"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 Elsevier editor gave a presentation to 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 also proclaimed that "some of the activities that are going on within Elsevier and RELX would have to stop…to be aligned with a safe and stable future….Are things happening within Elsevier and RELX, in my opinion, that we need to stop? Absolutely. Do I know whether they will stop? Not entirely.”
Nearly 3 years later, Elsevier continues to support fossil fuel expansion, despite obligations to avoid human rights impacts associated with the business. What we’re seeing is fossil fuel enablers promoting efficiency in new projects as sustainability and identifying a support for renewable projects as being indicative of their participation in the industry’s supposed transition. What this rhetoric does is help Elsevier's oil major partners and customers maintain their social license to operate while the industry simultaneously disregards the requirement to decrease production now to make it possible to mitigate future climate and human rights harms.
Making new fossil fuel projects more profitable for companies that are disregarding the negative impacts they cause to people and the planet will most likely 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 and scientists have been unable to secure. Please reach out if you, your organization, institution, or community care to engage in this process.
Kip Lyall
Climate Rights Coalition
May 2024
—Revealed: leading climate research publisher helps fuel oil and gas drilling, The Guardian, February 2022
—UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, 4 April 2022
—Cell Press editor, 15 July 2022, Customer Connections presentation
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.