"The actions of Elsevier/RELX, in light of UN human rights guidelines and climate justice principles, warrant careful public consideration. We encourage the company to attentively listen to the concerns of those impacted by climate change and acknowledge the potential risks associated with its ongoing engagement in fossil fuels to safeguard its broader business interests.”
—Myron Mendes
The Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change, CRC partner organization
On 15 July 2021, an editor at Elsevier's journal One Earth gave a presentation to some employees, detailing that "if we wait for 10 more years when we get through this [carbon] budget we basically have to decarbonize overnight, which is impossible...All of the oil reserves that these companies have, have to stay in the ground. They can’t take them out of the ground.” He condemned the actions of RELX's oil major partners and customers, contradicting company messaging on the virtues of these businesses. He also stated, to be aligned with a "safe and stable future," that "some of the activities that are going on within Elsevier and RELX would have to stop…Do I know whether they will stop? Not entirely.”
Following this, an employee group made RELX aware that the fossil fuel expansion it supports removes realistic pathways to global net zero and warming goals, contradicting its sustainability claims and human rights responsibilities. RELX chose to not act on these warnings, as its corporate messaging and products continued to mislead the public and policymakers about business aims of its customers. Despite RELX informing fossil fuel expansion, company managers continued to maintain that paper, waste, energy, and travel are RELX's primary negative impacts.
Beyond this, employees from the company's premium journals were pressured to disengage from independent advocacy, with some being successfully pressured to remove their names from a 2022 employee report. RELX leaders also became unmoved by reports of harassment and intimidation targeting employee advocates. In 2022, I reported through one ethics reporting channel of a senior manager's attempts to sway advocactes "to disengage [from] the group." I also noted that "I’m not sure why I’m being singled out for these [meetings] when plenty of other colleagues are concerned about the company’s behavior...the inaccurate claims I’m hearing strain any credibility that there is any purpose to these [meetings] except to try to get me to get behind the company’s 'narrative'...and simply accept these greenwashing practices." I reported "the company is misrepresenting itself, and the company—according to our messaging—is committed to addressing this." These observations raised no flags.
By late 2022, that same One Earth editor—having made direct contributions to multiple employee reports—was made aware that management was citing him "as backing up the company’s positions," including "inaccurate claims about the company and the science." Shortly after this, RELX Compliance placed communications restrictions on all members of the advocacy group. RELX remained unwilling to provide employees with any clarity about why its misrepresentations are permissible or how it conceivably found room in the carbon budget for rapid fossil fuel expansion to be considered consistent with sustainability efforts. Such activities are currently pushing climate targets forever out of reach.
The fossil fuel expansion and misinformation that RELX supports is helping to ensure any 'transition' is one that leads to a deeply unsafe and unstable future. A primary aim of Climate Rights Coalition and this grievance mechanism is to give a voice to people being more directly impacted by these business decisions, with the hope to generate more substantive commitments that employees, scientists, and other stakeholders have been unable to secure.
Kip Lyall
Director, Climate Rights Coalition
Please note, this initiative does not intend to disparage individuals fulfilling roles that have been defined by RELX, but rather to advocate for the removal of any constraints that may dissuade them from acting in defense of vulnerable populations.
—One Earth editor, in a July 2021 presentation
—A Senior Manager's 2021 assessment of management's response to an ethics complaint; included in a 2022 greenwashing report.
—An employee's assessment of a leader's message to an employee group raising greenwashing concerns. He later withdrew from the group. (2022)
—An editor at The Lancet, referring to management's response to the authoring of an employee report (2022).
—Employee advocate, warning of a manager who would successfully pressure employees to remove their names from a greenwashing report; as part of the rationale for blocking the report, the manager would claim the company does not promote fossil fuel expansion; this was the same month Elsevier joined the OSDU Forum, an industry group dedicated to oil and gas expansion. (2022)
—Editor at The Lancet Planetary Health (2022)
—Email to a senior Human Resources official who subsequently became non-responsive to this and other ethics concerns. (2023)
—UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (2022)
Climate Rights Coalition is an organization that seeks to bring together groups, organizations, and individuals who have an interest in generating accountability for those that would continue to promote new fossil fuel projects after 2021, a point at which such activity was determined by the global community to carry a high risk of human rights harms.