7 appreciation that business activities can cause human rights harm through climate change and so a commitment from the highest level of the enterprise to avoid causing, contributing or being linked to harm is critical for an effective response to climate change. (f) Principle 17 states that 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.” Could you please explain what this means in practice and the relevance of this principle in the context of climate change? This is the pivotal action to (a) know and show and (b) take steps to prevent, mitigate or redress any harm. It is through due diligence that any enterprise will understand the exact nature of its role and contribution to climate change and so define exactly how each enterprise can prevent, mitigate or remedy any harms from climate change. (g) Principle 22 states that where businesses “identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse impacts, they should provide for or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes.” Could you please explain what this means in practice and the relevance of this principle in the context of climate change? This principle is straight forward enough. The general responsibility is to prevent adverse human rights harm through climate change by undertaking due diligence to know the emerging risks. If however, the process fails, they should provide remediation. Remediation covers a wide range of actions from restitution in integrum to apologies and all that may lie between. Q19: Could you please explain the concept of corporate human rights due diligence, that is “the process by which a company can ‘know and show’ that it respects human rights”? A19: Corporate human rights due diligence refers to mechanisms and processes to reveal the potential impacts of the enterprise’s activities. For human rights purposes, due diligence is expected to reveal as much of the risks to the company as it does for other third party stakeholders. Effective due diligence must assess real human rights impact which should be tracked across the entire business operations and any lessons learned should be incorporated into the enterprise’s policies. Best of all, the lessons and policies should be communicated widely. Q20: Based on those principles then how should States ensure that businesses within their control or whose acts can be attributed to States are not violating or infringing the human rights of the citizens?