"The Philippines Human Rights Commission and the 'Carbon Majors' Petition", 22 Dec 2017

...This post reflects on the international law implications of the [Carbon Majors] petition [to the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR)] for arguments concerning the liability of corporations for alleged human rights violations associated with the impacts of climate change in a transnational context...

...The Carbon Majors petition reflects the growing recognition of the links between States’ obligations under human rights and climate change law...[I]t is possible to identify a set of core obligations associated with the protection of human rights in relation to environmental matters...These core obligations include procedural obligations to assess impacts on the enjoyment of human rights and to make environmental information public, to facilitate participation in environmental decision-making, and to provide access to remedies. States also have substantive obligations to adopt legal and institutional frameworks protecting against harm interfering with the enjoyment of human rights…[T]his includes harm caused by private actors...

...In…the Carbon Majors petition, the State duty to protect the human rights invoked by the petitioners – to life, to health, to food, to water, to sanitation, and to housing – from corporate violations, is well-established in the interpretative work of UN treaty bodies, special procedures, and in international jurisprudence...

...These examples point to the relevance to the Carbon Majors petition of the corporate responsibility to respect and its corollary duty of due diligence, which requires corporations to account for and address adverse human rights impacts, possibly including also those associated with climate change...