How can we put people at the centre of climate action?

Climate Justice
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A2: What I’m most excited about is the challenge and opportunity for the healthcare sector to play a pivotal role – especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. One in two people don’t have access to basic and essential health services. These underserved, often rural, communities are getting impacted from multiple sides and they have a hard time managing or treating these climate-related health issues. In these communities, self-care, or the ability to take care of your personal health, becomes a health lifeline.

The most successful programs focus on resiliency versus short-term relief from a climate event. Health literacy programs become essential – we need to teach people how to take care of themselves and their families. This can be both analog or fusing healthcare and technology. Think democratizing telehealth and other services that bring healthcare to communities in need. Healthcare companies have the know-how and scale to help these communities and in collaboration with governments, society and NGOs can create meaningful, sustainable change. I talked more about this in a recent op-ed I wrote for Diplomatic Courier: Climate Action or Human Action?

One of the biggest challenges is embedding this type of commitment into the fabric of how a company operates. A successful sustainability strategy needs to focus on a company’s unique value proposition; then once it is integrated across the value chain, these programs become a means to be both a force for good and a force for growth, not just a CSR initiative on the side.

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A2. We see that the Energy/utilities sector, agribusiness (and those connected to it, i.e. Food&Bev, Apparel, chemicals, etc), construction and tech are among the sectors that are the most aware about the challenges and are taking proactive measures, although often still in the form of projects, rather than as integrated processes, and children are still invisible in these.

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A2. Two of the biggest challenges that we see, are:

  1. Transformation of supply chains: efforts to cut GHG-emissions in supply chains must start going beyond carbon offsetting schemes and start to engage local communities in sustainable solutions. This is important, not the least for children and youth, who need both a healthy environment, AND prospects of decent jobs as they grow up.

  2. Listening to those that are impacted the most: many corporates would benefit from engaging more with youth: young people who are committed to fighting climate change are usually also acutely aware of social injustices and by taking in their perspective, insights into unintended consequences and how they could be managed better would be gained, in addition to a better understanding of what the expectations of the younger generation are.

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Great question. We have done this, inconsultation with compaies, investors and civil society, for our renewable energy humanrightrs benchmark - the key questions for each fo the indicators are what came through as the most powerful date to collect that will help discriminate leading companies from laggards. Renewable Energy & Human Rights Benchmark 2021 - Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

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This almost get’s into the social determinants of health. Perhaps helpful data points to explore for impact.

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Question 2:

Whether they’re doing this well yet feels too soon to call, but given the nature of their business, oil, gas and power generation companies are being pushed to move faster than many other sectors.

Within this sector, the Italian electricity company Enel is an example of what good practice might look like. As part of their push to decarbonize their electricity generation by 2050, they will need to close thermal power stations and ramp up renewables generation. They worked with unions both in Italy and in its other countries of operation, and made a commitment to respecting human rights and fair labour practices, set up apprenticeships to transfer knowledge from elderly to young workers, committed to retention, retraining, and redeployment, and offered early pensions for older workers.

Enel also acknowledges the importance of social welfare support during the first steps of any transition (which perhaps speaks to the second part of the question - about the challenges, or at least those that lie outside the gift of business).

This BSR/We Mean Business report has more detail.

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Answer 2
Can we decarbonise power and transport in time to avoid climate catastrophe? It is widely recognized that a transition to clean energy is both urgent and imperative. And it must happen on an unprecedented scale. The goal of achieving net zero-carbon by mid-century will require a massive expansion in the investment of transition mineral production to power renewable energy production and technologies. This will lead to surging demand for land and water, and for minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese, nickel, zinc, and rare earths. According to the International Energy Agency, a mid-century zero-carbon world will take a sixfold increase in the production of energy transition minerals by 2030. Demand is already increasing, and prices are surging.

A major investment surge for the clean energy transition has begun, especially in the Global South where many mineral deposits are found, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (cobalt), Tanzania, Indonesia, and the Philippines (nickel), and Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia (“lithium triangle”), and access to energy is urgently needed. But while the energy transition is a global imperative, the governance of mineral extraction is still through a bewildering array of voluntary arrangements, while ESG investors focus on environmental indicators, downplaying development, and human rights. There is significant risk to the speed and sustainability of the transition if the greening of energy systems in advanced and developing economies is achieved through corporate practices and investments that damage the economies of Global South countries.

Our Transition Mineral Tracker highlights the human rights policies and perfromance of the major mining companies across these six transition minerals; and our Renewable Energy Human Rights Benchmark does the same for the major companies and asset owners of renewable energy installations.

The Africa Progress Panel amongst others documented the many practices that weaken the link between transition mineral production and development, including tax evasion and avoidance, illicit financial flows, human rights abuses, and significant environmental damage. These risks, alongside a lack of sufficient public consent, will continue to result in community conflict, threatening the much-needed transition and putting marginalised communities and workers again at risk of human rights violations. Failure to establish approaches to investment and production that address these tensions will either lead to transition mineral production shortfalls and derail the energy transition, or they will perpetuate the abusive practices of the fossil fuel and extractive industries, and see benefits once again concentrated with the few. We now have an opportunity to shine a spotlight on these challenges, which have been hidden from multiple advocacy and policy dialogues.

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Good to hear about the BHRRC benchmark Phil. how do you think we can address the ever growing number of benchmarks?

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Thanks Phil, on environmental human rights defenders the Human Rights Council resolution 40/11 on Recognizing the contribution of environmental human rights defenders to the enjoyment of human rights, environmental protection and sustainable development can of course also be mentioned as well as the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights’ report on human rights defenders: https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-business/report-human-rights-defenders-and-civic-space-business-and-human-rights-dimension

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Question 2:

Global gender inequality is a big challenge. It is closely intertwined with climate change. It’s well documented that women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts. HOWEVER, they are also leading innovative solutions to climate change especially in frontline communities

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Love to know more about how companies could better support HRDs… are there any examples out there anyone knows of, and what sorts of things could they do? I remember when at FCDO we had guidance for Embassies on sorts of things they could do in terms of making representations to govts, funding etc - maybe business need the same…

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Yes agree with Alice that business needs to be proactive in advocacy terms but it’s new

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On how business can support Human Rights Defenders, there is this guide by Phil’s team at BHRRC!

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A2: To meet their responsibility to respect human rights, businesses must address the climate-related human rights harms with which they are involved. They should establish or participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanisms that can remediate climate and environmental concerns raised by affected persons. In the context of climate change, particularly where businesses have contributed to severe impacts (such as large businesses involved in the generation of electricity and heat, transportation, industrial agriculture, and other high emitting sectors), each business should provide for remediation appropriate to its share in responsibility for the harm.

In recent years, access to justice and effective remedy has been sought in the context of various judicial and non-judicial mechanisms to hold businesses accountable for climate change-related human rights harms, including the RWE, Milieudefensie et al v Royal Dutch Shell and Gloucester cases, proceedings before the OECD National Contact Points, and the climate change inquiry undertaken by the Philippines Commission on Human Rights.

In October 2021, the OHCHR Accountability and Remedy Project team hosted a webinar for the Grievance Redress and Accountability Mechanism (GRAM) Partnership on designing and administering grievance mechanisms, focusing on practical ways of ensuring grievance mechanism legitimacy and rights compatibility.

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Superb - will read with interest thank you both!

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Nina, We (Symrise) work with Unilever, GIZ and Save the Children on the ground in Madagascar using the CRBP framework to assess the work we are doing on sustainable development (climate smart agricultural practices including water conservation, protecting soil from erosion, crop diversification, etc.) and the impact on children in the farming communities. Regrettably due to COVID we have had to delay a second CBRP study that was planned and this will now not take place until later in the year.

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Good question. There are very few human rights benchmarks that are loyally moored to the international standards of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, or the OECD MNC Guidance. The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark is the mother of all these, and we and otehrs use this as the basis - so they form a ‘family’ across sectors. I am most concerned about the lack of consistency of most of the ESG ratings agencies who are used by investors. Yet there is little consistency betweeen their rankings for any one company as many agencies do not have a consistent approach to measuring the ‘S’ based on UN standards. This leads to great confusion, and unwittingly facilitates green- and white-washing on issues relation to human rights and social justice.

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A2. In terms of a collaborative, sector-wide response, I’m excited by two supply chains at the moment: cocoa and flowers.

Fairtrade always advocates sector-wide approaches because as proud as we are of our impact, usually represent (as in, certify) under 10% of any given supply chain. Of course, we do advocate regulatory changes in rich-world governments to incentivize and compel companies to act sustainably. But alongside this, we also see a role for multi-stakeholder initiatives where companies commit to all take a set of actions.

Cocoa and flowers are both showing promise in that regard. Manufacturers and traders are working together with certifiers and CSOs to encourage the EU to bring forward a mix of HRDD and programme support to tackle sustainability issues in a collective way. Encouragingly, this will help address a range of different issues in the cocoa supply chain in a holistic way - low incomes, child labour, and deforestation. More information here: Commission launches initiative for more sustainable cocoa production | International Partnerships (europa.eu)

In flowers, the Dutch have really been leading the way. In 2019 the Dutch flower industry agreed to move towards implementing the floor wage for all flowers sourced by Dutch flower traders. In addition, the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative (FSI) has been established which is seeking to address a range of sustainability issues including climate change. Fairtrade is currently talking to stakeholders in the UK flower industry about establishing something similar in the UK.

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I completely agree, @Barbara4444 . One of the challenges is that climate change is not going to be solved overnight. We need to think both long- and short-term here. Involving women and girls in the strategies for climate action, but also thinking about how do we set them up for success today.

For instance, at Bayer, we have a signature program called The Nutrient Gap Initiative which is executed in partnership with NGOs and governments to expand access to vitamins and minerals for 50 million people in underserved communities by 2030. Women and girls are among the most vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies. Much of the program is focused on expanding access to Multiple Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS or prenatal vitamins); when a baby is born with developmental delays or stunted growth, it’s challenging for them ever to lead a healthy life. By expanding access to MMS, the program helps build healthier families and more resilient communities

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Yes, it feels like there is more consistency between indicies and benchmarks on in climate issues eg reduction in Carbon emissions compared to social indicators.

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