BIICL held the webinar series 'Human Rights Due Diligence for Climate Change Impacts' from 10 September to 1 October 2020.

This topic came to our attention as requiring further consideration when we were leading a study for the European Commission  on regulatory options for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. The study showed that although there now seems to be consensus that climate change is a human rights issue, companies' human rights due diligence and their climate due diligence seem to be developing 'in silos'. Moreover, it is not clear exactly how a legal duty to exercise due diligence for climate impacts could and should be framed, and how it would apply in law and in practice.

The above study has led to the announcement by the European Commission of a legislative initiative, to take place in 2021...

For the purposes of this webinar series, we asked speakers to work on the assumption that we will have laws on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence - as a duty to exercise a standard of care - in the near future...

[A] number of speakers highlighted existing tools, principles and practices that benchmark and guide climate change due diligence...

There seemed to be a consensus that, to a certain extent and at least in theory, companies are already subject to a duty to exercise care not to harm the planet, for example in tort law. However, we do not yet have a body of case law to clarify the standard...

Many speakers also emphasised that while there might already be an existing duty in place, this has been very difficult to access in terms of remedies for victims...

Further questions relate to how to ensure that other human rights are considered as part of a 'just transition'..., the disproportionate impacts of climate harms on certain groups of people..., and the need to think 'transformatively'... Speakers also discussed the perspectives of investors..., insurers..., directors [...] and corporate advisors...

Some speakers called into question whether due diligence is actually the correct standard to apply here, or whether, given the nature of climate harms and the state of the climate emergency, a strict liability model is required...