Red Flag 25. Greenhouse gas-intensive activities, products and services that contribute to negative impacts on people’s rights

Greenhouse gas-intensive activities, products and services that contribute to negative impacts on people’s rights /

Activities, products and/or services that significantly contribute to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting physical climate change impacts that negatively affect people’s rights
For Example /
  • The extraction, refining, distribution, sale and/or use of oil, tar sands, oil shale gas or natural gas
  • The mining, processing, sale, and combustion of coal
  • Companies that depend heavily on:
  • Industrial land-use that results in extensive deforestation or other emissions-intensive land-use change (e.g., for palm-oil plantations or industrial livestock farming; see also Red Flags 12 & 13)
  • Industrial processes that produce significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (e.g., steel and cement production, aluminum refining and smelting, fertilizer production)
  • Intensive non-renewable fuel/energy use (e.g., technology data centers or large infrastructure in certain geographies, international shipping and aviation)
  • Companies whose principal products depend heavily upon non-renewable fuel/energy use (e.g., automotive, shipbuilding and aerospace manufacturing, energy inefficient products)
Higher-Risk Sectors /
  • Oil and gas exploration, extraction and transportation
  • Coal mining, processing and transportation
  • Fossil fuel-based power generation (e.g., lignite, coal, oil and natural gas)
  • Carbon intensive industrials sectors (e.g., petrochemicals, steel, iron, cement, aluminum and construction inputs)
  • Industrial-scale conventional agriculture (e.g., industrial livestock farming, palm oil plantations, and other commercial farming activities)
  • Forestry and forest products
  • Large-scale transportation (e.g., industrial land transport, marine shipping, aviation)
  • Transportation manufacturing (e.g., automotive, shipbuilding, aerospace)
  • Large-scale infrastructure, including real estate
  • Information and Communication Technology (see also Red Flag 21)
  • Financial institutions that are significantly financing higher-risk industries that lack robust transition planning
Download Red Flag 25

Companies whose business models significantly depend on industrial activities, products or services such as these make important contributions to increasing global GHG concentrations and global temperature rise, which is increasing physical climate change

impacts (e.g., sea-level rise, ocean acidification, extreme weather), with severe and pervasive risks and harm for nature and for people, including to the human rights to life, health, food, water, and an adequate standard of living. Additional impacts on nature and people may also result from these industries linked to their depletion or pollution of natural resources (see Red Flag 13).

Questions for Leaders /

  • How is your business model compatible with the objectives of the Paris Agreement?
  • How do you consider the impact of your climate action or inaction on people and how have you identified and engaged with potentially impacted workers (including value chain workers), communities, or consumers?
  • To what extent have you integrated human rights considerations into your approach to managing your climate change impacts?
  • Have you considered the regulatory, reputational, legal and financial risks associated with maintaining business as usual or taking insufficient action to address your climate impacts, including those risks that flow from the human consequences of your climate impacts?
  • To what extent have you explored potential business opportunities in developing products or services that help achieve net zero in ways that respect and advance human rights?

Understanding Risks
and Opportunities /

  • Climate change directly and indirectly affects a wide range of human rights. The UN Secretary-General has stated that “climate change is, quite simply, an existential threat for most life on the planet – including, and especially, the life of humankind”. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Human Rights Council and the Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change have highlighted that climate change has an impact on, among others, the rights to life, self-determination, development, health, food, water and sanitation, adequate housing and a range of cultural rights. In their landmark July 2025 advisory opinion on climate change, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) recognized that climate change carries “extraordinary risks” that are felt particularly keenly by people who are already vulnerable.
  • It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, as a result of rising GHG concentrations. The accumulation of GHGs has largely been driven by historical emissions from developed regions – particularly North America and Europe – which account for over half of global CO₂ emissions from 1850 to 2019.
  • Global GHG concentrations are leading to widespread and rapid climate change, with increasingly severe, compounding and cascading physical climate impacts that can have devastating implications for people, often disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change. For example, climate change is already directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, droughts, tropical storms and hurricanes and they are increasing in scale, frequency and intensity. A snapshot of recent examples include European heat waves, wildfires in Canada, the US and Australia, South-Asian flooding, and extreme weather events in southern Africa, the Horn of Africa and the US).
  • Exposure and vulnerability to harm play a critical role in the scale of human impact resulting from climate events – “the more people are in harm’s way and the more vulnerable they are, the greater their risk.” For example, the World Health Organization estimates that 3.6 billion people live in areas highly susceptible to climate impacts, such as coastal, low lying, storm or flood vulnerable locations. Further, the IPCC’s sixth assessment report emphasizes the ways in which inequity exacerbates vulnerability to climate change. Social aspects, including race, disability, gender, and socio-economic status, can make people more vulnerable because their capacity to adapt to climate change impacts is constrained by barriers to accessing information, resources, and services, as well as decision-making processes.
  • Physical climate impacts will continue to increase in frequency, intensity and duration unless urgent action is taken to curb global emissions. For example, the IPCC estimates that between 2030 and 2050 climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.
  • Companies whose business models substantially rely on emissions-intensive activities, products or services play a particularly critical role with respect to the action required to address global climate change.
  • A 2017 report by CDP in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute, referring to the world’s top 100 private and public fossil fuel producers since 1988, highlighted that ‘[t]he scale of historical emissions associated with these producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change. It follows that the actions of these producers over the medium-long term can, and should, play a pivotal role in the global energy transition’. In 2023, Carbon Majors estimated of the top 20 emitters globally (states and companies), 16 are companies. According to a 2021 study by Generation Investment Management, publicly listed companies represent 40% of global GHG emissions, underscoring how much potential influence investor engagement can wield. And these emitters span sectors beyond fossil fuel producers, such as Information and Communication Technology and Aviation. Without urgent and decisive action, emissions will continue to rise.
  • While progress on corporate climate action is being made, the pace and scale is not commensurate to what is needed. As result, the future efforts needed will increase exponentially with each year of insufficient action. The need for transparent, credible, Paris-aligned transition plans, backed by rigorous implementation, remains acute. Such plans form the necessary foundation of a rights respecting transition to a low carbon and climate resilient economy (often referred to as a “just transition”). And yet, while many companies have set ambitious net‑zero goals, very few have published credible, detailed plans explaining how they’ll reach them. Thus, further progress in transition planning and execution is an urgent and critical imperative for tackling the corporate contribution to global climate change with all its consequences for human rights and human existence. Further, these plans must be designed and implemented in a manner that addresses potential risks and impacts to people in order to foster trust and legitimacy, as well as avoid fuelling – and reduce – the high levels of economic inequality that increase social instability, political opposition, and protectionist economic policies, all of which can ultimately undermine critical climate action.

  • Reputational risks: Individual company climate change impacts that affect human rights can generate considerable attention and multinational corporations are often targeted for criticism, particularly where people believe that appealing to governments may have little effect.

    • Even where legal action against a company relating to the human rights impacts of climate action or lack of action is unsuccessful, this can still present considerable reputational risk to the company.

    • Non-judicial proceedings can create reputational risks. Examples include communications by UN experts on the responsibilities of the financial backers of Saudi Aramco under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and a complaint with the American National Contact Point against insurance broker Marsh challenging the East African Crude Oil Pipeline planned by TotalEnergies in Uganda.

    • In 2022, the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines published its final report finding that the world’s biggest polluting companies can be held responsible for human rights violations and threats arising from climate impacts. CHR announced that the 47 investor-owned corporations, including Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Repsol, Sasol, and Total, could be found legally and morally liable for human rights harms to Filipinos resulting from climate change.

    • In 2025, the UK charity ActionAid publicly cut ties with HSBC, citing the bank’s continued financing of fossil fuel and industrial agriculture projects—amounting to over £153 billion between 2021 and 2023—as evidence the company is consistently “choosing profit over people and planet”. Civil society groups like BankTrack, Indigenous rights advocates, and major investor coalitions such as ShareAction have raised similar concerns about HSBC’s increasing financial, legal, and reputational risks tied to climate change.

  • Legal, financial and regulatory risks: Companies that do not take action to address their climate change impacts can face legal action for their contribution or preemptive legal action to avoid company activities that are perceived to negatively impact local communities or other stakeholders. Since 2016, there has been significant growth in climate change-related legislation. As of July 2025, 2967 climate change cases have been filed globally. Around 20% of climate cases filed in 2024 targeted companies, or their directors and officers. According to the London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute, which analyzes climate change litigation annually, “The range of targets of corporate strategic litigation continues to expand, including new cases against professional services firms for facilitated emissions, and the agricultural sector for climate disinformation”. While highly anticipated legal decisions have faced evidentiary hurdles, they have: (a) acknowledged the connection between GHG emissions, physical climate change and impacts on people, (b) scrutinized whether companies are taking reasonable and sufficient action to mitigate their impacts, and (c) explored the principle of companies being held liable for climate-related harm. Some notable legal developments include:

    • Litigants have had high profile successes in international courts and tribunals, including at the International Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights, as well as advisory opinions form the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The decisions and opinions emerging from these international bodies, which broadly affirm the right to a healthy environment, including a stable climate, provide important points of reference for litigation more broadly.

    • Royal Dutch Shell was taken to court in 2019 in the Netherlands on human rights grounds relating to the climate impact of its business. Although Shell won an appeal of the case brought by Milieudefensie in 2024, the court emphasised that companies, especially those that have contributed to climate change, have a responsibility and power to contribute to combating climate change. Further, the court affirmed in unequivocal terms that “protection from dangerous climate change is a human right” and these rights extend to what can be required of Shell.

    • A Peruvian farmer filed a lawsuit against German Energy giant RWE in German courts. His case argued that because RWE’s GHG emissions—estimated at 0.5% of historical global emissions—contributed significantly to glacial melting and heightened flood risk that impacted his property in Huaraz, Peru, RWE should compensate him for 0.5% of the costs of his flood protection investments. While the case was ultimately dismissed, after multiple appeals and years of litigation, for the first time, a court affirmed that large emitters could be held civilly liable under German law for climate damage—even across borders—based on scientific attribution and proportionate responsibility.

    • In September 2015, typhoon survivors and civil society groups in the Philippines, supported by Greenpeace and NGOs, filed a first‑of‑its‑kind petition with the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (PCHR), calling for a formal inquiry into whether 47 major corporate emitters (including Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Repsol, Sasol and Total) violated Filipinos’ rights by fueling climate change. The PCHR officially accepted the complaint in December 2015, held hearings from 2016 to 2018, and gathered extensive scientific data, testimonials, and expert briefs. In May 2022, the PCHR released its National Inquiry on Climate Change report, which concluded that the companies engaged in “wilful obfuscation” of climate science and that their actions were both morally and legally liable for human rights harms to Filipinos resulting from climate change.

    • In May 2024, Vermont became the first U.S. state to pass a “climate superfund” law aimed at holding major fossil fuel companies financially accountable for the costs of climate change. The law targets companies responsible for over one billion metric tons of GHG emissions and seeks to recover the state’s climate-related costs—including infrastructure damage, public health impacts, and other social harms—dating back to 1995. The move has inspired similar legislative efforts in states like New York, Maryland, and California. As of mid-2025, Vermont is still in the implementation phase, developing a damages assessment, while facing a legal challenge from the fossil fuel industry aiming to block the law before enforcement begins.

  • Regulatory risks: Regulators globally are increasingly holding high-emitting companies accountable for both climate and human rights impacts. Governments are implementing carbon pricing mechanisms and stricter emissions standards, which increase operational costs for high emitting industries. Further, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive requires large firms to identify and mitigate adverse environmental and human rights impacts across their value chains and expects companies to transition their operations and value chains to a net zero economy in a rights-respecting way. (Note: As of publication, the existing text has been suspended pending a renewed legislative process that is expected to introduce some revisions.)
  • Financial risks: Financial institutions are increasingly concerned about the longer-term, climate-linked financial stability of their portfolios, with investors increasingly favoring companies with robust climate strategies, potentially leading to reduced capital access for firms that fail to evolve their business models or do so at too slow a pace. Climate-related shareholder activism has increased dramatically in recent years.
  • Business continuity risks: Companies that fail to address their contribution to climate change contribute to systemic risks with material, economy-wide implications for business continuity. For example:

In June 2023, the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises issued an information note on the UNGPs and climate change. In reference to the human rights instruments identified in UN Guiding Principle 12, the Commentary on Principle 12, the widely recognized right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and the understanding that anthropogenic GHG emissions are known to cause foreseeable and severe human rights impacts, the working group states that “States and business enterprises have obligations and responsibilities with respect to climate change, and with respect to the impacts of climate change on human rights.”

According to the Working Group, “The obligations of States under the Guiding Principles to protect against human rights impacts arising from business activities includes the duty to protect against foreseeable impacts related to climate change.”

With respect to business enterprises, the Working Group confirms that the responsibilities of those enterprises “under the Guiding Principles to respect human rights and not to cause, contribute to or be directly linked to human rights impacts arising from business activities, include the responsibility to act in regard to actual and potential impacts related to climate change.”

As physical climate impacts are primarily the result of cumulative, global GHG emissions, it may be difficult to establish that any one company has caused a particular, location-specific climate-related harm (e.g., that one company’s GHG emissions in Australia are directly responsible for an extreme weather event in India). However, where a company makes a substantial contribution to cumulative GHG emissions, because their business model substantially relies upon them doing so, that company can be said to have contributed to climate harm, thus requiring the company to “take the necessary steps to cease or prevent its contribution and use its leverage to mitigate any remaining impact to the greatest extent possible”. This supports the expectation that companies with this business model feature should develop and implement robust, credible and Paris-aligned climate transition plans that respect the rights of workers and communities, as well as use their leverage toward achieving broader systemic transition.

Corporations can also be linked to the human rights impacts associated with climate change through their business relationships. Examples of such linkage include a retailer sourcing from a supplier whose operations are carbon intensive, without any indication that the supplier will reduce them; or an investment fund holding equity in a fossil fuel company that has no discernible strategy to reduce its contributions to climate change.

Addressing impacts on people associated with this red flag can contribute to a range of SDGs depending on the impact concerned, but the most obvious and notable is:

  • SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Taking Action /

  • Are we developing or have we published a robust, credible and science-based climate action strategy or transition plan that recognizes and addresses impacts on workers and communities arising from climate action?

  • How are we engaging our own workforce, our value chain workers, affected local communities and consumers/end-users in discussions about potential or actual action to address climate change impacts?

  • How are we evolving our governance, strategy, risk management and metrics/targets to ensure alignment with the objectives of the Paris agreement? How have we integrated potential impacts on people evolving from that evolution?

  • Recognizing both the consequences for the climate and for people’s human rights of GHG emissions:

    • Do we: undertake a robust analysis and disclosure of our contribution to global GHG emissions, including the following?

      • Identifying all our Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions throughout all our operations, with such identification being science-based, verifiable and informed by input from experts

      • Identifying hotspots across our operations and value chains

      • Disclosing climate-related information through recognized frameworks, such as GRI, CDP, TCFD, ESRS E1, or IFRS S2

    • Do we set ambitious, transparent and verifiable climate-related targets, including:

      • GHG emissions reduction targets across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions

      • Transition-specific alignment targets that directly reflect our company’s progress on critical decarbonization milestones within our sector

  • Do we disclose the details of how our capital expenditure plan aligns with our climate action and human rights objectives?

  • Have we undertaken scenario analysis to assess resilience of the company’s operations and value chains, as well as the people its operations and value chains may impact, under various warming pathways (e.g., 1.5°C or 4°C)?

  • How do we ensure that our public affairs and policy advocacy activities are aligned with the objectives of our climate and human rights actions?

  • Do we rely on land-based carbon dioxide removals or the use of carbon credits to meet our GHG emissions reduction targets? If so, do we have mechanisms in place to evaluate the social and environmental integrity of doing so?

  • How do we assess whether our climate-related strategies and plans could impact stakeholder groups, namely, our own workers, workers in the value chain, communities and end users, with a particular focus on vulnerable populations?

For companies whose business models substantially rely upon high emitting activities, products or services, examples of integrated, ambitious, organization-wide, and Paris-aligned action is not yet common. However, there are examples of companies that are making important, if partial, strides to address their contribution to climate impacts. For example:

Partial business model transition:

Reconceptualizing climate-related target setting:

  • Large agrifood companies, such as Danone, Mars, Nestlé and PepsiCo, have acknowledged that, given the realities of the climate challenge within their sector, GHG emissions reduction targets are necessary but not sufficient. These companies have also set no-deforestation commitments for some or all high-risk commodities where deforestation is most prevalent. According to the 2025 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, “these examples demonstrate how transition-specific alignment targets can complement emission reduction targets to guide sector-specific corporate transitions”.

Decision-useful climate disclosures that address the Just Transition:

Collaborative initiatives that use leverage to affect change:

  • Climate Action 100+ is an investor-led initiative composed of around 700 investors globally and responsible for over USD 68 trillion in assets under management, which aims to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take action on climate change.

Citation of research papers and other resources does not constitute an endorsement by Shift of their conclusions.

Dr. Christine Chow /

Board Member

She/Her

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Dr. Christine Chow has more than 25 years’ experience in investment management spanning sustainable investment, corporate governance, technology and AI.

She has held senior leadership roles at UBS Asset Management, HSBC Asset Management and Federated Hermes, where she led global stewardship, thematic research, responsible investment and engagement with companies on sustainability and governance issues. She was the human rights engagement lead at Federated Hermes, where she pioneered its approach to global value chain engagement with electronics companies, and advocated for provenance and traceability of critical minerals.

Christine served as Managing Director at UBS Asset Management, leading on global stewardship, thematic research and impact engagement. Previously, she was Global Head of Stewardship and a board member of HSBC Asset Management UK Limited, and Head of Asia and Global Technology at Federated Hermes EOS. From 2019 to 2025, she served as a board member and then Chair of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), a global investor-led organisation representing around US$100 trillion in assets under management across more than 40 countries.

Christine is recognised internationally for her work on responsible investment, AI governance and corporate stewardship. She has published influential work on responsible AI and data governance and was a member of the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence, serving on its Data Governance Task Force. She is the Appointed Advisor of AFRC in Hong Kong, the independent regulator of the accounting profession, and Emeritus Governor of the London School of Economics. Her PhD research on responsible investment was shortlisted for a United Nations award recognising industry relevance and academic excellence.

David Vermijs /

Director

He/Him Amsterdam

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As Director, David engages with business partners to better identify, prioritize and act on salient human rights issues, embedding the UN Guiding Principles in companies’ decision-making processes.

Specializes in Business Enterprises

As Director, David engages with business partners to better identify, prioritize and act on salient human rights issues, embedding the UN Guiding Principles in companies’ decision-making processes.

David has over a decade of experience advising multinational corporations, governments, NGOs and others on business and human rights. Prior to joining Shift, David provided research assistance to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for business and human rights John Ruggie. As part of his contributions, David field-tested human rights due diligence with a group of Dutch companies and their stakeholders, and he supported research on company-led grievance mechanisms.

From 2008 to 2010, David was the lead consultant on an 18-month project, the Business and Human Rights Initiative, under the umbrella of the Global Compact Network Netherlands. The initiative was a collaboration between 10 Dutch multinationals – ABN AMRO, AkzoNobel, Essent, KLM, Philips, Rabobank, Randstad, Shell, TNT and Unilever – and led to the publication of a ground-breaking business guidance tool, How to Do Business with Respect for Human Rights, in 2010. Through his work at Shift, David led the update of this publication from 2014 to 2016 with the support of the Dutch government under their National Action Plan on implementing the Guiding Principles.

Another major guidance tool David has helped develop addresses due diligence on child labor, published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) in 2015. The guidance was the result of a multi-year, multi-stakeholder, multi-country project led by David involving the ILO, IOE, companies, unions, NGOs and other stakeholders.

David was previously a Research Fellow at the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, including assisting in teaching on business and human rights, global governance, corporate governance and leadership. David sits in a personal capacity on the board of the Dutch Social and Economic Council International Corporate Social Responsibility Committee. He has a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Business from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. David is a Dutch national, speaks English and Dutch and is proficient in Spanish and German.

Anna Triponel /

Senior Associate

She/Her London

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As a Senior Associate with Shift, Anna advises companies, lawyers, investors and business associations on how to put the Guiding Principles into practice.

As a Senior Associate with Shift, Anna advises companies, investors and business associations on how to put the Guiding Principles into practice. Trained as a lawyer, Anna focuses particularly on working with legal professionals on their role in implementing the Guiding Principles and has led work on analyzing regulations in various jurisdictions and how they align to the Guiding Principles. She also has particular expertise on the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework. 

Prior to joining Shift, Anna provided input to the work of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for business and human rights John Ruggie as a legal consultant. During this period, Anna also opened the New York office of the Public International Law & Policy Group, where she advised government officials, opposition leaders, human rights victims and civil society organizations on human rights, constitutional reform and transitional justice in Burma, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Somaliland, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Anna was previously a mergers and acquisitions associate at the law firm of Jones Day in New York, where she advised a broad range of multinational companies on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint venture, private equity and venture capital transactions. She founded and led the law firm’s International Law Pro Bono Group. She began her career as an advisor to the World Bank, advising on development governance structures to better meet the Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education.

Anna is a (non-practicing) lawyer qualified in New York, England & Wales and France. She is a frequent expert speaker and writer on business and human rights and is the recipient of various professional awards, including the Empire State Counsel Award for changing the lives of those unable to afford counsel and the Seymour-Reuben Award for shaping international law. Anna has a Masters in International Law from American University Washington College of Law and a degree in common and civil law from the University of Paris X. She has been awarded the Business Sustainability Management certificate from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and the MBA Essentials certificate from London School of Economics (LSE). Anna is a British and French national and speaks English and French.

Martyn Platt /

Head of Human Resources

He/Him

As Head of Human Resources, Martyn leads Shift’s global people strategy and oversees all aspects of HR across the organization.

As Head of Human Resources, Martyn leads Shift’s global people strategy and oversees all aspects of HR across the organization. He ensures that Shift’s systems, policies and practices foster a thriving, inclusive and values-driven culture that supports our mission to embed respect for people’s dignity at the core of business practice.

Martyn brings over a decade of HR leadership experience across mission-driven and international organizations working at the intersection of business and society. Prior to joining Shift, he was Director of People Development & Culture at the PRI and earlier worked with Business in the Community. In these roles, he developed and embedded HR business partnering models, guided the organizations through significant growth and transformation, and partnered with senior leaders to design and implement people strategies that supported the delivery of their mission. Most recently, he served as a consultant with the WeProtect Global Alliance, where he supported the establishment of their HR function.

He is a Chartered Member of the CIPD and holds a Level 7 Diploma in Human Resource Management, as well as an ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring, reflecting his strong focus on leadership development and coaching. Martyn studied German and International Relations at the University of Exeter, including a year at the University of Würzburg in Germany. He later worked on education projects in Nicaragua, strengthening his global outlook and commitment to people-centred change.

Martyn is based in the United Kingdom.

Brianna Peterson /

Senior Advisor

She/Her Rome

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As a Senior Advisor at Shift, Brianna advises financial institutions and companies on how to put the UNGPs into practice, with a particular focus on the nexus between human rights and climate change.

Specializes in Financial Institutions

As a Senior Advisor at Shift, Brianna advises financial institutions and companies on how to put the UNGPs into practice, with a particular focus on the nexus between human rights and climate change. Brianna combines environment and climate change expertise with experience developing and implementing human rights policies, due diligence approaches and sustainability reporting.

Before Shift, Brianna spearheaded innovative sustainability initiatives at Sustainable Development Technology Canada and Export Development Canada (EDC). At EDC she led the development and implementation of exciting new portfolio approaches for climate change and human rights risk management, as well as aligning EDC’s corporate reporting with international reporting frameworks, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and the UNGPs Reporting Framework.  She also led EDC’s international sustainability negotiations and engagements, including as co-Chair of the Equator Principles Climate Change Working Group.

Prior to joining EDC, Brianna worked for nine years as a diplomat with Canada’s foreign ministry, including four years at the United Nations General Assembly where she led environment and development negotiations, advocacy and outreach on behalf of the Government of Canada, including for the creation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Brianna has also advised international financial institutions including the World Bank Group, institutional investors, bilateral development agencies, and small- and medium-sized enterprises on the practical application of environment, climate change, human rights standards.

Brianna has an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Queen’s University and a Master’s degree in Environmental Change & Management from the University of Oxford.

Ashleigh Owens /

Director | Financial Institutions Lead

She/Her New York City

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As Shift’s Director / Financial Institutions Lead, Ashleigh leads our work with financial institutions and supports other partners across industries, leveraging her breadth of experience to tackle cutting-edge issues and entrenched challenges on the road to implementation of the UN Guiding Principles.

Specializes in Financial Institutions | Valuing Respect

As Director / Financial Institutions Lead, Ashleigh engages directly with financial institutions, companies and investors as they embed respect for human rights into their operations and business relationships. She also leads on pieces of research under our Valuing Respect Project, which is focused on developing better ways to evaluate business respect for human rights. Ashleigh has a breadth of experience approaching the Guiding Principles from business, legal and academic perspectives and brings a holistic view to Guiding Principles implementation.

Ashleigh was previously Executive Director at Ernst & Young’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services. At EY Japan, she led a team of consultants supporting policy-making, educational program and governance design, stakeholder dialogue and due diligence strategies for multinational and domestic companies across a variety of industries.  As founder of the EY Human Rights Network, she led the enhancement of EY’s human rights capabilities across EY’s global network. In her role she was a frequent speaker and moderator of dialogues at multi-stakeholder fora and functioned as a connector between civil society, government and corporate actors with a common goal of empowering business to respect rights.

From 2012 to 2014 she conducted research at the United Nations University in the field of Sustainability Science, specializing in business and human rights. She prepared research for the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and spent time at the UN Global Compact New York and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Ashleigh later sat on the UN Global Compact’s Human Rights and Labour Working Group and drafted the Global Compact’s 2015 Guide on How to Develop a Human Rights Policy.

Ashleigh is a lawyer qualified in Australia and England & Wales and specialized in intellectual property law, labor law and public international law. She has advised governments and companies on state human rights obligations, companies on the nexus between bilateral investment treaties and human rights and fellow lawyers on integrating the Guiding Principles into legal advice. In 2007 she won the Intellectual Property Society of Australia & NZ prize.

Ashleigh has authored or contributed to a number of publications including: Business and Human Rights: Corporate Japan Rises to the Challenge (joint publication between EY Japan and Global Compact Network Japan), Corporate Social Responsibility Can Save Japan (Op-ed in Japan Times), Cumulative Human Rights Impacts (in UN Global Compact/ Maplecroft Business Dilemmas Forum) as well as several legal publications on intellectual property law in Australia and English translations of Japanese High Court judgments. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)’s Division for Prosperity.

Ashleigh has degrees in Law and Asian Studies from the University of Western Australia, with studies also conducted at the University of Vienna and Sophia University in Japan. She has a Masters of Science in Sustainability from the United Nations University and has undertaken the institution’s Leadership for Sustainability program. Ashleigh is an Australian national, and is fluent in Japanese.

Rachel Davis /

Vice President and Co-Founder

She/Her Sydney

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As the Vice President and Co-Founder of Shift, Rachel helps shape our strategy and oversees a range of our collaborations with companies, governments, investors, civil society and other partners. Rachel is also responsible for driving our work on standards advocacy and with sports associations.

Specializes in Standard Setters | Sports and Human Rights

Rachel is one of Shift’s co-founders and has led work at Shift over the last decade on standard-setting, human rights and sports, financial institutions, conflict and international law.

As Vice President, Rachel shapes our strategy and oversees a range of our collaborations with companies, governments, investors, civil society and other partners. Rachel leads Shift’s work to influence standard-setters of all kinds to integrate the UN Guiding Principles into the rules that govern business, including engaging with governments and the European Union on mandatory human rights due diligence.

Rachel also has unique experience advising and leading efforts to drive respect for human rights into the operations of global sports governing bodies. Rachel was the Chair of FIFA’s independent Human Rights Advisory Board while it operated, between 2017 and 2021. She has advised the International Olympic Committee on human rights since 2018, including co-authoring recommendations for the IOC on a comprehensive human rights strategy with former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein.

Rachel has more than a decade of experience in implementing the Guiding Principles with a wide range of organizations, including public and private financial institutions and companies from diverse business sectors and geographies, and she frequently leads and facilitates engagements with senior audiences around the world. She is the co-author of the leading study of the costs of company-community conflict in the extractive sector.

Prior to co-founding Shift, Rachel was a senior legal advisor from 2006-2011 to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on business and human rights, Harvard Professor John Ruggie. She played a pivotal role in the development of the Guiding Principles, advising on all aspects of the relationship between the Guiding Principles and national and international law.

Rachel is also a Senior Program Fellow with the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and has experience at the highest levels of the Australian legal system and internationally, having clerked at the High Court of Australia and at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. She has a particular interest in Indigenous peoples’ rights, having advised the Australian Federal Attorney-General’s Department on Indigenous affairs and acted as Ruggie’s liaison with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues during his UN mandate.

Rachel has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School and Bachelors degrees in Law and Politics from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where she also lectured and published in law. She is a (non-practicing) lawyer qualified in New South Wales.

Federico Burlon /

Director

He/Him London

As Director at Shift, Federico engages with business partners to better identify, prioritize and act on salient human rights issues, embedding the UN Guiding Principles in companies’ decision-making processes.

Specializes in Business Enterprises

As Director at Shift, Federico engages with business partners to better identify, prioritize and act on salient human rights issues, embedding the UN Guiding Principles in companies’ decision-making processes.

Prior to joining Shift, Federico was Head of Delivery at Impactt. Federico managed a portfolio of clients, supported by a team of consultants. He led human rights assessment and remediation projects in the construction, energy, food and shipbuilding industries. This resulted in positive outcomes such as the return of passports and reimbursement of recruitment fees to workers and the strengthening of companies’ employment practices. Federico led Impactt’s engagement with the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy in Qatar as external monitor of worker welfare in the construction of venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He also developed Impactt’s Diagnostics community of practice, delivering for clients as well as building internal capacity to execute human rights assessments around the world, with a focus on worker voice.

Prior to Impactt, Federico was a Sustainability Manager at Tesco plc. He contributed to the roll out of Tesco’s ethical trading programme to the goods-not-for-resale value chain. Federico engaged with hundreds of product and services suppliers and internal purchasing and sourcing teams to raise awareness of human rights issues and to prioritise and address the findings from third-party social audits. He also worked on climate change to develop a roadmap to achieve Tesco’s carbon reduction commitments related to direct and supply chain emissions.

In prior roles, Federico worked with a variety of human rights organisations in the United Kingdom and United States.

Federico holds a MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science and International Studies from Macalester College, with a focus on human rights law and international migration. He is a United World College Adriatic alumnus and is from Argentina.

Erika George /

Board Member

She/Her

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Erika George is Director of the Tanner Humanities Center and Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law at the University of Utah. She has conducted leading research and is a passionate advocate for women’s rights, children’s rights, gender equality and environmental justice. 

Professor Erika R. George is the Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, & Engagement, Professor of Law, and Ernest Haddad Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Law and a leading expert in business and human rights.

Professor George is the author of “Incorporating Rights: Strategies to Advance Corporate Accountability” (Oxford University Press, 2021), which examines the evolution of demands for corporate responsibility to respect international human rights. She was a founding member of the editorial board of the Business and Human Rights Journal (Cambridge University Press) and since 2022  has served on the board of Shift. 

Before joining BU Law in 2024, Professor George spent over two decades at the University of Utah as the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law. She directed the Tanner Humanities Center for four years and worked to enhance engagement and expand and diversify audiences for public humanities programs during her tenure. She also advocated for academic freedom and the right to read. Along with the former poet laureate of Utah, she co-founded the PEN America Utah Chapter to protect access to information and prevent censorship. 

Professor George is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an American Bar Foundation fellow, a trustee of Earthjustice, and serves on the Executive Board of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Society of American Law Teachers’ M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award and the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission Human Rights Award.

Professor George earned her BA with honors from the University of Chicago, a MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She also clerked for Judge William T. Hart of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She was a litigation associate at the law firm of Jenner & Block in Chicago before joining Human Rights Watch as a research fellow.

We recorded an interview with Professor George when she joined Shift’s Board in February of 2022. It is available here.

Erika George is Director of the Tanner Humanities Center and Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law at the University of Utah. Prior to joining the University of Utah, Professor George served as a law clerk and litigation associate at prominent firms in both Illinois and New York. She also worked as a fellow and later consultant at Human Rights Watch, where she conducted investigations in South Africa on women’s rights, children’s rights, violence, the right to education and abuses related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She wrote a book-length report, Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools, which received widespread media coverage in South Africa and internationally. She currently serves as special counsel to the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.

Her scholarship has appeared in the California Law Review, the Michigan Journal of International Law, the New York University Journal of International Law and Policy, and the annual proceedings of the American Society of International Law.

Professor George has served on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Department of State Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan and as a member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. She is an Editor for the blog globaljusticeblog.com.

We recorded an interview with Professor George when she joined Shift’s Board in February of 2022. It is available here.

John Ruggie /

Founding Chair / In Memoriam

John Ruggie is the author of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

In Memory of John Ruggie

John served as the founding Chair of Shift from 2011 to 2021. He was the Berthold Beitz Research Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He also taught at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the University of California, and at Columbia University where he became Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. From 1997-2001 John served as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning in the cabinet of Kofi Annan; from 2002-2005 as Special Advisor to the Secretary-General for the Global Compact; and from 2005-2011 as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he received numerous awards from academic and professional societies for his contributions to social science, public policy and the development of international law. In addition to serving as Shift’s Board Chairman, John was also on the Board of Arabesque Asset Management Holding Company as well as Unilever’s Sustainability Advisory Council. His book, Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights, has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Caroline Rees /

President and Co-Founder

She/Her New York City

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As Shift’s President, Caroline leads our strategic development and drives our thought leadership work on key challenges and opportunities in advancing corporate respect for business and human rights.

As the President and Co-Founder of Shift, Caroline leads our organizational strategy and development and drives our thought leadership work on key challenges and opportunities in advancing corporate respect for business and human rights. Caroline speaks extensively at events around the world and frequently facilitates dialogue and debate amongst companies, governments, investors and civil society. In recent years, Caroline has focused on improving corporate human rights reporting as a catalyst for better human rights risk management, and on improving the data and methods used in evaluating companies’ social performance as part of ESG (environmental, social and governance) analysis. She has written and spoken extensively on the relevance of business respect for human rights, and the UNGPs specifically, to movements that seek to advance sustainability, equality, ESG investing, stakeholder capitalism, and human and social capital.

Caroline previously spent 14 years with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From 2003 to 2006 she led the UK’s human rights negotiating team at the UN and she ran the negotiations to establish the mandate of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on business and human rights. The success of this initiative led to Professor John Ruggie’s appointment and from 2007-2011 Caroline was a lead advisor on his team and deeply involved in the drafting of the Guiding Principles.

From 2009 to 2011 Caroline was also the Director of the Governance and Accountability Program at the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and she remains a Senior Program Fellow there. Caroline is a member of the Imperatives Board of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Board of the Capitals Coalition, the Unilever Sustainability Advisory Council, and the Steering Committee of the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures.

Caroline’s prior British foreign service career covered Iran, Slovakia, the UN Security Council in New York and the European Union in Brussels. Caroline has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from Oxford University and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Caroline is a British national and speaks English, French and German.