Developing countries are attracting a significant portion of global foreign direct investments. Governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting multinational corporations (MNCs) in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies, often prioritising economic goals over fundamental human rights. For a long time, economists have analysed the economic impacts of MNCs, while a parallel strand of work in political science, business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions of MNC operations on human rights. Despite the significant relatedness and complementarities, these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted. This paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrates existing micro-level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of MNCs on developing countries. It provides a critical analysis of what is known and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and/or negative impacts of MNC operations on host developing countries. Based on a critical analysis of the literature, it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new interdisciplinary research agenda on this subject.

This article makes the case for a ‘holistic’ approach to human rights due diligence, arguing that such a standard must be interpreted in the light of mutually reinforcing principles of environmental law, climate law and human rights law. Through a review of emerging climate change-related litigation, it shows how a concept of ‘climate due diligence’ is gradually consolidating. Building on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the article explores climate due diligence both as a standard of conduct and as a business process, presenting its main features. It argues that corporations should integrate climate due diligence into their processes and policies to be best prepared for likely regulatory and judicial developments, such as the upcoming European Union’s regulation on human rights and environmental due diligence.

In Milieudefensie et al. v Royal Dutch Shell, the District Court in the Hague ordered the respondent company to cut its global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030, as compared with 2019 levels. The landmark judgement represents the first imposition of a specific mitigation obligation on a private company over and above reduction targets set by existing ‘cap‐and‐trade’ regulations and/or other governmental mitigation policies. In interpreting Royal Dutch Shell's duty of care under Dutch tort law, the Court referred extensively to international soft law, including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This note considers the implications of this case for corporate responsibility for environmental and human rights.

Under the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), banks, like all businesses, have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. Although climate due diligence is not explicitly included in the UNGPs, tackling an enterprise’s direct and indirect climate change impacts is arguably a dimension of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and should form part of the human rights due diligence process. At present, it is unclear how such responsibility applies to banks, whose contribution to climate change is mostly indirect. This article addresses the research question: how should the law be interpreted to form a coherent climate due diligence standard for banks? To address it, the article first maps out the climate responsibility of banks under international soft law standards and assesses privately developed guidance. It then elucidates the emerging concept of climate due diligence, reading climate change responsibilities into the now well-established corporate responsibility to respect human rights as authoritatively elaborated in the UNGPs. Finally, it explains how such normative standard applies to banks and unpacks the key elements that a bank’s climate due diligence process should include.

In May 2020, the European Commission published the Farm to Fork Strategy aiming to create a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system. The Strategy is an important element of the European Green Deal and includes a Draft Action Plan with 27 specific proposals for action, and a timeframe. This article outlines the Draft Action Plan and evaluates four clusters of proposed legislative actions. It then analyses how the Strategy will impact food businesses by focusing on two proposals to (a) improve the corporate governance framework including a requirement for the food industry to integrate sustainability into corporate strategies; and (b) develop an EU code and monitoring framework for responsible business and marketing conduct in the food supply chain. It discusses how to reconcile those proposals with a separate EU commitment to a cross-sectoral legislative initiative on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence obligations for all EU companies. Overall, we argue, first, that the idea of ‘sustainable business’ conflates many dimensions and should be more clearly explicated and, second, for coherence between the different initiatives targeting the private sector.