Climate and Corporate Accountability

Unchecked corporate power is driving human rights abuses and fueling the climate crisis. Corporations in the fossil fuel, agribusiness, plastics, and mining sectors, pursuing profits and unlimited growth, have caused significant harm to the climate with limited accountability. The same lack of accountability also leads to human rights abuses, including unsafe labor conditions, polluted water, loss of land and livelihoods, and criminalization of defenders.

One strategy—strategic litigation—is gaining traction to hold corporations accountable for their human rights and climate impacts. Strategic Litigation: Climate and Corporate Accountability explores how communities working in close partnership with allied NGOs design and implement legal strategies against corporations fueling the climate crisis. SAGE support for the development of a wide range of legal strategies across sectors and regions is generating impact and illuminated in this report. While some of SAGE’s projects have the explicit objective of addressing corporate contributions to climate change, they all target one of the main drivers of climate change: lack of corporate accountability. Successful strategies and cases documented in this report have resulted in halting deforestation, advancing stewardship of lands and resources, reducing emissions and pollution, ameliorating health and environmental impacts, and catalyzing changes to extractive industry practices of major carbon emitters.