Respecting the Human Rights of Communities: A Business Guide for Commercial Wind and Solar Project Deployment

This guide from the ALIGN Initiative and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment can help you to better understand how rights-respecting projects can contribute to equitable rural development and bolster community livelihoods, and how to build a comprehensive and integrated human rights program that can help your business model to evolve with respect to human rights. This guide explains why respecting human rights is important to business; some of the most notable and potential adverse human rights impacts across value chains; the implications of human rights violations on businesses; and key recommendations - informed by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights - for building a comprehensive human rights program that is embedded throughout business operations.

Although design with renewable energy projects in mind, the core elements of this document (including the recommendations) are applicable to projects in other sectors.