Submission in Support of Petitioners Case No. CHR-NI-2016-0001 livelihoods.134 As the world gets warmer, it will become increasingly difficult for the government of the Philippines to fulfill its human rights obligations with respect to these people. International Law Sources of the Commission’s Jurisdiction and Respondents’ Obligations Petitioners in this case have asked “whether or not the Respondent Carbon Majors must account for…the human rights implications of climate change and ocean acidification.”135 The question requires the Commission to consider, among other things, its ability to exercise jurisdiction to investigate the human rights implications of domestic harms caused by private actors’ activities undertaken outside the Philippines.136 International human rights law does not pose a jurisdictional bar to such an investigation. Indeed, international human rights law supports the Commission’s investigation of petitioners’ claim. Based on states’ substantive human rights obligations, the CESCR, regional courts, and UN special rapporteurs have concluded that states have a general duty not only to “adopt legal and institutional frameworks that protect against, and respond to, environmental harm that may or does interfere with the enjoyment of human rights” but also to ensure that these frameworks include protections to prevent third parties from creating environmental harms that interfere with the exercise of human rights.137 Such protections necessarily include access to an adequate remedy, judicial or non-judicial, when human rights are violated by third party, non-state actors. Similarly, OHCHR has concluded that “[s]tates should take adequate measures to protect all persons from [climate-related] human rights harms caused by business” and that this entails, among other things, “tak[ing] measures to ensure that those harmed by climate change… have access to effective remedies including 134 Id. Greenpeace Petition at 17. Note that this is an administrative proceeding rather than a judicial proceeding, and the Commissions’ ability to exercise jurisdiction is based on Rule 2 of the Omnibus Rules of Procedure of the Commission on Human Rights, which states that the Commission “shall take cognizance of and investigate… all forms of human rights violations and abuses involving civil and political rights.” 136 See Greenpeace Petition at 9-11 (addressing issues of extraterritoriality). 137 HRC, Report of the Independent Expert on the issue of Human Rights Obligations Relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, John H. Knox, ¶¶ 46-7, A/HRC/25/53 (Dec. 30, 2013). 135 Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School 25