NAT.C01.EE Commitment to Safety of Rights Defenders
About the data
This metric was designed by The World Benchmarking Alliance, more information can be found here. Sources and Alignments for each indicator can be found here as well as the scoring guidelines here
The World Benchmarking Alliance's Nature Benchmark measures and ranks the world's most influential companies on their efforts to protect our environment and its biodiversity.
This metric relates to the Indicator: The company respects the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Rationale: The United Nations recently recognised access to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a universal human right (UN, 2021b). Business activities and infrastructure projects may expose local communities to increased environmental risks and adverse impacts, for example related to toxic materials or spread of diseases (IFC, 2012). At the same time, human rights defenders across the globe remain highly vulnerable and face violent and sometimes fatal assaults – in conjunction with increasing intimidation, harassment, stigmatisation and criminalisation. There is growing concern about the role of business in causing, contributing or being directly linked to attacks against human rights defenders, or in failing to take action against such attacks (UN, UNEP, 2021).
Methodology
WBA analysed all publicly available group-level disclosure in English on the applicable group website, which was predominantly annual reports and sustainability reports. Draft assessments were then sent to each company inviting them to provide feedback. This feedback could include additional publicly available group disclosure published. These were then reviewed and finalised. Final assessments were then shared with each company before being published online.
For this metric If the companies' commitment refers to ‘human rights defenders' but makes no reference to land/environment, it can still be considered met. the company should reference all types of attacks identified (acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment), however, this has been checked on a case-by-case basis depending on the wording used.
Keywords: land and environmental rights defenders, human rights defenders, land defenders, environmental defenders.