From Nuremberg to Climate Change: The Corporate Responsibility to Respect

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter unpacks the meaning and implications of the corporate ‘responsibility to respect’ as conceptualized in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The UNGPs refer not only to the adverse impacts caused by a corporation through its own actions or omissions, but also to those caused or contributed to by other subjects and in which the corporation has some form of involvement. Understanding the different categories of corporate responsibility under Guiding Principle 13 is essential both to businesses who need to put in place processes of due diligence, and to policy-makers who are crafting legislation on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. This chapter analyses the different types of involvement in human rights and environmental impacts highlighting their possible financial, reputational and legal consequences. Drawing on guidance published by the OHCHR, it shows how these different modes of corporate involvement are not placed in separate silos, but rather on a ‘responsibility continuum’. Finally, this chapter argues that a coherent reading of the UNGPs requires adopting a holistic approach to the corporate responsibility to respect and interpreting the human rights responsibilities of corporations in the light of relevant environmental law and climate law standards.Keywordscomplicityenvironmental due diligenceclimate due diligencedivestmentboycottsOECD National Contact Points