Business & Human Rights

Academics Offer "Scientific" Tools for Corporate Climate Action

January 10, 2018

A group of researchers at the University of Oxford has published "scientifically-grounded tools" investors and companies should use in developing their strategies to reduce to "net zero" the greenhouse gas emissions from their business activities in line with the global agenda against climate change.
Nigerian NGO Files OECD Complaint over Flooding

January 10, 2018

A Nigerian community association has filed a complaint with the National Contact Points for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in Italy and the Netherlands claiming that an Italian energy company and its Dutch subsidiary violated "international standards of corporate conduct" by flooding Nigerian villages through infrastructure they built to extract oil from the country.
SEC Rejects Apple's Exclusion of Human Rights Resolution

January 10, 2018

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sent a letter to Apple opposing the tech company's move to exclude from a shareholder vote a resolution requiring the company to establish a "human rights committee" on the ground that the resolution was not "sufficiently significant" to Apple's business operations.
Court Rejects Constitutional Climate Claim Against Norway

January 10, 2018

Reuters reports that a Norwegian court has rejected a lawsuit launched by environmental activists seeking to halt the Norwegian government from granting licenses to energy companies for Arctic oil exploration on the ground that the climate impacts of new oil drilling violated the constitutional right of Norwegians to a healthy environment.
NGOs Resort to Courts to Force Climate Action

January 10, 2018

The Thomson Reuters Foundation reports on the growing trend of attempts by nongovernmental organizations, frustrated by the perceived lack of political action on climate change, to use courts to force businesses to address their asserted impacts on global warming and to require governments to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.