131 7. To NGOs, CSOs, and the Legal Profession i. NGOs and CSOs No less than the Human Rights Council has emphasized that “civil society actors have an important and legitimate role in promoting corporate social responsibility, and in preventing, mitigating and seeking remedy for the adverse human rights impacts of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.”567 With the growing power of multinational companies and the shrinking influence of governments, NGOs and CSOs have become the third force alongside the public and private sectors in promoting and ensuring human rights with respect to companies.568 The Commission recommends that NGOs and CSOs continuously engage in strategic litigation to strengthen business and human rights norms, change public policy, increase government ambition, and create binding precedents catalyzing the movement towards zero-carbon energy. ii. Legal Profession Justice Brian Preston569 explains the role that lawyers play in supporting climate action: Recognizing that addressing climate change depends on responses on a small scale, and that any legal action which involves climate change issues will impact on climate change policy, gives rise to a responsibility on lawyers to be aware of climate change issues in daily legal practice. It calls for a climate conscious approach rather than a climate blind approach. A climate blind approach is where the outcome of the legal problem or dispute will have some impact on climate change issues, but legal advice is given or the dispute is litigated or resolved without any attention to climate change issues. A climate conscious approach requires an active awareness of the reality of climate change and how it interacts 567 United Nations Human Rights Council, Elaboration of an International Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights, U.N. Doc. No. A/HRC/RES/26/9 (July 14, 2014), available at https://undocs.org/A/HRC/RES/26/9. 568 Chris Jochnick and Louis Bickford, The Role of Civil Society in Business and Human Rights, in Business and Human Rights from Principles to Practice 258 (Dorothée Baumann-Pauly & Justine Nolan eds., 2016). 569 Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales.

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