Strengthening Accountability for Environmental Harm: Pathways for Transformative Business Practices

Geneva, Switzerland

November 24, 2025

4:40 - 6 pm CET

The accelerating climate crisis, rapid biodiversity loss, and escalating environmental degradation are placing unprecedented pressures on businesses, governments, and societies. Across global value chains, environmental harms increasingly have profound human rights implications, particularly for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. At the same time, evolving international norms, national legislation, and multi-stakeholder initiatives are creating new opportunities to strengthen corporate environmental accountability.

This panel discussion will examine how emerging legal, policy, and standard setting developments are reshaping corporate responsibility for environmental harm, and how these can be leveraged to advance inclusive and sustainable development amid the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises. Discussions will explore challenges and opportunities for integrated human rights, climate, and nature due diligence, and consider how legal accountability for ecocide could complement existing human rights and ESG frameworks to drive meaningful environmental responsibility grounded in respect for human rights.

Scheduled Speakers

Paloma Muñoz Quick, Director, Human Rights Standards, BSR

Director, Human Rights Standards, BSR

Copenhagen

Paloma leads BSR’s work on Human Rights Standards, including standard-setting, knowledge management, and helping companies respond to emerging standards and regulation. She is also Senior Advisor to BSR’s Finance & Human Rights Practice.

Prior to joining BSR, Paloma was Advisor to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and Senior Consultant of the UN B-Tech Project, where she developed a vision for promoting the uptake of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights among investors and guidance on responsible investment in digital technologies. Prior to the UN, Paloma launched and led the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, where she developed thought leadership on the investor responsibility to respect human rights and supported stewardship engagements across industries. She also worked at the Danish Institute for Human Rights advising companies, governments, and civil society on business and human rights.

Paloma is a member of the US government’s Advisory Committee on Responsible Business Conduct. She sits on the Editorial Board of Developments in the Field of the Business and Human Rights Journal of Cambridge University.

She holds a Master of International Affairs (M.I.A.) in Human Rights from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a B.A. in Political Science, also from Columbia University.

Paloma is Chilean-American and is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.