I don’t like using the ‘lawsuits card’ as a way to drive companies forward - it can lead to a number of unintended consequences that is the exact opposite of meaningful human rights due diligence. ⚖️
But let’s all be honest, we know for sure that lawsuits against companies will increase - significantly. 📈
Best response? Don’t fight it. Prepare for it. It starts by meaningfully implementing human rights due diligence and talking about what you are finding and doing. And it continues by connecting human rights and climate together, big time. Human rights due diligence that is not connected to climate change quite simply is not human rights due diligence. Doesn’t work, can’t be done. Do you remember that reference to the operating context in the UN Guiding Principles that increases severity and likelihood of adverse human rights impacts occurring? Climate change will do that for you. 🧑🏻🏭🌎
So just a few of my top picks this week from the world of rising lawsuits (so many to chose from):
In the UK, we’ve just had a landmark Supreme Court ruling (Finch vs Surrey County Council): the State cannot approve any new fossil fuel projects before assessing the downstream (scope 3) emissions from burning oil and gas. The result? Will any new oil extraction projects be possible, now that environmental impact assessments actually include the biggest environmental impact of them all? 🇬🇧
In Hawaii, we’ve just had a groundbreaking settlement released. Two years ago, 13 young people between the ages of nine and 18 filed a lawsuit against Hawaii (State & department of transportation) arguing that prioritising projects such as highway expansions, instead of efforts to electrify transit and promote walking and biking, violated their rights. Their right to a clean and healthful environment, which is guaranteed by the state’s constitution, and their ability to live healthful lives in Hawaii, now and into the future. The settlement released yesterday provides State’s transport department a 2045 deadline to fully decarbonize and achieve zero emissions under agreement - and this will be overseen by the court. 🌱
Some of you will recall that the Montana Constitution also guarantees the right to a clean environment, and that last year, 16 plaintiffs (aged five to 22), made headlines when they won a case against the State of Montana. States do need to consider greenhouse gas emissions, and their impacts on people’s rights, before permitting energy projects. 🌎 🏭
And of course, we are always watching for developments in the business and human rights laws. The latest: The Paris Court of Appeal just issued its first decisions under the French Duty of Vigilance Law. Cases against TotalEnergies and EDF are admissible, and will now proceed to the merits stage. (Reminder: the EDF case is the just transition case - the one where EDF is viewed as not having considered the rights of a Mexican indigenous community when proceeding with a wind farm. The TotalEnergies case is the climate and human rights case, and argues that TotalEnergies has not taken the necessary measures to align with the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement and therefore has not met its duty of vigilance.) 🧑🏽⚖️
We predicted back in 2016 that all of the first lawsuits under the French law would be strategic, and they would be about climate and human rights, and about just transition. And here we have it. ✅
OK so to end with some lovely news before the weekend. The world’s largest pubic opinion survey on climate change ever has just been released - The People’s Climate Vote, run by the United Nations Development Programme, alongside the University of Oxford and GeoPoll. People do care about climate change - a lot as it turns out!
73,000 people were surveyed in 77 countries and the results are very strong, they even surprised the organisers of the poll: 80% of people surveyed globally want their country to do more on climate change; 72% of people said they want their country to move away from fossil fuels to clean energy quickly; 78% of people want more protection for people at risk from extreme weather; and 81% of people want more on nature, like protecting trees and protecting wildlife. (To name a few examples.) ✨
And some of you loved the lightness at the end of last week’s post, so here’s another one that has been doing the rounds again on Linkedin. The one where a dinosaur speaks to policy makers in the UN General Assembly. I wish I’d been there. 📣🦖
Anna
PS: I’m really very excited to see so many of you next week! I’m thrilled to have my Shift hat on in the first half of the week, working with Shift team members and its Business Learning Programme companies on responsible disengagement within a changing climate context. Then covering a number of London Climate Action Week events alongside my Human Level team members. We are all in this together, so let’s make waves (spoiler alert: that text will be on our new website!) 🌊
