The world’s biggest renewable energy companies are failing to address numerous human rights violations, according to a new report.
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s inaugural review of the sector claims none of the world’s 16 largest public wind and solar companies currently fully meets their responsibility to respect human rights as defined by UN Guiding Principles.
The report identifies 197 allegations of human rights abuses related to renewable energy projects since 2010.
Allegations include killings, threats, intimidation, land grabs, dangerous working conditions, poverty wages and harm to indigenous peoples’ livelihoods.
Seven of the 16 companies benchmarked were judged to be meeting less than 10% of their human rights obligations with 12 scoring below 40%. The average score was just 22%.
Former high commissioner for human rights and president of Ireland Mary Robinson said: “A narrow focus on short term return on investments regardless of the harm to people and the environment has led fossil fuel companies to lose legitimacy and social licence to operate.
“If the same happens to renewable energy companies, it will only slow our expansion to a net-zero carbon future.
“That’s why we need clean energy that respects human rights. A transition that is fast, but also fair.”
The Report can be found here: https://www.business-humanrights.org/…/renewable-energy-hum…
A fuller analysis of the report including company responses will be included in this week’s subscriber-only reNEWS.
https://renews.biz/…/clean-power-companies-failing-on-huma…/
0 Comments