45
harms resulting from the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification
affect the exercise and enjoyment of Filipinos’ human rights.177 A recent
submission by Office of the High Commission on Human Rights to the 21st
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change similarly found that “[c]limate change and its impacts,
including sea-level rise, extreme weather events and droughts have already
inflicted human rights harms on millions of people.”178
2.112. Third, the respondents have responsibility to: (a) avoid causing
or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities,
and address such impacts when they occur; and (b) seek to prevent or
mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their
operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they
have not contributed to those impacts.179
2.113. The UN Guiding Principles are clear that corporate
responsibility “arises in relation to all human rights” and that there is an
“agreement among states that environmental and climate harms interfere
with the enjoyment of many internationally recognized human rights.”180
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment has
found that the three pillars of the UN Guiding Principles apply to all
environmental human rights abuses, including impairments of human rights
in relation to climate change.181
2.114. On one hand, states must protect human rights against
business-related abuses; and, on the other hand, companies must respect
177
For a detailed exploration of the human rights implications of climate change in the Philippines, see
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School, Submission in Support of the Petitioners
dated 16 December 2016, available at https://business-humanrights.org/en/amicus-briefs, last accessed on
08 February 2017..
178
Understanding Human Rights and Climate Change, Submission of the Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights to the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (2015), available at http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/COP21.pdf.,
last accessed on 06 February 2017.
The amicus submission from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School provides a
detailed explanation of the impacts of climate change and how they interfere with the enjoyment of human
rights and why non-state actors may be held accountable for this interference under international human
rights law. Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School, op cit.
179
Guiding Principles, op cit., Principle 13, p. 14.
180
Seck, S., amicus submission, op cit., p. 5 (citing Human Rights Council, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and
sustainable environment:
climate change, John Knox, 1 February 2016, A/HRC/31/52 (2016), para. 66, available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2729611, last accessed on 08 February 2017.
181
Knox, J. Climate 2016 at para 66. See also 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: Mapping Report, UNOHCHR, 25th Sess, UN Doc A/HRC/25/53(2014), United Nations Mandate
on Human Rights and the Environment, para. 59, available at http://srenvironment.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/03/A-HRC-25-53-clean-final-version-1.doc, last accessed on 08 February 2017.
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