This is true for several reasons:
- Environmental change is reshaping traditional human rights risks and redefining what effective prevention and mitigation require.
- Entirely new categories of risk are emerging, which many companies are not yet prepared to address.
- Corporate impacts on climate and nature can expose new groups of people to harm unless effectively mitigated.
- Even well-intentioned mitigation strategies may create new human rights risks.
Below are four examples of some of the most common examples I encounter in my work. I also share freely available sources to support your risk assessment, together with selected company examples that show what is feasible today.
Forced labour under climate pressure
Extreme weather events and environmental degradation continue to destroy traditional livelihoods, pushing millions into cities and unfamiliar regions. In search of income, many of these migrants are left vulnerable to exploitation in global supply chains. Young people are disproportionately affected.
At the same time, new supply chains linked to climate mitigation—such as renewables and recycling—are already recognised hotspots for forced labour. Unless companies apply a climate and nature perspective and include their mitigation work in their human rights due diligence, these new and emerging risks are easily overlooked.
Recommended resources
- Walk Free Global Slavery Index (2023): The Costs of the Climate Crisis
- World Economic Forum (2025): Urgent Action Against Forced Labour
- US Department of State (2024): 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report
- The Climate Change and Modern Slavery Hub: Global and regional resources
- Energy Research & Social Science Volume 77 (2021): From forests to factories: How modern slavery deepens the crisis of climate change
- ILO Technical Brief (2025): Decent work opportunities and challenges in recycling
- Tetra Pak and PepsiCo: Joining The Circulate Initiative with the aim of improving working conditions of informal waste workers in India.
Child labour and new vulnerabilities
Climate change is also reshaping and increasing child labour risks:
- Natural disasters may push children into work as a survival strategy when family farms are destroyed.
- Reduced adult productivity due to extreme heat, diseases or crop failure often increases reliance on children’s work.
- Around 500 million children are projected to be at risk of climate-related displacement—making them highly vulnerable to exploitation.
- Declining agricultural productivity is pushing children from farming into mining and manufacturing, often under even harsher conditions.
But there is also opportunity: well-designed climate adaptation strategies can strengthen household incomes and reduce reliance on child labour in supply chains.
Recommended resources
- UNICEF (2021): The climate crisis is a child rights crisis – The Children’s Climate Risk Index
ILO (2023): Issue paper on child labour and climate change
Occupational health and safety in a changing climate
From agriculture to construction, workers face heightened exposure to extreme heat, dust, and climate-driven diseases. These risks are no longer confined to the future—they are impacting industries today. Heat stress is a serious threat to workers’ health.
Where piece-rate or output-based pay is common, climate-related disruptions such as heat stress or flooding can reduce workers’ earnings at the same time that climate change contributes to higher food prices, amplifying risks to livelihoods and compounding pressures on the right to an adequate standard of living. Reduced and unstable income is also a well-established driver of adverse health outcomes, as it limits access to adequate nutrition, healthcare, and safe living conditions.
Climate stressors are also affecting the mental health of workers and local communities. In India, for example, an increase in farmer suicides have been linked to prolonged climate impacts combined with inadequate policy responses.
At the same time, we know that mitigating measures are cheaper and add business value, see for instance: Occupational and Environmental Medicine (Volume 86 (2025)): Economic Analysis of a Rest–Shade–Hydration–Sanitation Program at a Nicaraguan Sugar Mill.
Recommended resources
- World Meteorological Organisation and the World Health Organization (2025): Climate Change & Workplace Heat Stress – a technical report & guidance
- ILO (2019): Working on a warmer planet – the impact of heat stress on labour productivity & decent work
- The World Bank (2025): Jobs in a Changing Climate: Insights from World Bank Group Country Climate and Development Reports Covering 93 Economies
- The Journal of Climate Change & Health (Volume 22 [2025]): Impacts of Extreme Heat on Mental Health – Systematic review and qualitative investigation of the underpinning mechanisms
Climate and environmental pressures on livelihoods
Climate change and nature degradation act as risk multipliers for business-related human rights impacts to local communities, for example by:
- Intensifying water scarcity and competition over shared resources.
- Disrupting local food systems and agricultural productivity, undermining livelihoods dependent on stable ecosystems—such as smallholder farming, livestock herding, fisheries, and forest-based activities affected by drought, biodiversity loss, or ecosystem degradation.
- Increasing health and displacement risks linked to heat, flooding, and extreme weather events.
These dynamics can raise both the severity and likelihood of impacts, particularly for Indigenous Peoples and land-dependent communities. The best human rights risk mitigation often lies in enabling local communities and farmers to transform production in nature-positive ways:
- Veja: Paying 5 times the market price for Amazonian rubber to ensure the living conditions of the rubber tappers and protect the Amazonian forest.
- Slow Forest Coffee: Combining nature-positive farming practices, responsible contracting principles and entrepreneurial support to farmers.
- Nestlé: Improving Livelihoods in its cocoa supply chain by combining climate and income generating actions.
- McDonalds USA: USD 200 million investment to help accelerate the implementation of regenerative grazing principles among US-based beef cattle producers.
Recommended resources
- WWFs Biodiversity and Water Risk Filter for companies and financial institutions.
- The ND-GAIN Climate Vulnerability Index helps companies identify where the greatest needs and opportunities for improving resilience to climate change exists.
- The Global Forest Watch provides over 65 data points to help companies in real time analyse land-use, forest communities and real-time tree cover loss.
- The World Resource Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, often used by companies for operational and value chain risk assessments and prioritize sites for water stewardship targets and strategies.
The strategic takeaway
Climate change and nature degradation are increasingly linked to business-related human rights impacts and should be considered as part of the identification and assessment of salient, and material human rights risks. Approaches that assess these issues in isolation risk overlooking impacts on affected stakeholders and weakening the effectiveness of human rights due diligence as well as corporate risk management processes.
I welcome your reflections. How is your company integrating climate and nature into human rights due diligence?
