For more than four decades, communities in Arica, Chile, have lived with the consequences of toxic waste dumped by a Swedish company. In Uganda, thousands of people violently expelled from their land to make way for a coffee plantation are still seeking compensation more than 20 years later. From mining-affected communities in Senegal and Serbia to Indigenous Peoples confronting lithium extraction in Latin America, the pattern is global: corporate human rights violations crosses borders, but accountability rarely does.
A new briefing paper by ESCR-Net member FIAN International, developed with contributions from fellow members, the Center for International Environmental Law, Franciscans International, and our ally the International Service for Human Rights, argues that the United Nations Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights could help close this accountability gap.
Published with the support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the paper presents the treaty as a “structural lever for environmental justice”—one capable of translating the internationally recognized right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment into binding rules for corporations and effective remedies for communities.
From recognition to enforcement
In 2022, the UN General Assembly recognized a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a universal human right. Yet this recognition has not stopped corporations from polluting ecosystems, displacing communities, or exploiting differences between national legal systems.
“No binding global legal framework exists to regulate the activities and value chains of corporations,” the paper warns. This allows transnational companies to take advantage of weak regulations, complex corporate structures, and jurisdictional loopholes.
Voluntary initiatives such as the UN Global Compact and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights have failed to overcome these structural problems, it argues. They do not establish enforceable corporate obligations or provide adequate investigative, sanctioning, and remedial mechanisms.
The Binding Treaty, under negotiation at the UN Human Rights Council since 2014, offers an alternative. Its provisions could require states to prevent corporate harm, hold parent and controlling companies liable and guarantee access to justice when violations occur across borders.
Justice means more than compensation
One of the paper’s central conclusions is that environmental remedy cannot be reduced to financial compensation. Citing the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, it stresses that comprehensive remedies may also require an end to pollution, the clean-up of contaminated sites, guarantees of non-repetition and recognition of affected communities’ right to truth.
The treaty could also address one of the greatest barriers communities face: proving corporate responsibility without access to information held by companies. Measures such as reversing or dynamically allocating the burden of proof could help correct this imbalance.
Its current draft also provides foundations for civil, administrative and criminal liability across corporate groups and value chains. Extraterritorial jurisdiction could enable courts in countries where parent companies are based to hear cases involving harms committed abroad—particularly when justice is unavailable in host states.
As the paper concludes, these provisions could make corporate obligations and access to justice “actionable” beyond national borders.
Protecting the right to say no
The paper places affected communities and human rights defenders at the center of environmental governance. Stronger treaty provisions could reinforce meaningful participation, environmental and human rights impact assessments, and Indigenous Peoples’ right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
Together, these protections could help communities exercise their “Right to Say No” to projects that threaten their territories, livelihoods, water, or health.
This is particularly urgent as projects promoted as part of the green transition reproduce extractive models. Carbon markets, biodiversity schemes and growing demand for minerals such as lithium and cobalt are already contributing to dispossession, pollution and labor exploitation.
In Tolima, Colombia, for example, communities are confronting both extractive and infrastructure projects affecting water sources and carbon-market initiatives advancing without adequate consent or effective safeguards. The paper warns that climate policies that fail to address these power relations risk becoming false solutions.
A just transition, it argues, cannot simply replace fossil-fuel extraction with new forms of exploitation. It must guarantee human rights, ecological protection and justice for present and future generations.
A decisive opportunity
Recent climate rulings have strengthened the legal basis for action. Advisory opinions issued by the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2025 affirmed states’ responsibilities to regulate private actors, prevent harm and ensure effective remedies. The Inter-American Court went further, recognizing corporate responsibilities throughout value chains and the need to hold parent companies accountable.
The challenge now is to translate these advances into enforceable global rules.
The paper calls on states to strengthen the treaty, protect frontline communities and defenders, establish robust liability and due diligence standards, and end corporate capture of decision-making spaces. It also urges civil society to connect struggles across human rights, climate, biodiversity, and environmental movements.
“The LBI process opens up a historic path to confront corporate power,” the paper concludes. At stake is whether the international community will move from recognizing environmental rights to ensuring they can actually be defended—putting people and the planet before profit.
