change impacts. As discussed in the Statement of Facts, the current or predicted climate impacts
in the Alabat and Verde Island communities have resulted and/or will likely result in the
infringements of the people’s human rights.
The Interpretive Guide describes the ways in which a business’s activities may “cause,”
“contribute,” or “be directly linked” to adverse impacts on human rights.65 For example, a
corporation may be deemed to have caused an adverse impact if it is the “sole or main source” of
environmental harm in a community.66 A corporation may have contributed to an adverse impact
if it is one among other sources that have caused such harm or if it provides products or services
to a third party that then causes harm.67 Business activities can be directly linked to adverse
impacts if the corporation supplies products or services to an entity that causes or contributes to
adverse impacts.68 With respect to “cause” and “contribute”, a corporation that is responsible for
the adverse impacts “should cease or change the activity… in order to prevent or mitigate the
chance of the impact occurring or recurring;” and if an impact does occur, remediation is
necessary “either directly or in cooperation with others (be it the courts, the Government, other
enterprises involved or other third parties).”69 Whereas for “directly linked”, the corporation has
a responsibility to use its “leverage to encourage the entity that caused or contributed to the
impact to prevent or mitigate its recurrence.”70
Despite the scientifically established link between carbon emissions from fossil fuel
production and climate change/ocean acidification, and their human rights implications, there are
fossil fuel companies actively preventing action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and
solutions by denying the science and running campaigns of confusion, similar to the tactics
employed by the tobacco industry.71 For example, according to research endorsed by leading
percent) is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed by the planet. And like any warm object sitting in cold
surroundings — and space is a very cold place — some energy is always radiating back out into space as invisible
infrared light. Subtract the energy flowing out from the energy flowing in, and if the number is anything other than
zero, there has to be some warming (or cooling, if the number is negative) going on.” Massachussetts Institute of
Technology, Explained: Radiative Forcing, Mar. 10, 2010, http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/explained-radforce-0309
(last accessed on Sept. 17, 2015).
65
Interpretive Guide, supra note 25, at 17, box 2.
66
Id.
67
Id.
68
Id.
69
Id. at 18.
70
Id.
71
See Union of Concerned Scientists, The Climate Change Dossiers, July 2015, http://www.ucsusa.org/globalwarming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.Vfp7wZ2qpHw (last
accessed on Sept. 17, 2015); Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M., Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists
obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, New York: Bloomsbury Press (2010);
Greenpeace USA, Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Machine v. Climate Science, Sept. 2013,
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/Dealing-in-Doubt---theClimate-Denial-Machine-vs-Climate-Science/ (last accessed on Sept. 17, 2015); U.S. Senators Edward J. Markey
(D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent letters to “100 fossil fuel companies,
trade groups, and other organizations to determine whether they are funding scientific studies designed to confuse
the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the
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