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This briefing paper argues that the proposed United Nations Legally Binding Instrument (LBI) to regulate transnational corporations is a critical structural lever for achieving environmental justice. It contends that existing voluntary frameworks are inadequate to stop corporate-driven ecological destruction and that the LBI can transform the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (RtHE) into enforceable obligations, ensuring corporate liability and access to remedy across transnational value chains.

This briefing paper argues for the necessity of a legally binding United Nations instrument to regulate transnational corporations and other businesses as a structural lever for environmental justice. It contends that current voluntary frameworks are insufficient to ensure corporate accountability for ecological destruction and human rights violations, particularly in the Global South.

This briefing paper argues for the adoption of a United Nations legally binding instrument (LBI) to regulate transnational corporations as a structural lever for environmental justice. It highlights the failure of voluntary frameworks to ensure corporate accountability for ecological destruction and human rights abuses, proposing that a binding treaty would operationalize the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment through mandatory due diligence, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and effective remediation.

This report, prepared by Greenpeace and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) as part of the ETO Consortium, examines the application of the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations (ETOs) to ecological destruction and climate change. It argues that states must be held accountable for human rights violations occurring outside their borders resulting from their own actions, omissions, or failure to regulate non-state actors, such as transnational corporations.

This document is a summary of seven national diagnostics conducted by member organizations of Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) regarding the increasing power of transnational corporations in the energy and agricultural sectors.