    o 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.” Principle 13 should be interpreted to require that the respondent companies use appropriate means equivalent to the scale of the risks to human rights from climate change in order to reduce their emissions in order to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. Principle 14 - “The responsibility of business enterprises to respect human rights applies to all enterprises regardless of their size, sector, operational context, ownership and structure.” Principles 15 & 16 - To meet their human rights responsibilities, businesses should implement policies and processes appropriate for their size and circumstances, so as to safeguard human rights in all aspects of their operation. Principle 17 - Businesses should also carry out human rights due diligence, which includes “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Principle 22 - Where businesses “identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse impacts, they should provide for or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes.”311 Principles 15 through 17 of the UNGPs require enterprises to have policy commitments to reducing their impacts on human rights, a due diligence process, and processes to enable remediation. Amici emphasize that conducting due diligence is not merely a mechanical process. The due diligence process fuses two conceptually distinct processes, one is an investigation of facts, and the other is an evaluation of the facts in light of the relevant standards of care. Properly conducted due diligence requires the investigator to use his or her informed and reasoned judgement to actively investigate, assess, and respond to areas of known or potential risk. 312 “Because the hard and soft laws governing corporate human rights responsibilities are evolving, respecting the letter and spirit of international human rights is the appropriate standard of care to apply in human rights due diligence.” 313 Principles 16 to 22 set out the operational requirements and, in the context of climate change, mean that companies should: a) Acknowledge, in their statement of policy created under Principle 16, the effect of climate change on the exercise of human rights now and in the future; b) Include climate change as a human rights issue in human rights due diligence undertaken in accordance with Principle 17; c) Identify and assess the specific human rights impacts of climate change arising from their operations and products, drawing on human rights expertise, and 311 ClientEarth brief at ¶ 51. Amicus Curiae Brief submitted by Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), at pgs. 9-10, https://business-humanrights.org/sites/default/files/documents/CHR-NI-20160001%20CIEL%20Opinion%2010.2.17.R.pdf [hereinafter CIEL brief]. 313 CIEL brief, at pgs. 8-9. See also Mark Taylor, Luc Zandvliet & Mitra Forouhar, Due Diligence for Human Rights: A Risk-Based Approach 3 (Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Working Paper No. 53, Oct. 2009). 312 64

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