A/HRC/44/44 poorer and less adaptable countries with adequate finance and technological substitutes. Human rights-based international solidarity would be at the core of these processes: it underscores the need for planning among differently situated actors in the fossil fuel economy with ambition, justice and the utmost haste. B. Reforming corporate law and practices 35. An overwhelming share of emissions from fossil fuels and other sectors is traceable to corporations that either directly emit or define the choices that consumers have or do not have to reduce their emissions across supply chains. 82 States have duties to regulate corporations to protect the international human rights of people living at home and abroad, including environmental rights.83 The Supreme Court of Canada has recently found that it is not plain and obvious that corporations enjoy a blanket exclusion under customary international law from liability for violating the human rights of individuals in another State.84 The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines is also anticipated to release findings that corporations headquartered abroad can be held liable for harms to individuals in another country, specifically arising from climate change.85 In spite of the positive tenor of these developments, legal measures to regulate corporate emissions are direly lacking. 86 At a general level, the absence of stringent requirements on corporations is a gap in international solidarity because it underscores inadequate State efforts to meet the Paris Agreement’s collective goal and thereby protect human rights. More fundamentally, this report identifies the profit-seeking and transnational organization of corporate governance as a profound structural impediment to human rights-based international solidarity in the climate change field – one that calls for mutual assistance among States to re-envision the basic rules of corporate governance. 36. Currently, the profit incentive of corporate boards does not typically require them to take decisions that benefit the broader societies in which they are headquartered, let alone the peoples of other countries. 87 This poses a grave structural problem for international solidarity in the context of climate change, since corporate governance tends to elevate the profits of shareholders over environmental protection with little regard for the impacts of climate change on human rights. 88 In practice, directors make decisions relating to climate change for compliance with regulatory standards (which are largely wanting), based on the business case for the company and investors. 89 This militates against protecting human rights through the most robust global climate action. 37. There are now a proliferating number of guidelines that promote corporate reporting on climate-related financial risks, which are a limited expression of cooperation across States and financial actors.90 However, disclosures about “stranded assets” and other such financial risks (with no greater substantive regulation of corporate behaviour) accomplish relatively little from a solidarity viewpoint, as they mainly enable lenders, insurers and investors to make self-interested choices about their stakes in a corporation, based on the presumption that this will lead to good environmental decisions. Thus, financial disclosures 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 See, e.g., Carbon Disclosure Project, “CDP carbon majors report 2017” (London, 2017). Olivier de Schutter, “Towards a new treaty on business and human rights”, Business and Human Rights Journal, vol. 1, No. 1 (2016), pp. 44–45; Atapattu and Schapper, Human Rights and the Environment, pp. 85–107. Whether the customary international law norms pleaded in that case do apply to corporations, as a matter of law and fact, has been left for a trial judge to determine. Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, 2020 SCC 5 (Canada). See www.ciel.org/news/groundbreaking-inquiry-in-philippines-links-carbon-majors-to-human-rightsimpacts-of-climate-change-calls-for-greater-accountability. See, e.g., Lisa Benjamin, “The responsibilities of carbon major companies: are they (and is the law) doing enough?”, Transnational Environmental Law, vol. 5, No. 2 (2016). See Beate Sjåfjell, “Redefining the corporation for a sustainable new economy”, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 45, No. 1 (2018). Ibid., pp. 38–40. Ibid., pp. 36–38. E.g., Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (2017). 13