Why Supporting Business and Human Rights Organizations Matters for Environmental Justice and Climate Action
Written by: Malkilina Nyandieka, Haki Ni Yetu Grants Manager
When many people hear Business and Human Rights (BHR), they often think about labour rights, corporate conduct, or legal accountability. Yet, through our work supporting grassroots actors, I have increasingly come to appreciate that Business and Human Rights is also deeply connected to environmental rights and climate justice.
As a Grants Manager under the Haki Ni Yetu Project, one of the most rewarding aspects of my work is witnessing grassroots organizations translate complex issues into meaningful community action, strengthen accountability, and create spaces for important conversations about rights, justice, and sustainable development.
Environmental harm does not happen in isolation. It affects livelihoods, health, land, access to natural resources, and the dignity of communities. And often, the communities most affected have the least access to information, participation, or remedy.
Through the Haki ni Yetu Project, it has been encouraging to support organizations that are helping communities bridge this gap.
One such organization is Kinango Human Rights Network (KHRN) in Kwale County. Through their work on Procedural Environmental Rights (PER), KHRN created spaces where communities could openly discuss environmental pollution, weak enforcement of environmental regulations, and barriers to accessing information and accountability mechanisms. Communities in Samburu, Mwavumbo, Kasemeni, and Kinango engaged directly with duty bearers, county officials, and NEMA representatives to ask difficult but necessary questions: How can communities’ access Environmental Impact Assessment reports? Who is accountable for environmental monitoring? How can citizens meaningfully participate in environmental decision-making?
What encouraged me most was not only the dialogue itself, but seeing communities gain confidence to move from silent frustration to informed engagement. Through the project, community members strengthened their understanding of environmental rights, public participation, and access to justice. In one instance, a community formally sought information from NEMA regarding licensing and environmental compliance concerns linked to industrial activity in their locality.
This is climate accountability in practice.
Similarly, through support to Kwale Mining Alliance (KMA), I have seen how Business and Human Rights work can strengthen community voices in extractive industry contexts. Mining discussions are often framed around investment and development, but communities experience these realities through questions of land, environmental governance, livelihoods, and access to remedy. Supporting KMA has meant supporting grassroots awareness, community organizing, and local human rights defenders working to ensure that environmental and business decisions are not made without the participation of affected communities.
Haki Ni Yetu Grants Manager Malkilina Nyandieka with small grantees during an onboarding workshop in Nanyuki, Laikipia County. Photo|InformAction
Another encouraging example comes from OneMillionTrees4Kilifi, whose work demonstrates how environmental justice can be advanced through community organizing and accountability structures. Through the grant, progress was made toward strengthening local environmental governance, including support around the formation of a Community Development Agreement Committee (CDAC) structure and stronger community engagement on mining-related concerns and environmental accountability processes. Seeing communities organize around environmental governance and claim space in conversations that affect their future is exactly the kind of change that reinforces why grassroots support matters.
These experiences have reinforced an important lesson for me as a grants manager: supporting Business and Human Rights organizations is not only about funding activities. It is about investing in communities’ ability to understand rights, ask questions, engage institutions, and demand accountability.
Climate action is not only negotiated in global conferences or expressed through national policy commitments. It is also shaped in community forums in Kwale, in conversations between citizens and regulators, in communities seeking environmental information, and in grassroots actors creating pathways for participation and justice.
Supporting organizations working on Business and Human Rights therefore contributes directly to advancing environmental rights and demanding climate action from the ground up.
And from where I sit as a grants manager, that is some of the most meaningful work we can support.
The Haki Ni Yetu project is funded by the EU Delegation to Kenya. You can learn more about the project here: https://kios.fi/en/haki-ni-yetu/
This page is funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the KIOS Foundation & The Haki Ni Yetu project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.