Editor’s Note: Elisa Chiaro is a legal consultant focussing on Business and Human Rights and International Criminal Law. In 2016 she completed an LL.M. at SOAS, University of London. Before that she worked for five years as international corporate lawyer both in Italy and UK. She is admitted to the Bar in Italy.
1. Introduction
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) climate change is real: “[h]uman influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.”[1]
From a scientific point of view, it is well established that the concentration of greenhouse gases (“GHGs”), which are present in nature and essential for the survival of human beings and plants, is linked to the Earth’s temperature, which has been rising steadily since the Industrial Revolution. From the perspective of public health, according to the WHO, an effect of climate change will be an increase of approximately 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 due to malnutrition, disease (such as malaria and diarrhoea) and heat stress.
As will be explained in the following section many international agreements and initiatives have emerged to tackle the problem. However the main goal of this post is to analyse some examples of civil judicial and quasi-judicial means that have been used to hold companies accountable for the effects of climate change. The first category under scrutiny will be litigation brought against private companies, such as in the case Lliuya v. RWE AG brought before the German Court and in American cases brought by public institutions (cities or counties) against oil companies. The second category encompasses other grievance mechanisms, such as the notification to the OECD National Contact Points of violation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (“OECD Guidelines”) by corporations (Dutch NGOs v. ING Bank). More...
Editor's Note: Catherine Dunmore is
an experienced international lawyer who practised international arbitration for
multinational law firms in London and Paris. She recently received her LL.M.
from the University of Toronto and her main fields of interest include international
criminal law and human rights. Since October 2017, she is part of the team of
the Doing Business Right project at
the Asser Institute.
Introduction
This report compiles all relevant
news, events and materials on Doing Business Right based on the daily coverage
provided on our twitter feed @DoinBizRight. You are invited to complete this
survey via the comments section below, feel free to add links to important
cases, documents and articles we might have overlooked. More...
Editor's Note: Catherine Dunmore is an experienced international lawyer who practised international arbitration for multinational law firms in London and Paris. She recently received her LL.M. from the University of Toronto and her main fields of interest include international criminal law and human rights. Since October 2017, she is part of the team of the Doing Business Right project at the Asser Institute.
Introduction
The Court of Appeal in London recently handed down its judgment in Dominic Liswaniso Lungowe and Ors. v Vedanta Resources Plc and Konkola Copper Mines Plc [2017] EWCA Civ 1528 (Lungowe v Vedanta) addressing issues of jurisdiction and parent company liability. The judgment runs contrary to the historical legal doctrine that English domiciled parent companies are protected from liability for their foreign subsidiaries’ actions. This decision clarifies the duty of care standard a parent company owes when operating via a subsidiary and opens the gates to other English domiciled companies and their subsidiaries being held accountable for any human rights abuses. More...
Editor's note: This report compiles all relevant
news, events and materials on transnational business regulation based on the
daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @DoinBizRight. You are invited to complete this survey via the comments
section below, feel free to add links to important cases, documents and
articles we might have overlooked. More...
Editor's note: Sara Martinetto is an intern at T.M.C. Asser Institute. She has recently completed her LLM in Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam. She holds interests in Migration Law, Criminal Law, Human Rights and European Law, with a special focus on their transnational dimension.
On 29th June 2017, four Nigerian widows launched a civil case against Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), Shell Petroleum N.V., the Shell Transport and Trading Company, and its subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) in the Netherlands. Esther Kiobel, Victoria Bera, Blessing Eawo and Charity Levula are still seeking redress for the killing of their husbands in 1995 in Nigeria. They claim the defendants are accomplices in the execution of their husbands by the Abasha regime. Allegedly, the companies had provided material support, which then led to the arrest and death of the activists.
In the light of this lawsuit, it is interesting to retrace the so-called ‘Ogoni Nine’ legal saga. The case saw the interplay between multiple jurisdictions and actors, and its analysis is useful to point out some of the main legal issues encountered on the path to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses. More...
Doing Business has been a (if
not the) core concern for the post-WWII world order, leading up to contemporary
economic globalisation and the ‘free’ movement of
goods, capital and ideas across the globe. With our research project, and the
launch of this companion blog, we aim to shift the focus towards Doing Business
Right. Thanks to the financial crisis
in 2008, there is growing awareness of the fact that Doing Business can lead to extremely adverse social and economic
consequences. The trust in Doing Business
as a cure-all to modernize, democratize, or civilize the world is fading. Moreover,
the damaging externalities prompted by the operation of transnational economic
activity are more and more visible. It has become harder, nowadays, to ignore
the environmental and social consequences triggered elsewhere by our
consumption patterns or by our reliance on certain energy industries. What does
Doing Business Right mean? How does
the law respond to the urge to do business right? What are the legal mechanisms
used, or that could be used, to ensure that business is done in the right way? Can
transnational business activity even be subjected to law in a globalized world?
This blog will offer an academic platform for scholars and practitioners
interested in these questions. With your help we aim to
investigate the multiple legal and regulatory constructs affecting transnational
business conduct - ranging from public international law to internal corporate
practices. We will do so by hosting in-depth case studies, but also more
theoretical takes on the normative underpinnings of the idea of Doing Business Right. We aim to be inclusive in
methodological terms, and believe that private and public, as well as national
and international, legal (and...) scholars should come together to tackle a genuinely
transnational phenomenon. Future posts will cover issues as diverse as
national, EU, international, transnational regulations - including self-regulation,
voluntary codes, and market-based regulatory instruments - applying to transnational business conduct.
Case law from the CJEU, international tribunals (ICJ, arbitral tribunals) and
national courts, as well as decisions from international organisations,
national agencies (such as competition authorities) will be recurring objects
of discussion and analysis. Yet, our perspective is not solely focused on the (traditional)
law: management practices of companies and their effects will also be
scrutinized.
This blog is thought as an open discursive
space to engage and debate with a wide variety of actors and perspectives. We
hope to get the attention of those who care about Doing Business Right, and to provide useful
intellectual and legal weapons for their endeavours.
The Editors:
Antoine Duval is a Senior researcher at the Asser Institute since 2014. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence in which he scrutinized the interaction between EU law and the transnational private regulation of world sport, the lex sportiva. His research is mainly focused on transnational legal theory, international arbitration, and private regulation.
Enrico Partiti is researcher at the Asser Institute since 2017. He holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam on private standards for sustainability. His research interest lies at the intersection of EU and international economic law on the one hand, and private regulation for sustainability on the other. He studies the interactions and reciprocal influence between transnational public and private norms, and how they determine and impact on social and environmental sustainability in global value chains.