmer and farmworker deaths due to pesticide poisoning every year, the majority in the Global South. The widespread and prolonged use of such chemicals further pollutes the soil, causing damage to the produce grown and risks the health of animals and people. Furthermore, during the spraying, chemicals are often picked up by the wind drifting onto nearby surfaces, including plants, insects or water sources. Agrochemical products may cause acute and delayed negative health effects, including irritation of the skin, reproductive problems, birth defects, and cancer. Agrochemical products are further linked to land degradation, potentially increasing food insecurity. The rights of communities to biodiversity and healthy food systems are more likely to be adversely affected and the dietary security of populations will suffer.
• Subsidies: Local farmers are increasingly receiving subsidies, in part as a result of global economic insecurities and political decisions to incentivize farmers to adopt certain practices. The UN has reported that nearly 90% of the yearly $540bn in global farming subsidies are “harmful”, by distorting export and import tariffs, including price incentives for specific livestock and crops and providing subsidies for fertilizers and pesticides. The largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly meat, eggs and dairy producers, receive the largest proportion of subsidies; whilst subsidies for farmers in lower-income countries are often used for chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These subsidies promote the overconsumption of meat, dairy and eggs in wealthy countries and the overconsumption of low-nutrition foods in poorer countries – decreasing the health of the global population.
• Deforestation: According to the Rainforest Alliance, agriculture accounts for 80% of deforestation. 420 million hectares of forest has been lost to agriculture since 1990 – the equivalent of six times the size of Texas. Deforestation contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical deforestation is considered to account for 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of deforested land is used as cropland or for commodities like soy or wheat to feed livestock. In 2019, a study found that landslide susceptibility is higher and more longer lasting in areas where forests have been cleared, increasing the risk of natural disasters – and the risk to life and health.
• Water consumption: Agricultural production consumes excessive amounts of water, approximately 69% of the earth’s fresh water is consumed by the agricultural sector, and degrades water quality – subsequently damaging global water systems. Agriculture irrigation is the largest use of water, accounting for 70% of global water use, where intensive pumping of groundwater for irrigation depletes aquifers, creating negative environmental damage. In addition, as discussed above, agrochemicals contribute to water pollution through livestock effluents and excessive fertilizer and pesticide run-off and a high percentage of external inputs.
• Emissions: Livestock emissions and animal waste are the main agricultural sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including methane – a byproduct of cattle. Methane, in particular, is a hazardous air pollutant, causing 1 million premature deaths every year. Many farming practices, including the use of fuel-powered machinery and the burning of fields, also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, with the livestock sector accounting for 18% of all greenhouse gas productions worldwide. These emissions make habitats hostile and exacerbate climate change damage. Additionally, land cleared for agricultural production contributes to climate change, with the carbon stored in forests released when cut or burned.

The mining and extractives industry has historically caused massive environmental damage, violating the rights of local communities who live close to the industrial activity. The environment is frequently damaged by mining and extractive sites to such an extent that this impacts human rights. The direct adverse environmental impacts of this sector include pollution, biodiversity loss, and a shortage of drinking water sources due to mine de-watering, whilst climate change effects are more indirect but just as harmful as the extractives sector contributes half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions contributing significantly to climate change.

Extractives-specific risk factors include the following:

• Water and soil contamination: Without proper management, fracking and other mining activities, such as de-watering, contaminate groundwater, and can release toxic substances into the water and soil. Communities surrounding extractive sites are vulnerable to health issues from exposure to polluted water or soil, including cancers and aggravated asthma. Soil contamination also makes it difficult for communities to grow healthy crops.
• Water usage: Refineries consume considerable amounts of water, often straining already-stressed local resources. Such consumption depletes aquifers, increasing water stress and affecting fragile ecosystems.
• Waste: Mines and refineries generate large quantities of wastewater (often toxic) and solid waste difficult to dispose of, and flares release hazardous gas and other toxins into the atmosphere. All of this waste can have a significant effect on peoples’ health. For example, gas flaring has been linked to increased rates of leukemia and birth defects.
• Waste storage: Effluents and waste from mining is often stored in pond-like structures called tailings. These can become poisonous and toxic, can poison nearby soil or waterways through a process called ‘seepage’, and can in some cases become flammable, presenting a fire risk. Tailings (leftover materials from ore-processing) can also ‘leak’, causing the toxic effluent to seep into local water sources and soil. This toxic sludge damages nearby land and communities, sometimes to catastrophic effect, such as in the Vale dam and the TÜV Süd retention basin dam in Brumadinho. This can have devastating impacts on the local food and water sources, as well as local ecosystems.
• Air pollution: Dust and particles released from mining can cause long-term respiratory diseases if they are inhaled by workers or local communities. Common respiratory diseases from mining include bronchitis, silicosis and pneumoconiosis. The greenhouse gases connected to the extractive industry also exacerbate climate change.
• Noise pollution: Exposure to loud noises, such as mining machinery, falling rocks and explosions, can result in hearing disorders for workers or local communities, including hearing impairment, hearing loss and conditions like tinnitus, as well as chronic stress. These noises can also have a detrimental impact on ecosystems.

Consumer goods are considered any goods purchased by the end-user, with no intention of being used later to produce other goods. These can include clothing, white goods like kitchen appliances, electronics such as phones, computers and E-bikes (powered by lithium-ion batteries), food and vehicles.

Health and environmental degradation is considered the ‘foundation of cheap consumer goods’. Consumer goods are environmentally heavy, using up natural resources to produce the good, make the packaging, and transport the materials and goods. The production processes often use huge amounts of water and produce a large proportion of the world’s emissions. For example, the food and fast-moving consumer goods industries produce over one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The materials used in production, the products themselves and the packaging also often end up in the natural environment, particularly in land-fills and the ocean, contributing to habitat and biodiversity destruction and pollution. That said, by 2035, EU Member States must reduce the amount of municipal waste sent to landfills to 10% or less of the total amount of municipal waste generated.

Consumer goods-specific risk factors include the following:

• Chemicals: Many consumer products, including personal care products, cleaning supplies, and products used in workplace settings, such as lubricants or sealants contain substances that can potentially harm human health and the environment. Researchers in the US have found that over 100 types of consumer products contain at least one, and often multiple, chemicals linked to health issues, including cancers, developmental problems, and reproductive issues. Many of these products were used by workers, such as professional cleaners, seamstresses, tanners, hairdressers, nail technicians, auto-mechanics, and workers in plastic factories who were exposed to higher levels of chemicals than regular consumers, and faced greater health risks. Furthermore, vulnerable groups, such as women, children, older people, and people with disabilities are especially susceptible to health risks of these chemicals.
• Short-trend cycle: The fashion industry’s trend cycles are becoming shorter – fast fashion. This contributes to a range of environmental impacts, including requiring huge amounts of resources and producing waste (see bullet point below). The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global CO₂ emissions as clothes containing synthetic fibres are often made from fossil fuel-derived plastics to make them cheaply and quickly enough to keep up with the short trends. Additionally, microplastics are more likely to pollute soil and the sea, destroying ecosystems and further risking people’s health; microplastics can harm animals and humans by bioaccumulation: the accumulation of pollutants in organisms, either through dermal/respiratory resorption from the surrounding medium or across food chains (biomagnification).
• Waste dumping: Global waste exports from Europe or the United States to the Global South are increasing, with 1.7 million tonnes of textile exported outside the EU, primarily to Africa and Asia, in 2019. Plastic packaging of consumer goods, which often either cannot be or is not properly recycled is also dumped. Countries in the Global South are unable to ensure proper waste management, creating huge landfills or polluting waterways. Attempts to burn dumped garments also frequently pollute the air. Additionally, many consumer goods (often electronic goods containing chemicals and/or hazardous materials) are not properly disposed of. These goods can leak toxic effluents into the ground, damaging the water and soil – impacting local communities and environments.
• Transportation: In the current globalized world, companies source from different places across the world to ensure lower costs of sourcing and production. The export of these goods produces large amounts of emissions through shipping and freight transportation. For example, in 2020 the shipping and return of consumer goods accounted for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• E-Commerce: Shopping attitudes have changed, with consumers preferring to order online and expect them to be delivered as soon as possible (with the advent of ‘same day’ or ‘next day’ delivery). Not only is the water consumption of data centres storing online shopping catalogues massive, but the packaging of such goods has also increased. The forest conservation group Canopy found that 3 billion trees are pulped every year to produce the 241 million tonnes of shipping cartons needed to transport goods ordered online. Furthermore, packaging waste generated from online shopping is mostly non-recyclable as it mostly consists of mixed materials, and often primarily plastic with the Chinese e-commerce industry producing 221.5 million kilograms of plastic packaging waste in 2019, and the United States producing 212.7 million kilograms.
• Low skilled labourers: Low-skilled laborers and people working in the informal sector are likely to have restricted fundamental labour rights. They are thus more vulnerable towards environment-related risks and damages. These population groups are also less resilient as they have fewer resources with which to take precautionary or evasion measures.

As the world seeks to reduce its environmental footprint by moving away from fossil fuels, its focus is turning to alternative renewable energy sources. This would result in less greenhouse gas emissions, reduce climate change and air pollution impacts and better protect the people and planet. Wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen energy are all considered alternatives to fossil fuels. Despite the benefits of renewable energies, their manufacturing, construction and maintenance is associated with environmental adverse impacts.

Renewable energy-specific risk factors include the following:

• Critical metals and minerals: There is a surging demand for critical minerals, like copper, cobalt, polysilicon, aluminium, iron, and lithium, to drive the green energy transition. The mining and refining of these minerals can heavily damage the environment, and local communities are often impacted by various types of pollution. Extracting critical minerals is highly land and water intensive. Noise, air and water pollution, soil degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss and water scarcity all disrupt a persons’ ability to live and work healthily and safely in an area. Refining metals and minerals consumes a lot of energy.
  • Cobalt mining: Cobalt is used to power rechargeable batteries, found in smartphones, electric vehicles and computers. It has therefore become a particularly critical mineral. However, the mining of cobalt is dangerous, child labour is frequently used, and it is resource-heavy – air and water pollution are considerable. The toxic dust from mining cobalt contaminates children and adults working in the mines and local communities surrounding the mines. Mining processes also contaminate water-sources with toxic effluents, and deforestation is vast. Children’s health is particularly at risk for those child labourers in the mines, who frequently work without personal protective equipment of health and safety instructions. Health issues of cobalt include asthma and other respiratory issues, heat, thyroid, liver and kidney problems, and fibrosis.
• Land use: Some renewable energy sources can use less land than fossil fuels, such as solar panels which can be installed on existing structures, and wind turbines can be built on agricultural land without destroying crops. However, without proper environmental management, land use, such as solar power developments, can excessively damage the local environment and disrupt biodiversity. Land has to be cleared and graded, appropriate drainage channels built, and erosion is highly likely before renewable energy infrastructure can be built. For example, solar panels are often built on farmland without consideration for the local biodiversity or food needs; whilst wind turbines can negatively impact the environment in which bats and certain bird species live and offshore wind farms can increases ocean noise, affecting the behaviours of fish and other sea creatures – disrupting the ocean ecosystems.
• Water scarcity from lithium extraction: Lithium-based batteries are crucial for the renewable energy transition, but lithium mining is water intensive. Lithium is commonly mined in areas already facing water stress, such as Chile, Argentina and Bolivia (known as the Lithium Triangle), but lithium extraction depletes groundwater and increases water scarcity. This places communities at risk of being unable to access clean drinking water or water for crops. Meanwhile in Europe, Serbia is set to become one of the main lithium producing countries and companies should consider the risk of water scarcity here.

This section outlines the due diligence steps that companies can take to prevent environmental damage from impacting individuals in their operations and supply chains. The described due diligence steps are aligned with the UNGPs. Further information on the UNGPs is provided in the ‘Key Human Rights Due Diligence Frameworks’ section below or in the Introduction.

While the below steps provide guidance on protecting the right to a healthy environment, it is generally more resource-efficient for companies to ‘streamline’ their human rights and environmental due diligence processes by also identifying and addressing other relevant human rights issues (e.g. forced labour, discrimination, freedom of association) and environmental issues (e.g. water pollution, biodiversity loss) at the same time.

Disclaimer: There is little business-specific guidance on how to protect this right throughout companies’ value chains and businesses should do their best to identify and respond to environmental impacts using a rightsholder perspective. This means considering how an environmental impact may restrict the rights of rightsholders, even where those rightsholders are not directly linked to the impact, and engaging with particularly vulnerable rightsholders, who often feel the disproportionate effect of the adverse impacts of environmental degradation. The UN Development Programme’s upcoming Business Guide on Environmental Due Diligence will provide useful guidance on this issue, particularly how to include the rightsholder perspective into environmental due diligence.

Additionally, the SME Compass offers guidance on the overall human rights due diligence process by taking businesses through five key due diligence phases. The SME Compass has been developed in particular to address the needs of SMEs but is freely available and can be used by other companies as well. The tool, available in English and German, is a joint project by the German Government’s Helpdesk on Business and Human Rights and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

Companies should consider adopting policy commitments that set out to protect the right to a healthy environment. Most companies have yet to produce human rights policies, which include the specific right to a healthy environment, and instead adopt separate human rights and environmental policies, or they have sustainability policies, which do not necessarily cover commitments to the protection of the right to a healthy environment.

Aldi South Group has integrated its human rights and environmental due diligence into one policy and considers a range of environmental issues from a human rights perspective, such as deforestation and land rights. This does not go so far as to explicitly cover the right to a healthy environment, but does seek to bridge the gap between adverse environmental impacts and human rights. Financial institutions are also increasingly committing to the protection of human rights from environmental damage in their policy documents. ING’s Environmental and Social Risk Framework commits to actively managing ‘social and environmental risks associated with its business engagements’. Whilst it does not seek to identify the social impact of environmental risks, it does assess community health and safety from the perspective of environmental damage.

In practice, developing such a policy might include actions such as:

• Integrating the main issues identified in the impact assessment (see Step 2 below for further details) to ensure only the relevant environmental and human rights issues are included;
• Revisiting human rights commitments to encompass the right to a healthy environment and link to its environmental or climate policies;
• Appropriately coordinating internal human rights and environmental governance frameworks to ensure this right is embedded throughout the business;
• Outlining how a company intends to prevent and address adverse impacts on the environment which may violate a person’s rights enshrined within the right to a healthy environment;
• Effectively engaging with rightsholders, including employees, suppliers, employees of suppliers and communities, to support in the development of the policy and commitments;
• Ensuring board commitment and tone from the top will help maintain this right as a priority.

Human rights impact assessments are usually broken down into two parts: potential and actual.

Potential Impact Assessment: A potential impact assessment seeks to identify the size of the potential footprint (i.e. adverse impact) the company could be having on rightsholders. For example, a logging company operating in Brazil inherently risks adversely impacting the rights of indigenous communities, but it does not mean that it actually is. Potential risks should be prevented by taking the appropriate preventive measures.

Actual Impact Assessment: An actual impact assessment analyses exactly what impacts the company is actually having on rightsholders. For example, a logging company operating in Brazil may actually already be impacted the rights of indigenous communities by land-grabbing or excessive violence by security forces. Actual risks have already arisen and need to be brought to an end or mitigated by corrective or remedial measures.

The right to a healthy environment requires further analysis than a standard human rights impact assessment, which should first assess adverse environmental impacts. Companies are expected to have an embedded process, which recognises the connection between human rights and environmental impacts and an inherent and actual understanding of both their human rights and environmental impacts of all activities in their value chains. Embedding environmental considerations into a human rights due diligence procedure requires a company to first understand the adverse environmental impacts of its entire operations and that of its value chain. It can then begin to assess whether these adverse environmental impacts are restricting any human rights.

Companies should undertake an assessment of their actual and potential impacts on the various rights interconnected with the right to a healthy environment, prioritising the most severe and likely adverse environmental impacts of their own business activities and their relationships with third parties, including business partners.

The suggested process outlined below therefore seeks to align with the UNGPs by effectively assessing adverse environmental impacts from a rightsholder perspective. The process follows some of the steps of an environmental impact assessment rooted in environmental management processes such as ISO14001 or EMAS, with an extra step of considering how such environmental impacts may affect rightsholders. Such assessments are typically required for particular projects, such as planning permission for certain types of projects under domestic law, certain investors requiring environmental impact assessments, or change of land use in certain contexts under domestic law.

A company needs to have a solid understanding of the adverse environmental impacts of its operations and supply chain before it can assess the extent to which these impacts may have violated human rights. To do so, a company should assess its environmental context and footprint.

1a. Potential Impact Assessment – What is the environmental context of your business?

Companies could start by identifying the environmental context within which their own activities and value chains operate. This helps to understand the broader environmental conditions, which the company may be part of. Accordingly, a company should look at a range of facets of its activities and value chains to see how and to what extent the environment is impacted more generally. For example, a company may have suppliers operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo where water quality is particularly low, with poor sanitation systems, and frequent pollution of water systems.

The following guiding questions can help companies better understand their value chains with respect to potential environmental risks:

• What is my business model and product/service?
• Which semi-finished products, raw materials, production steps (including disposal) and transport steps are required?
• What is the composition of my product?
• In which countries are my own operations and my suppliers located and what activities of value creation take place at supplier level?
• Which environmental risks and violations could be relevant?
• In which countries are those risks particularly high?

This type of exercise requires a company to have a good understanding of its value chains, and access to environmental and social risk data.

Companies should use a range of data sources, such as:

• Exchange with relevant departments/functions and suppliers
• Databases on product composition (e.g. EU Safety Gate, SCIP- Database, safety data sheets), chemical analytics (random sample)
• Technical and scientific sources
• Media reports, guidelines, studies at industry, product or country level (e.g. Atlas on Environmental Impacts: Supply Chains, Federal German Environment Agency – UBA), government reports, BHRRC
• Indices for environmental protection goods (e.g. Environmental Performance Index)
• Tools: CSR-Risk-Checker, WWF Water/Biodiversity Risk Filter
• UNEP Environmental Rule of Law Indicator (in planning), ratification status of environmental agreements

1b. Actual Impact Assessment – What is your environmental footprint?

Once a company understands its environmental context, it can better identify its actual environmental impact. Companies are expected to create knowledge on what materials, semi-finished products and extraction/production steps are necessary for the materials/semi-finished products/products they receive.

The assessment should consider how the company’s environmental context affects its environmental footprint. For example, a textile supplier operating in Pakistan may produce a lot of toxic waste from the dyeing chemicals used for garments, which is likely to contribute to the environmental damage already occurring in Pakistan.

The following guiding questions can help companies better understand their value chains with respect to actual environmental impacts:

• What is the quality of the technical equipment in your own operations and at suppliers? Is it state of the art?
• Are there any indications of environmental risks and violations in relevant processes in the company’s own operations or at the supplier (e.g. chemicals management, emission control, waste and wastewater disposal, soil protection)?
• Is the precautionary principle applied?

There are a range of assessment methods a company could use, including:

• Expert analysis
• Quantitative physical models
• Use of a Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix
• Internal technical expertise on production processes
• Information from documentation of relevant processes (e.g. EMAS/ISO14001)
• Risk-specific supplier questionnaires
• Information from consultation of (potentially) affected persons/representatives (local communities, indigenous people, NGOs, trade unions, etc.)
• Own knowledge from audits and on-site visits
• Complaints procedure
• Employee surveys

Once a company understands its environmental risks, it needs to consider whether the identified environmental damage by the company’s operations or supply chain might have an adverse impact on human rights and upon whom. A company may operate in a number of countries, have complex value chains and limited resources, which restricts their ability to address all the impacts at once. Therefore, prioritisation allows a company to address the most severe and most likely human rights impacts of environmental damage first and with more resources. During this prioritisation process, companies should consider both the potential and actual impacts on human rights of environmental damage.

When prioritising, companies should consider:

• Severity
• Likelihood

To effectively evaluate the severity of a potential or actual impact, companies should consider:

• Scope: How many people are impacted by the impact
• Scale: The extent of the impact to the rightsholder
• Remediability: How easy it is to restore those impacted to the position they were in before the impact

For example, an impact may cause one death, which cannot be remediated versus another impact which causes illness to 200 people but can be remedied with time.

In assessing severity, companies should also consider how large of an area was affected by the environmental impact, as an indicator to the scale and scope of the impact. Shift’s Explanatory Note on the Concept of Prioritisation provides more details on how to determine whether prioritisation is necessary and the severity of an impact.

2a. Potential Human Rights Impacts

When assessing potential human rights risk, a company should consider the locations and industries of the activities it is assessing, as well as the size of the company. This helps a company build a better picture of the potential risk within its operations and/or supply chain. Potential risk assessments tend to use quantitative data.

Companies should have an awareness of the inherent risk to human rights when environmental damage occurs. Companies should assess:

• Severity: Using scale, scope and remediability to build a picture of the severity of a potential human rights impact due to environmental damage. Understanding the location and industry of the environmental damage will help assess the severity of the potential impact on human rights. Severity had priority over likelihood, meaning that companies must address severe risks even when they are not very likely.
• Likelihood: A company should understand the likelihood of an impact actually arising.
• Timescale: Companies should consider whether the environmental impact is violate a human right now or whether it may violate a human right in the future. This may help in prioritisation, but it is important for companies to note that longitudinal effects can occur over a large time scale, and do not necessarily make a human rights impact less severe or urgent to address.

There are a range of sources companies can use to identify potential impacts, such as:

• US Department of State reports, including the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report or the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
• Media reports
• Reports from non-governmental organisations, for example Freedom House, WWF, Greenpeace, or other local human rights or environmental NGOs who have an understanding of the situation ‘on the ground’.
• Status of countries’ ratification to UN treaties

2b. Actual Human Rights Impacts

Once a company has a solid overview of its risks, it should then identify and assess the actual impact of its environmental damage on human rights. It should do this by engaging with a range of stakeholders to understand exactly what is happening on the ground. A company should then consider the severity of the actual impact to better prioritise the impacts most affecting rightsholders.

The type of data reviewed to understand actual impacts differs considerably from the potential impacts:

• Complaints raised under a grievance mechanism
• Incident reports
• Adverse media reports
• Audits and Supplier Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs)
• On-the-ground reconnaissance
• Direct consultation of rightsholders
• Government documents (including, for example, land registry records)
• Engagement with local civil society stakeholders and, if relevant, other businesses operating in the area

Companies should consider both the potential and actual impacts on human rights of environmental damage. It should be noted though that severity takes priority over likelihood and it is only necessary to consider likelihood when assessing potential impacts, as actual impacts have already arisen.

This prioritisation process creates a list of a business’s most salient risks to/impacts on the right to a healthy environment.

The actions and systems that a company will need to apply will vary depending on the outcomes of its impact assessment. Any actions should take into account (and try to address) risk factors and root causes of the environmental damage based on the environmental impacts which are at risk of the most severe negative impacts to human rights (i.e. the salient human rights risks).

Once a company understands its most salient risks, it is required, under the UNGPs, to address those impacts. However, prior to this, the UNGPs emphasize that appropriate action will vary according to a company’s level of causation, and the extent of its leverage, as well as the likelihood and severity of the impact, in addressing the adverse impact. As such, these two elements should be considered when prioritising which measures to take to address adverse impacts found:

• Degree of Involvement: The UNGPs require companies to address and remediate human rights impacts they have caused or contributed to. This means companies should consider whether they have caused, contributed to or are directly linked to an impact that may restrict a human right. Companies should also consider whether the impact itself (i.e. the environmental damage) is causing or contributing to a restriction of this right.
  • Causation usually refers to a company’s direct actions within its own operations – i.e. the company alone caused the impact. For example, a mining company’s own refusal to use state of the art equipment for mining might cause toxic chemicals to seep into the soil, which damages the local communities’ health. Where a company has caused an impact, or where the environmental damage of a company has caused a human rights impact, it is expected to cease, prevent, remediate or cooperation in the remediation of such impacts.
  • Contributed to relates more to the actions of a company’s business partner for which the company is procuring that particular product or service or with whom it is jointly working on a project which caused the impact i.e. the company has caused the (potential or actual) impact together with a business partner. For example, a buyer might be contributing to the violation of an indigenous community’s rights where its supplier refuses to comply with deforestation legislation and destroys indigenous land. Where a company has contributed to or may contribute to an impact, it is expected to cease, prevent and use what leverage it may have to remediate/mitigate impacts.
  • Directly linked to: When companies have a (direct or indirect) business relationship, they may be considered directly linked to an impact. Companies are not required to undertake remedial measures for impacts they are only directly linked to, but they should consider how they can support in addressing this impact.
• Leverage: A company’s ability to address an impact it has caused or contributed to will depend on its leverage over a supplier. Leverage usually refers to the “ability of a business enterprise to effect change in the wrongful practices of another party that is causing or contributing to an adverse human rights impact.” Companies can exercise their leverage over their business relationships through traditional commercial leverage; broader business leverage; collective leverage through bilateral engagement, action with other business partners and multistakeholder collaborations.
  • Where a company has leverage over a business partner, it should seek to use it to enable them to effectively remediate or mitigate impacts, particularly before considering ending a relationship. Where a company does not have leverage, it should seek to increase its leverage, for example by collaborating with other companies, civil society organisation or other actors.
• Effectiveness: Companies should tailor the actions they take to the particular issue which is causing the impact to ensure they are effective at addressing that impact, meaning the measures make it possible that the impact is prevented, mitigated or remediated. For example, training in relation to the environment will very likely not be effective when the problem is insufficient technical equipment.
• Rightsholder engagement: Engaging with rightsholders during the development of action plans to address impacts will not only ensure the effectiveness of the measures, but also prevent conflicting environmental and social objectives from arising. For example, without meaningful engagement with communities, a company’s efforts to restore nature may restrict indigenous peoples’ rights to traditional land or cultural/spiritual practices.

Preventing, correcting and remediating environmental damage: Companies should first seek to prevent and correct/remediate the underlying environmental damage. Suggestions of appropriate measures include:

• Modernisation of old industrial facilities
• Establishing of adequate management systems for chemicals, industrial waste, emissions.
• Establishing a monitoring system for industry emissions into the air, water, soil
• Applying best available techniques to reduce harmful emissions
• Integration of environmental standards into purchasing practices
• Purchasing environmentally friendly raw materials and supplies
• Implementing an environmental management system (e.g., ISO 14001)
• Promoting environmental awareness within the company
• Change of distribution practices to ensure all the necessary safety information is provided on toxic products and the geographical context is considered when marketing a product. For example, ensuring all necessary safety information is on the label of toxic products, such as agricultural products, in the right language, in readable font size, and with correct pictograms according to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS).
• Implementing good practices for the extraction, production, storage, conversion and handling of a product will prevent accidental damage occurring;
• Setting climate and/or environmental targets which take a holistic view of the potential environmental damage, such as overall absolute emissions and land use, rather than relying on ‘intensity’ metrics;
• Reviewing environmental permits provided to suppliers to ensure they are given only to those making solid human rights commitments.
• Changing of design strategies could include changing to raw materials and semi-finished products with a smaller environmental footprint, allowing for more environmentally friendly production processes, producing less toxic or just less waste in the production process, have a smaller footprint when the final product is used or disposed of. This is known as ‘product stewardship’.

Preventing, correcting and remediating human rights impact of environmental damage: Suggestions of practical approaches companies can take to prevent or mitigate the restriction of the right to a healthy environment include:

• Training: One of the most common actions undertaken by companies is trainingof company employees and suppliers, which may cover the salient human rights risks, reference to relevant international standards and reporting lines, and could be updated in-line with new developments in relation to this right. Targeted training programmes for the environmental teams on how to engage with rightsholders will be crucial to addressing impacts. Training sessions can be delivered in a range of forms, such as online videos, e-learnings, in-person sessions or supplier roundtables. Training should also be offered in a language most applicable to those taking it to ensure accessibility.
  Businesses, however, should be mindful that training alone will not solve the problem. Taking action on specific environmental impacts may require local community engagement so that the most sustainable and effective solutions to address these impacts can be found.
• Enhancing alignment and collaboration between the purchasing team, the sustainability team, responsible sourcing experts, or the environmental team inside the buying company;
• Corrective Action Plans: Where impacts are identified, Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) should be developed (jointly with the supplier if necessary), setting out clear targets and milestones for improvement. Progress should then be tracked regularly to ensure CAP completion. This plan needs to be developed and agreed upon through engagement with impacted rightsholders and effective monitoring might include ensuring the participation in and validation of the company’s managing procedures and scientific environmental analysis.
• Collaboration in the value chain: All measures in relation to business partners require collaboration. Companies should therefore seek to enhance collaboration with their business partners in their efforts to prevent or address human rights impacts through:
• • Responsible contracting: As companies become more responsible for the conduct of their value chain, it is important to engage with suppliers in a meaningful way. A company should contract with suppliers in such a way that sets them up to succeed, rather than fail. Furthermore, responsible contracting includes supporting the supplier to develop action plans, which seek to address adverse impacts, rather than cutting ties with them as soon as impacts are found. In practice, this could mean running training sessions for suppliers, or offering financial or resource support to address the root environmental cause of a human rights violation.
  • Shared responsibility: Companies should take a shared responsibility approach with their suppliers in their efforts to address an impact. It should not be the sole responsibility of a supplier, particularly those in the Global South or SMEs. This can include providing financial or knowledge-based assistance to suppliers in upgrading their facilities to ensure they are using the best available techniques. Ensuring fair contributions are made in line with levels of responsibility and abilities, and costs are shared accordingly between the relevant parties helps maintain willing collaboration.
  • Change of purchasing practices: Companies should ensure their purchasing practices do not make it difficult for a supplier to meet their human rights requirements. This includes integrating pricing which covers all costs of production, including living wages and incomes, environmental protection and costs of occupational safety and health. They should also consider their payment terms, lead times and short term changes to product specifications. For example, a company should include long enough lead times in a contract to allow a supplier sufficient time to manufacture a product, without the need to circumvent environmental regulations.
  • Responsible exit: Where the impact assessments identify actual environmental damage caused by the supplier to such an extent that human rights are restricted, corrective actions may be required for the most severe impacts. Some companies may decide that — as a last resort — a failure to remediate or correct the situation should result in termination of the relationship with the offending supplier. Companies should try to resolve issues with the supplier first though, to prevent termination leading to worse positions for workers or a further deterioration of the environment. A company seeking to exit a relationship with a supplier should ensure all orders are paid up and any consequential risks of exiting are addressed.

Businesses should regularly review their approach to preventing, correcting and remediating environmental damage and human rights impacts to see if it is effective and serves the rightsholders involved. Section A.4 of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance provides details on the type of information, which should be tracked, and how to effectively track and implement the results.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are an important tool for tracking performance. Companies should set appropriate qualitative and quantitative indicators and SMART targets designed to track both the efforts to reduce an environmental impact and the extent to which the impact is restricting human rights. Setting SMART targets helps objectively track performance. SMART targets are those that are: specific, measurable, attainable, resourced and time-bound. Such targets should integrate impacted rightsholder and stakeholder views. A range of inputs will be necessary to produce a full picture of whether KPIs and targets are being met:

• Assessment data like using staff questionnaires to measure the learning outcomes achieved during training sessions – this helps companies understand the effectiveness of a training;
• Data from grievance mechanisms to understand the number and frequency of, as well as the type and severity of incidents; and
• Stakeholder engagement to proactively track the effectiveness of a company’s efforts to identify, prevent and remediate any new impacts is crucial. Such engagement can include non-governmental organisations, environmental NGOs and other types of NGOs, workers’ organisations, law enforcement authorities, environmental authorities, and labour inspectorates. Stakeholders provide useful on the ground insights into the impacts occurring and the measures designed to address them, particularly as they are often the ones the impacts are affecting.
• Audits, surveys or social/environmental monitoring are common ways to check performance. Such methods can be undertaken internally by the company or a third party contracted by the company. A common approach or first step taken by companies is to issue self-assessment questionnaires (SAQs) to suppliers, requesting information and evidence on their environmental protection procedures, such as how they handle their wastewater to ensure it doesn’t feed into the local river. Standards like ISO14001 require such SAQs, which may be particularly relevant when the supplier is ISO14001 certified. Repeated SAQs can give insight into improvements in supplier management systems and let suppliers self-report on actual or potential environmental impacts restricting a person’s right. The audit results should be considered an indicator to be recorded and monitored as part of the SMART targets set. These types of monitoring should always be combined with stakeholder engagement to prevent unreliable results.

Responsibility for data collection should be clearly allocated to relevant roles within the company and reported with a set frequency (for instance once a month).

Companies are expected to communicate their performance on protecting the right to a healthy environment, both internally and externally.

Internal: Companies should communicate the relevant information to impacted rightsholders about how they are taking action to address the environmental damage. Such communication should be timely, culturally sensitive and in an accessible manner. Companies may choose to communicate through a range of formats: in-person meetings, online dialogues, consultation with affected stakeholders, websites and informational brochures.

External: Companies are expected to communicate their performance on protecting the right to a healthy environment in a formal public report. The CSRD requires in scope companies to report on the environmental and social impacts of their activities, companies could use this report to detail their efforts to maintain a healthy environment. Conversely, an update on progress on implementing the right to a healthy environment can be included in a broader sustainability report, or in an annual Communication on Progress  which seeks to implement the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact. Additionally, other forms of communication should include in-person meetings, online dialogues and consultation with affected rightsholders.

Grievance mechanisms play an important role in helping to remediate human rights impacts of environmental damage in operations and supply chains. They allow for input and feedback from individuals who may highlight issues that have not been identified or by providing input on how to effectively respond to an issue. Grievance mechanisms help build trust and understanding of issues between companies and communities (indigenous, local and further-afield). They also provide an early warning system to identify and address concerns of communities before escalation is required.

Grievance mechanisms should be:

• Created and implemented with input from the affected groups they are intended to help, as well as other stakeholders;
• Available in multiple formats and languages to accommodate rightsholders’ needs;
• Accessible by anyone;
• Transparent and predictable with a clearly defined process;
• Anonymous and confidential to protect the safety and well-being of the complainant to ensure a victim does not fear repercussions for coming forward.

These mechanisms should feed into the risk identification and management process, with remediation a key focus of the grievance mechanism. It is important that responsibility is allocated for the monitoring of the grievance mechanism, and that an independent body or committee is set up to oversee and handle the complaints.

Remediating the violations of the right to a healthy environment can be difficult and should be handled sensitively, as the harm caused to the victim(s) and the environment could be significant. It is advisable that businesses have a remediation plan included in their human resources policies and procedures, which can guide responsible employees in remediating the situation in an effective and appropriate way.

The inclusion of affected communities in the design of grievance mechanisms and in the remediation process is crucial to ensure the effectiveness of the grievance mechanisms and any subsequent remediation measures. Not only does this mean ensuring that grievance mechanisms are accessible to all affected peoples, including women, children, older persons, BPOCs, indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities, but it also means seeking their input on how complaints should be made, and communicated. Remedial measures should be developed through open discussion and dialogue with affected rightsholders to ensure they best suits the needs of the impacted communities. The inclusion of impacted rightsholders in the remediation process ensures the acceptance and legitimacy of a remediation plan.

Collaboration with third parties and environmental initiatives will be important for effective remediation. Companies should build and sustain strategic partners and collaborative action with third party stakeholders/initiatives to meet their human rights commitments around the right to a healthy environment (e.g. other companies, trade unions, government agencies, civil society organisations, experts, international bodies and multi-stakeholder initiatives). These partnerships allow companies to remediate actions more swiftly and effectively.

Coming soon…

Examples of further guidance on a clean, healthy and sustainable environment include:

• Economist Impact and the UNDP, Asia in Focus: Clean Air and the Business and Human Rights Agenda: This report analyses air pollution in Asia, the link between air pollution and human rights and how the UNGPs can be used to address the pollution.
• ERM, How business can adapt to new environmental and human rights due diligence requirements: This resource provides five practical actions for businesses to take when integrating environmental and human rights due diligence processes.
• European Commission and International Trade Centre, Making Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Work for All: This document outlines human rights and environmental due diligence, the relevant actors and their roles, and provides guidance on how to design supporting measures. Fairtrade, Client Earth, et al, Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence: This collaborative document seeks to outline the importance of implementing environmental considerations into human rights due diligence.
• Forest Peoples, Implementing a human rights-based approach: This working group paper provides an analysis on how best to adopt a human rights-based approach to implementing the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
• GBI, Business involvement in biodiversity-related human rights impacts: This briefing seeks to support businesses in identifying and addressing human rights risks linked to biodiversity issues.
• GBI, Climate Action and Human Rights – Moving to regenerative agriculture: This briefing provides businesses with high-level guidance on the human rights risks of shifting to regenerative agriculture and the challenges of due diligence.
• OHCHR, Human Rights, Climate Change and Business: This document seeks to understand the legal implications of the three pillars of the UNGPs with regard to climate change.
• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: This report analyses the state of global food security and nutrition in 2023. It gives companies and organisations an insight into a range of food security issues, including agriculture, climate change and human rights.