The world is facing the escalating triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, driven largely by unrestrained corporate extraction and profit-driven economic models. Extractive and polluting industries such as mining, large-scale agriculture, and industrial forestry degrade ecosystems, undermine the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and violate interconnected human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, and water. Communities and human rights defenders continue to denounce these harms, which too often occur without accountability or access to justice.
“No Profit Without Accountability: For People and the Planet” was prepared for the 11th session of the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights at the UN Human Rights Council in October 2025. It examines the urgent need to explicitly recognize the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment within the international legally binding instrument (LBI) on business and human rights. It also presents concrete legal proposals aimed at strengthening environmental protections and preventing corporate-related environmental abuses and human rights violations.
Published on January 8, 2026