Our key takeaway: Vulnerability play a central role in the context of climate change. On so many levels: vulnerability is one of the three drivers of physical climate change risk; vulnerability of a person or group increases the severity of the climate impact; and intersecting factors compound the risks for vulnerable people in the context of climate change. In this context, just transition and just resilience are key. Shift finds that support for people and communities negatively impacted by physical climate change has so far received relatively limited attention and has generally not been included in Just Transition discussions, which tend to focus on employment and job issues. Thus, they highlight the need for a just resilience, aka, addressing human rights impacts that may arise from responses to physical risks. The UNGPs can help companies advance on both the just transition and just resilience - in particular through its focus on effective engagement with potentially affected stakeholders and prioritisation of actions based on severity of impacts. To advance, companies can ask themselves two sets of questions - first on awareness and analysis of human rights risks in company responses to climate change, and second on integration of human rights due diligence into climate risk strategies.
Shift has published: ‘Climate Action and Human Rights: How the UN Guiding Principles can help companies respect human rights when responding to climate change’ (February 2023). This paper delves into how the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) can provide a framework to help companies bring managing climate change and human rights risks together: