Never a dull moment in the business, human rights and climate space!
The EU Parliament 🇪🇺 voted this week to adopt the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) - a game-changing step forward for mandatory reporting with a range of sustainability topics covered (climate change, worker rights, business conduct, etc.) 📕
The EU Parliament overcame some last minute opposition from a cross-party group of 44 rightwing and liberal MEPs. Initially over 11,000 listed companies will need to comply from the start of 2024. The scope will expand to large non-listed companies and listed small and medium enterprises in 2025 and 2026, totalling around 50,000 entities in all.
The UN negotiations 🇺🇳 related to the establishment of a Loss And Damage Fund collapsed this week - in large part due to insistence from the US and EU that the fund should be hosted by The World Bank.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted a regional dialogue related to the right to a clean, health and sustainable environment - focused on Europe and Central Asia. Key ask from civil society? Step up EU governments by adopting a protocol under the 🇪🇺 European Convention on Human Rights. 🌿
And all of this while I was visiting a sugarbeet farm discussing the connections between just transition and regenerative agriculture with AIM Progress members - amongst many other timely topics. We at Human Level have been part of three sessions on just transition for corporates this week. Everyone can now start to see the inter-connections between human rights, climate and the environment. The question is rapidly becoming: How and What are the next steps?
It’s mid-term this week in the UK so we’re taking a short break from the summaries. When we’re back with you, we will be implementing a new system to try and get back to Friday midday UK delivery into your Inbox! You’ll have noticed that the more working sessions we run in a week, the more challenging it has been for us to stay on track with our internally-agreed deadline. But process will come to the rescue, just as it does for embedding human rights policies into culture. 😁
See you soon, Anna
