February 2024
With no answers provided for UCS and SGR's questions, CRC and our partner groups sent this initial communication to RELX. It contains an explanatory complaint submitted to the The Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council, detailing the science-based reasoning for positing company negligence of UNGP human rights obligations and the company risking complicity in human rights harms. A request to RELX CEO Erik Engstrom and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility Márcia Balisciano was sent in May to understand when the company will fulfill its UNGP responsibilities and respond to the questions provided.
KEY OBSERVATIONS:
• Elsevier/RELX oil and gas customers are not reducing production in line with a just Net Zero Transition.
• Elsevier/RELX serves fossil fuels expansion in the knowledge that they are facilitating the continued burning of fossil fuels.
• Elsevier/RELX must comply with its own responsibilities regarding the fossil fuel industry’s climate-related human rights impacts. There is a serious risk that Elsevier/RELX is failing to comply with its responsibilities.
Elsevier has spent decades helping the fossil fuel industry accelerate discoveries. With the UN's Human Rights Council resolution 48/13 unequivocally recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all people, scientists initiated a dialogue about its continued engagement in this activity in light of the human rights implications.
—UN investigators, in a letter delivered to Aramco and various non-fossil fuel companies that are still facilitating new fossil fuel projects. June 23, 2023.
—D., Elsevier journal editor, on introducing constraints on content based on human rights concerns. October 10, 2023.
October 2022 / SUMMARY
Union of Concerned Scientists and Scientists for Global Responsibility launch a scientist-driven petition regarding company support for fossil fuel expansion, activity inconsistent with a 1.5°C warming and a just transition.
April 2023 / SUMMARY
April 2022 / SUMMARY
Márcia Balisciano, replying for the CEOs, provides a response that does not signal an end to this activity, or alignment with the IPCC and IEA's net zero pathways.
September 2023 / SUMMARY
Rebuttals refute the accuracy of company claims and inconsistency with RELX's Code of Ethics. 4 questions are submitted pertaining to ending support of fossil fuel expansion and misinformation.
October 2023 / SUMMARY
October 2023 / SUMMARY
Márcia Balisciano, replying for the CEOs, again neglects to signal an end to activity associated with human rights harms.
November 2023 / SUMMARY
Given human rights concerns, UCS and SGR offer an extension for having their questions answered and announce the initiation of a UNGP grievance mechanism.
Grievance Mechanisms are defined by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as “any routinized, State-based or non-State-based, judicial or non-judicial process through which grievances concerning business-related human rights abuse can be raised and remedy can be sought.” Grievance Mechanisms can be initiated on behalf of or by anyone "potentially impacted by the business enterprise’s activities,” where potential impacts are “linked to their operations, products or services" and “business relationships.”
The UNGPs are divided into three chapters (“pillars”), the third of which is devoted to access to remedy and which details the complementary roles of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms. The outcome from a Grievance Mechanism can take a range of forms, such as apologies, restitution, rehabilitation, financial or non-financial compensation, and punitive sanctions—whether criminal or administrative, such as fines—as well as the prevention of harm through, for example, injunctions or guarantees of non-repetition of the activities in question.
RELX pledges to "consider the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights" in all [its] activities" and has committed to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security.” International human rights law requires an effective remedy where such rights or freedoms have been violated.
As noted in an IPCC special report, “climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming of 1.5°C and increase further with 2°C.” With RELX/Elsevier providing technological and geographic guidance for the fossil fuel industry majors to develop new resources that are misaligned with any safe warming target, Elsevier has notably not been adhering to its commitment to "discontinuing activities with potentially adverse climate change-related human rights impacts." It is the right of all stakeholders to seek remedy.