Principles for advancing liability
Measures taken to hold polluting industries liable should employ a combination of legislation and litigation to spur actions that advance corporate accountability through a variety of actions, including those that are civil, criminal, legal, cultural, and administrative.
Measures to advance liability should adhere to the following principles:
Be regulatory and mandatory:
Be regulatory and mandatory for the relevant corporation(s), not self-regulatory or voluntary.
Honor differentiated responsibilities:
Respect the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) as enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in international and climate change law, which acknowledges that countries that have contributed the most to climate change have the responsibility to take the greatest and fastest action.
Directly support frontline communities:
Provide publicly governed mechanisms that channel large-scale finance to directly support the communities on the front lines of the climate crisis: those who are leading the way in just and gender-responsive solutions and who are unduly experiencing the greatest impacts.
Frontline communities control public finance:
Place control of that public finance in the hands of these frontline communities and under public control in general.
Protect rights
of people:
Protect the rights of local communities, Indigenous peoples, peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, nomadic and rural peoples, and women as stewards of nature.
Recognize and protect the rights of nature:
Recognize and protect the rights of nature in harmony with protecting rights of the stewards, acknowledging nature sustains all life on Earth and must be respected, preserved, and treated with reverence.
Ensure equitable access to real solutions:
Ensure equitable access to real, community-led and gender responsive solutions to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Finance real solutions at scale:
Make feasible the implementation of real solutions by accessing vast finance to implement them at scale, while rejecting polluting industry schemes like carbon markets, net-zero, negative emssions, and geo-engineering and ending abusive business practices.
Fund reparations toward climate/ecological debt:
Fund reparations toward the climate and ecological debt owed to communities most affected by the climate crisis, not shareholders or other actors such as investors.
Promote phase-out of polluting products:
Contribute to a rapid phase-out of polluting products like fossil fuels and destructive activities such as deforestation in line with what is needed to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,[1] not become a “license to further pollute.”
Help fund a
just transition:
Help communities fund a just transition that protects workers’ rights and livelihoods.
Avoid dependence on polluting industries:
Guarantee workers or communities are not made to become dependent on polluting industries, directly or indirectly.
Help end
corporate impunity:
Contribute to ending corporate impunity and other business practices that are exposing nations and communities to the threat of extinction.
Shift costs from people to entities responsible:
Shift the costs of climate change from people and communities to the entities responsible for both global greenhouse gas emissions and the intentional deceit that has inexcusably delayed climate action.
Deny immunity to corporations:
Deny transnational corporations immunity or protection from liability, including through Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS).
This list is not exhaustive but it should be used to assess the strength of steps taken by decision-makers to advance the measures in this roadmap.
Contact us
This liability roadmap is meant to be a living document that will continue to be updated as new opportunities, guidance, and case studies emerge.
Please reach out to info@liabilityroadmap.org if you:
Would like to suggest an addition to the roadmap, such as a case study, a toolkit, or liability measure not currently reflected here.
Are a public decision-maker or social justice leader looking for support in advancing one or more of the liability measures laid out in this roadmap.
While we may not be the right people to assist with every request, we will do our best to provide additional resources and connect you to a convening organization that may be able to support you.
1 V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P. R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield, eds. Summary for Policymakers. In: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, IPCC, 2019, https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/.