Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence

The document advocates for the EU to establish a comprehensive environmental due diligence framework within its sustainable corporate governance directive. It argues that human rights protections alone are insufficient because environmental damage can occur without direct human harm. The briefing proposes that companies be obligated to identify, prevent, and remedy adverse impacts across their entire value chains, aligned with international standards like the Paris Agreement and OECD Guidelines. It suggests a broad definition of environmental impacts—including climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss—and calls for a robust enforcement regime combining administrative, criminal, and civil liability to ensure victims, including those outside the EU, have access to justice.

• Environmental protection must be treated as a distinct requirement from human rights in the EU directive because environmental damage can occur without constituting a human rights violation or causing immediate harm to people.
• Environmental due diligence should be defined as a company's obligation to identify, assess, prevent, mitigate, cease, monitor, and account for adverse impacts across their operations, subsidiaries, and value chains, including the requirement to remedy harms.
• The EU should define adverse environmental impacts by referencing international agreements and a non-exhaustive list that includes climate change (greenhouse gas emissions), air, soil, water and noise pollution, hazardous substances, waste, forest and ecosystem damage, biodiversity loss, and habitat/species loss.
• Corporate climate obligations should be aligned with the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement and cover all three scopes of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (indirect energy), and Scope 3 (all other indirect value chain emissions).
• The enforcement framework should utilize a mix of administrative, criminal, and civil liability, allowing national authorities to sanction non-compliance and empowering the public and NGOs to bring complaints.
• Civil liability regimes must ensure victims of corporate abuses, whether inside or outside the EU, have access to justice through group claims, injunctive relief, a fairer distribution of the burden of proof, and extended time limitations for transnational claims.

APA

ClientEarth (2021). Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence. https://www.clientearth.org/media/o0knzuoo/putting-the-environment-in-human-rights-and-environmental-due-diligence.pdf

Chicago

ClientEarth. Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence. 2021. https://www.clientearth.org/media/o0knzuoo/putting-the-environment-in-human-rights-and-environmental-due-diligence.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=ClientEarth |title=Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence |date=May 2021 |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/o0knzuoo/putting-the-environment-in-human-rights-and-environmental-due-diligence.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{clientearth2021putting, author = {{ClientEarth}}, title = {{Putting the Environment in Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, year = {2021}, month = may, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/o0knzuoo/putting-the-environment-in-human-rights-and-environmental-due-diligence.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }