Global challenges in 2025 - what do they mean for responsible business?

Two months after the launch of IHRB’s Top 10 Business and Human Rights Issues for 2025, how are recent geopolitical developments impacting the issues in our list?

IHRB’s CEO, John Morrison, sits down with three colleagues, Salil Tripathi, Francesca Fairbairn, and Haley St. Dennis, to discuss a wide range of topics, from the backlash to DEI, to the value of international norms and standards, to how a second Trump term could impact just transitions. This conversation delves into the human rights complexities and challenges that these issues present to companies.

IHRB’s Top 10 Business and Human Rights Issues 2025 is available to read online or download. The Top 10 list - released every Human Rights Day - is our annual forecast of priority challenges and opportunities to advance responsible business practice in the year ahead.

Our 2025 Top 10 list explores some of the most important issues bound by a theme of uncertainty - whether due to breakdown in multilateralism, the spread of violent conflict, industry-changing legislation, or climate action inertia. It includes issues such as the rush for renewables, to AI risks, to the rise of ‘dark fleets.’

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Host: Deborah Sagoe, IHRB's Communications Coordinator
Producer & Editor: Helen Brown
Additional Contributors: Sam Simmons, IHRB's Head of Communications

Transcript

John Morrison: Do you think we're being a bit doom and gloom by just talking about the negative aspects of AI in our top 10?

Salil Tripathi: No. No. It's wonderful that you are talking it up while I'm talking it down because people need to know both the stories. I think that's a point.

Deborah Sagoe: Hi there. And welcome to Voices from the Institute for Human Rights and Business, also known as IHRB. I am Deborah Sagoe and in this podcast you will hear from people working to make respect for human rights parts of everyday business. You've just heard from my colleagues John Morrison and Salil Tripathi discussing one of IHRB's top 10 issues for the year ahead. The top 10 is our annual list of key business and human rights issues and predictions. John, who is IHRB's CEO, sat down with three colleagues including Salil to discuss the issues raised in the list. In this episode, you're going to hear a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from the backlash to DEI, the value of international norms and standards and how a second Trump term could impact just transitions. Let's begin with John, who sets out some context on IHRB's top 10.

John Morrison: Every year, IHRB puts out into the world a list of 10 issues that he thinks will be particularly relevant for the year ahead. We did that. We did it two months ago. We actually agreed a list at the end of November because we launched it on International Human Rights Day the 10th of December each year. So in a way, the list has already been out now for two months because we join you at the end of January. The top 10 for 2025 is ensuring accountability in the rush for renewables, preventing finance from fueling conflict, confronting AI risks, responding to shipping dangers, rebuilding war-torn states, abiding by humanitarian law, implementing mandatory measures, making migration work for all, advancing workplace diversity and rebuilding confidence in climate action. And we don't rank those, right? So I didn't go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 because I didn't want to convey any sense of priority, but they're our top 10 for 2025.

I'm here with three of my colleagues, Haley St. Dennis is our head of just transition. Francesca leads our work on shipping and commodities and Salil is one of our senior advisors that looks at global issues whose whole job I think is to spot trends ahead. Last week I was in Davos doing my bit to melt the snow with climate change and some of the issues came up at Davos last week. But my overriding message that I picked up on was how upbeat everyone was trying to be about the state of the global economy, particularly the US economy and the incoming Trump administration. Everybody was trying to be positive and in a way contrasting with the year before, there was more doom and gloom I think a year ago. And so you had the IMF, you had the European Central Bank, you had everybody trying to embrace the new administration and of course Trump himself appeared in a sort of Orwellian fashion on the screen on Thursday with the CEOs sort of sitting below him, diminutive CEOs and a huge image of the president.

But of course everything is very transactional and I think the sort of overriding concern I have of course, and many of us will have is where does international law, international standards sit within a heavily transactional world. Where these laws that have been crafted over the past 80 years are there deliberately to protect the vulnerable people in the world who lose out in transactions, right? Who are not powerful, who don't have the leverage. Now, some issues like forced labour, which we were talking a lot about last week I think will do okay because of the bipartisan issues sort of consensus around them. But some of the issues, including some of the issues in our top 10 I think are much more vulnerable. So, Salil, two months in already, are there any things in our list that you think have already come out to play from what you've seen and heard?

Salil Tripathi: I have to thank President Trump for that because he's bringing us closer to the reality which is almost dystopic and despairing at the same time at many levels. And it just shows that this race isn't over because if you go back to how this international architecture was created two or three days ago that we are speaking now and we are speaking in late January, and some of you might watch this much later. So just to put it in context, we are speaking almost the same week of the Holocaust Memorial Day and yet you have a new administration who supporters think it's okay to move on and the people who are saying it's okay to move on are the people who are not the victims.

The only people who can say it's time to move on are those who had actually suffered and they still want justice. And as we know from the conflict in Gaza that sometimes those who have suffered become oppressors. So the saga is continuing and the international architecture that was being built in 1945 at the [inaudible 00:05:16] and so on is still needed. We still need those institutions and those are under a severe assault. You have the US moving out of WHO, it has already signed off from the climate treaty and it is also, I mean if you go to the State Department website, you can't find the national action plan for business. I mean my colleague Haley is on the expert group of that. So that scares me that US is becoming isolationist in a very narrow centric way and at the same time the same companies have to abide by international norms and standard.

So it's going to be a great tussle for those companies. So the time is right for the companies to look again at these top 10 issues and more to make sure that their conduct and their activities are consistent with human rights standard. Because however good your local standards are, ultimately a company has to choose between what's superior, the local standard or the global standard. And then local standard falters, that it's happening in America where I live normally, I just happened to be in India this month, it now looks like the world is a better place than the US is. And all of us who wish well for the world, given the power of US companies have to help them to get the right thing right.

John Morrison: Thank you, Salil. Francesca, one of our top 10 was responding to shipping dangers and the vulnerability of maritime workers and the practises like dark fleets, et cetera. How might a maritime worker be feeling about the first two months of the Trump... well, the first month of the year, put it this way?

Francesca Fairbairn: I mean, so dark fleet, for those who don't know, it's a huge fleet of unregulated vessels currently crossing the world's oceans, transporting mainly sanctioned oil initially from Venezuela and Iran and now obviously from Russia. And these ships don't follow safety standards, they turn off their AIS, which means they're invisible, which means collision and oil spill. It's a matter of possibly when not if. And obviously seafarers are on these substandard ships, they are subject to far greater risks than legitimate vessels.

So in terms of sanctions then, which is what has really spurned the huge rise in the use of the dark fleet, Biden, before he left office, he created what had been described as Trump-proof sanctions against a whole load of vessels against maritime insurers and against various oil companies. Whether these work or not is one thing, that's a political question. Whether they will reduce the flow of sanctioned oil, who knows? And whether it will reduce the dark fleet also remains to be seen, but one fears that now there's a taste among illegal operators for the money, masses of money that can be made from these journeys. So the practise may become entrenched that may be here to stay.

John Morrison: Thank you Francesca. Haley, one of the first things President Trump did was sign an executive order to leave the COP process, which is what he did during his first administration, given rebuilding confidence in climate action as one of our top 10. Not a great start.

Haley St. Dennis: Not a great start, but very much as expected as predicted, certainly from our side and many others. And so I think it speaks to a bit of an end of an era for just transitions as we call them, which is sort of climate action. It's decarbonization, it's responding to the climate crisis in a way that tries to leave no one behind, the workers, the communities and others that have been dependent on fossil fuels for so long. And so I say end of an era because I think there was a sort of post Paris boost, Paris Agreement, the international climate treaty in 2015 cemented this concept of just transitions in global action that benefited from a wave I think of popularity around this concept over the last 10 years or so. That's now starting to peter out in part because of the Trump effect. We're also seeing the end probably of the first installation of policies being implemented.

Ironically, many of those were really in large part in response to opposition to climate action from Trump's first term in office or the Gillie Jean protests and other social disruption where things weren't being done well and bringing people along. We're kind of at a tipping point I think in terms of recognition, which is positive, there's now 34% of NDCs. These are nationally determined contributions. The national level climate plans for how a country is going to decarbonize and adapt to climate. 34% are now recognising explicitly just transitions and this need to take a human centred approach to what this looks like. 38% of the most carbon intensive companies have at least some commitment to just transitions. And there's also an initial spectrum of financial measures that are looking at what the kind of financial mechanisms and different actors across public, private, and blended need to do to actually make this happen because money really does matter.

At the same time, we're just off the back of COP29 in Baku. That was in November of last year, a couple of months ago. And that signalled a couple of problems, an inability to really agree a new just transition work programme at the global level and more profoundly it delivered a deeply unsatisfactory finance deal. And as you said at the start, John, Trump has now removed the US from the pro action ledger on climate broadly and on just transition specifically. And that's going to bring ripple effects we know whether that's other countries following suit in terms of how they might exit the Paris Agreement. But also more adversely perhaps to suppress and climate ambition amongst US and other international climate initiatives across finance industry and everywhere else.

John Morrison: You don't agree that somehow because Trump has made big play for the steel workers and coal miners and the Rust Belt, that actually in a sense he cares about just transition or his voters do at least they are the very people that are afraid of the transition ahead and that's why they voted for him. So is there not an opportunity there?

Haley St. Dennis: There is. I think it goes back to what you said at the start, which is he of course takes a very transactional approach and I think there is a very strong business case for just transitions. We as a community just need to make it and make it well. But if you just scratch beyond the surface of the rhetoric in the US alone, you'll see for example that Texas is the biggest investor in renewables of any US state. So it is there, it is about people and if you can really harness that power, you'll see the benefits and happy to speak more to the ways in which IHRB is really trying to elevate that.

John Morrison: Yeah, we'll come back to that. Well that's good. Thank you. So that's where we are now in January. Looking now ahead to the rest of the year, some big events coming up, we have COP30 in Brazil, even if it's without the USA being there. South Africa is hosting the G20 this year. Saudi Arabia seems to be hosting just about everything else that's going on in the world at the moment. And I was there two weeks ago for the Future Mining Forum, a lot going on there. There is a 42-day peace accord. Well as ceasefire I would say in Gaza or Israel at the moment and a big uncertainty as to what happens beyond the 42 days.

And there's the beginnings now of noises around Putin and Trump sitting down at some point to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what happens next. And of course the back end of last year we saw the collapse of the Syrian regime. And this is obviously something that's discussed a lot, including in Saudi Arabia as to what comes next there. Trump has acted or is threatening to act on his immigration measures in quite a Draconian way. And of course we're beginning to see the rollout of what you could call the anti-woke anti-DEI agenda.

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, there's a smorgasbord, I don't know what to pick, but it's a very grim world. I mean that's the starting point I would start with, and I sympathise with the companies that want to abide by the law because the law is unclear. International law protects companies as civilians when they're victims or survivors, but international law does not tell them what to do when things go wrong. And therefore companies often take decisions based on a seat-of-the-pants analysis to use an American phrase there. What they end up doing is that they have in classic cases a French company operating in an African country which has a civil war and it has workers from Thailand or Bangladesh and it has to ship them to safety because of the conflict. Who's responsible for that? And the international is silent.

If you look at the Red Cross and ICRC and the Geneva Convention, it will say you have to go to the government in charge, but the government in charge is A, a combatant. B, it could be a very, very bad actor. And C, it could be a powerless creature because the rebels are more powerful supported by major powers. I mean there's no point telling a tiny government, which is about to collapse to look after Thais or Bangladeshis who are building a highway, but that's what Devu had to deal with in Libya when Gaddafi was falling. So I'm not talking about a random instance. These things have happened in the past and we have to learn from that and we have to make sure that we have to put aside, we have to... here's how I'll put it, do what is right for human rights as long as what you're doing is not harming other human rights.

John Morrison: So I'm an infrastructure company and I'm thinking about whether I should move into Syria this year. Well, what you say to me?

Salil Tripathi: So I would ask you to go back to what was done by Amnesty International and disclosure, I wrote part of the report, so I'm biassed about what should you do when you're rebuilding a country after a conflict? And I wrote the report after Iraq. And the idea was that you make sure that the contracts you award to your subcontractors do not include people who are implicated in human rights abuses. You make sure that the workers you bring in are not replacing workers who need the jobs. You make sure that in your recruitment policies there is no discrimination.

You make sure there's no corruption involved in that process and you also make sure that you're not doing anything that provides any fuel that leads to helping the seeds of the future conflict to start. Now these are very broad parameters and there is a report which I wrote in 2004, people can download from the Amnesty International website, but that's not the point here. The point is that we do know what are the right things to do. Companies have to do them so long as in doing that, they're not violating international standard. And what ICRC will tell you that, "Oh, the Geneva Conventions don't ask you to do that." That's fine, so long as they don't ask you not to do that, it's worth doing it if the consequence of that is positive.

John Morrison: Should I care about international standards if I was a company? Let's be devil's advocates. Are we moving into-

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, I think the [inaudible 00:16:13]

John Morrison: Has that been world variation [inaudible 00:16:16] care about these things then?

Salil Tripathi: No, no, it's a great question and I've been grappling with it frankly over the last few years because of the way the world is turning. Because if we don't have international standards, what do we have? We have a caveat emptor system, a devil get the hindmost system where the power will decide the rules. And the whole rationale of creating international standards was to ensure that the world abided by certain rules which applied equally to everyone. And I think we have to move towards that and we have to uphold those.

John Morrison: So business is going to need that, whatever, right? Or maybe you can make an argument that business needs it even more now.

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, absolutely. Because if you're a US company, you to still have to abide by EU CSDDD and you have to apply with CSRD. If you're Facebook, you can't simply do what you want because Brazil will tell you to do certain things, Australia will tell to do certain things and therefore it's good to have international standards.

John Morrison: Very good. Francesca, yes, come in on this.

Francesca Fairbairn: Yeah, I mean it's hard to see anything positive really or clear for what's going on in the year. I mean obviously international standards will be backed up by increasing legislation as Salil mentioned, the CSDDD, there's CSRD, various other national supply chain acts. I mean on the other hand, the fear that I would have possibly is there are many companies certainly in the states, I mean obviously Meta being an example. And I'm sure Salil will come back to that who are bending the knee to the new administration, rolling back on DEI, et cetera. And I imagine there's a very real fear on the part of these businesses that if they speak out or act against Trump's policies, that there may be consequences. Now it could be bluster, it could not happen, but it's a brave company that has to take those risks I think.

John Morrison: Or it could be an advantage to other jurisdictions around the world where maybe some of the tech giants will begin to diversify their investments away from US possibly.

Francesca Fairbairn: Yes. Well that would be a positive outcome for sure if they did it for the right reasons.

John Morrison: I'll come to you in a second, Haley. Salil, I want to come back on this confronting AI risks. There was a lot of discussion around AI at Davos last week, but not many people were talking about the risks. I would say 90% of the conversation is around the opportunity. And that included me because I was there partly to launch a global data partnership against forced labour where AI could be transformative in the business and human rights field. And I profoundly believe that whilst recognising the rules of the road and the risks and the need for governance. Do you think we're being a bit doom and gloom by just talking about the negative aspects of AI in our top 10?

Salil Tripathi: No, no. It's wonderful that you are talking it up while I'm talking it down because people need to know both the stories. I think that's the point because of course AI is positive, it can make things easier, simpler, swifter, neater, efficient and all that. I will never question that, but I just want to know who controls the data, what the database is, where the large language models are created from. And also stuff like what comes out, whether it's misinformation or disinformation. The whole hallucination problem is a very important one with AI because AI produces an answer very quickly. AI is like a very smart 15-year-old kid who wants to impress the teacher. So you ask a question and it will blurt out the answer because it wants to get A plus in the class, but it doesn't tell you where it got the answer from. So there are no footnotes and you don't know what the basis of the argument is. And I think that's a problem with AI.

And the problem is that there are bad actors who will want to manipulate it. They will want to use misinformation out of negligence and disinformation because they want to get the AFD to win the election in Germany or Nigel Farage to win an election in Britain and so on. And that's when the disinformation comes in so that's the sinister aspect of AI, AI can manipulate the past, not just the present and the future, that the risk... California had this intense wildfire. Haley, you are in America. I'm not in America, I'm not there right now. But one of the stories that came out was that firefighters were not given the equipment because equipment was exported by Biden to Ukraine. It was false on age counts, that story, but it got widespread because the algorithm made it possible and with imagery that was created by AI. And I think that's the problem, that is going to recreate the past and when it recreates the past, and if we can't agree on that, that's risky. So all those air champions and lovers need to smell the coffee.

John Morrison: Okay, Haley, you're actually in America. Are the streets littered with federal DEI employees suspended on full pay? What are they doing with themselves at the moment? What's it feel like?

Haley St. Dennis: It doesn't feel good. Certainly we've seen announcements from state offices around essentially threatening. I mean it's quite scary in some contexts if you're seen to be even potentially involved in such kind of DEI initiative, even under other language or name, you will be investigated and there will be consequences. It's quite dystopian.

John Morrison: But only if you're a federal employee. I did talk to a number of American companies last week as well about how brave they might be on human rights and DEI this year. Are they going to hold the ground, so to speak?

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, I know. I just wrote a blog. I mean, we can tell you one thing that some companies are resisting. Apple is one, Costco is one, Microsoft is one. And I think they need to. They need to because they're global companies and they have to respond to CSDDD, Brazilian laws, Australian laws and other laws that will come in. And there is plethora of evidence available to show that DEI is good for you, I mean good for a company. I mean to say that it's not good for a company is incredibly naive and stupid. South Africa tried that and it collapsed so magnificently as we all know from history. So let's accept that as a given. So there's a lot of drama around jettisoning DEI and so on. And I'm profoundly disappointed by US companies, which did so well in the last few years supporting Black Lives Matter and gay marriage and speaking against gun violence and supporting issues on modern slavery to capitulate.

And that's what we are seeing in America. But I mean, I want to believe that the US system is resilient enough to resist that ACLU and others will challenge all these rules and they will get struck down and it will go to the Supreme Court and we'll see. And by then President Trump might be history, he has one term left. Let the political response to that. But more seriously, if you look at it from a corporate perspective, given the economic business and financial parameters, which McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Ernst & Young, Pricewaters have shown that DEI is good for you. Follow those rules and convince your shareholders. Tell them that it's in your interest that your consumers belong to all races, that your employee pool belongs to all races because if you narrow it down, you become South Africa, and South Africa collapsed.

John Morrison: Very much. So let's now turn to the rush towards global renewables. Haley, we've spoken a lot about the US. Maybe thinking ahead also with COP-thirty in Brazil, what's going to happen more globally? Are we on track?

Haley St. Dennis: I think it's essential this intertwined one track of rebuilding confidence in climate action and ensuring accountability. It's also a very tall order given what we talked about already in terms of Trump's exit from the Paris Agreement for the US. So it means 2025 really is going to be one where leadership matters. And that's really a flashing light principle on leadership because these consensus-based arena I think are set to be less productive now with the US stance. Whether that's in the world of COPs under the UNFCCC, the global climate biodiversity and desertification accords and negotiations every year, the G20 and otherwise. So I think leadership will need to become braver but also more individualistic. On the business and financial actor side, I think we're already beginning to see a real division of the pack emerging, right? And if you think about it, maybe in cooking terms, separating the fat from the richer stock between those that are going to really succumb to the kind of Trumpian anti-woke, anti-ESG pressures to walk away from what were always essentially hollow climate commitments versus those that'll double down and deepen their implementation.

And I don't see that as a bad thing if the kind of ecosystem of those pushing for climate ambition and just transitions channel their efforts in support of imperfect leadership and against what were always those kind of hollow trend followers. So I think there's areas looking ahead for really planting the seeds of transformation. And obviously that will take time, but those seeds are everything and that's will top down and bottom up. And so you mentioned COP30, Brazil is hosting the Global Climate Summit this year. That is a key moment to really make or break what we mean when we say confidence in climate action. 2025 is the year of NDCs, these climate plans that governments agree every five or now 10 years. We need to see leaders across industry, finance and otherwise really backing those NDCs. And we need to see really clear fiscal resources and we are, Brazil's new NDC fresh off the press is a great example of how this can be done.

And likewise, I said bottom up and Collie Australia, this little town in Western Australia is a great example of what it means to co-create a transition plan with those most affected by these really disruptive industrial processes, right? To decarbonize and to adapt to an entirely different energy or other industrial systems brings enormous change. And so Collie is a community with 130 year heritage of powering an entire enormous region, right? Western Australia. So that initial closure announcement, the exit from coal was literally met with a pinch up in the town hall, right? Transition is a deeply uncomfortable human experience. No one likes change. And so without investing in bottom up dialogue that road to net-zero is going to be teaming with social opposition. But Collie is this excellent example of how bottom up can also really guide the top down because once the community process their grief and anger, initially they got on with designing what a really diversified, thriving green future can look like.

And the state government invested in that plan. And so that signals a third item for me, which is the importance of finance. We've already talked about it. Transition will cost money, but just transitions will actually unlock more money through economic diversification, right? It's an investment in value. And again, Collie shows the really immediate rewards that this can reap. It's not some distant vague promise, but really concrete improvements in both pay and conditions for workers that have built confidence in the disruption to come, that they trust that that's going the right direction. And significant initial buy-in from new green industries now coming to Collie, flocking to Collie to invest in the next a hundred years. So at last point, I just really want to emphasise in terms of those seeds to plant for this year is I think something we've always felt, but maybe not quite put our finger on or put words to, which is the importance of honouring history and heritage.

And Salil spoke about this a bit at the start in terms of the Holocaust, and of course the transition context is very different, but I think some principles can similarly be applied in terms of honouring history. And I think often carbon emitting workers and nations are being shamed for contributing to the climate crisis. But that's a new narrative and for the last a hundred plus years, they've been the ones keeping the lights on. So I think giving recognition to that development impact has been so critical, certainly in the case of Collie, which has done that in a really interesting way to then being able to move on and look positively to that future. So it's not about standing still, but it is about really honouring legacy.

John Morrison: And I also think about the role of mining unions and the whole development of human rights, right? I mean, if you think about the role of the coal mining unions in apartheid South Africa or communist Poland, or even further back in terms of welfare rights in many industrialised countries, workers, trade unions, miners have been at the forefront of all those struggles. And to throw them under the bus now for climate regions always felt a dishonourable thing to do. Salil, go ahead.

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, no, I had a question about Haley actually, and this is out of ignorance because you are the expert on this. I'm curious about what you're positing because we all agreed that isolationist America is not good for the world. But if Trump is going to say drill, baby drill on one hand, and if what we need in terms of what... Collie is a very good example of a communitarian ethic where the community comes with a solution. And with the whole self-oriented libertarian American ethos and the isolation streak that's coming in America, to what extent is it a threat? And what do we need to do to convince the companies, US companies, which will have to choose or it'll have to coexist with a libertarian America and a communitarian Europe and the rest of the world? And how will that play out and what role should the civil society play? I'm not talking to you about the IHRB, but all of us should play because we are at a threshold.

Haley St. Dennis: We are at a threshold. I guess I'll go back to my point that there are ways, I suppose as a community and as an ecosystem of trying to channel this new moment of transaction approach to decision making and prioritisation. And there are very strong cases to be made, right? Already the costs of renewables is the same if not cheaper than fossil fuel and high emitting energies, right? There is a very clear business case and rationale for investing in that. And we are seeing a lot of US companies doing that even though their rhetoric is different. So as a community, I think we can really try and parse through what is rhetoric versus what is action. I think there's history repeating itself a little bit in terms of where we should be engaging and there will be a very imperfect theme to transition over the next 10 years.

We're at the absolute earliest stages and these will unfold over the long term. And so it's about, as I said, brave leadership. It's about trial and error, feeling our way through the dark. And my fear is there's such a strong backlash against greenwash very necessarily, right? Completely hollow gestures that never meant anything in a climate context. But there's also a spectrum. And what I fear is we'll pivot to the entire other side, which is greenhush. Those that are actually trying, albeit imperfect, ultimately get silenced because it's not enough, it's not good enough. How dare you do X, Y and Z. And in order for us to be able to move on, I think we need to focus on what works and build.

John Morrison: Okay. Last few minutes. I want us to focus on the year ahead. Imagine we're coming back in a year's time and we're reflecting on 2025. What will the top 10 of next year look like, do you think? Which of these issues do you think will still be in front of us and which new issues might be arising? There's a couple of our current top 10 we haven't really spoken much about, migrant workers, for example, this sort of tension in our societies that we know we need migrant workers for our economies. And yet there's this huge populist resistance to migration flows and also the standards, the mandatory measures coming out of the European Union, there might be some consolidation and alignment with the omnibus that Ursula von der Leyen has proposed for this year. But let's assume that those laws will be moving forward and we'll have more clarity as to what those could look like at the national level within a year's time. Touch on those two issues or any others that you want to bring forward. Francesca and then Salil.

Francesca Fairbairn: I'll leave CSDDD and migrant workers to Salil and Haley. I mean, if I had three predictions, as I said at the start of this podcast, I fear the dark fleet may be here to stay. And completely putting aside the remaining massive appetite for oil that is causing this and all the climate implications of that, I think the international maritime organisation and states do need to act on that. Otherwise, that is going to be an issue that's going to be here next year. Also, shipbrokers need to be careful who they're selling their old vessels to. And insurers need to be careful from a commodities' perspective, the community costs of the scramble for minerals.

That's not going away either, in my view. That's only going to get bigger and bigger. And if I can just do one on AI, although it's not my area of expertise, I went to see Tim Berners-Lee speak at an LSE event. And the final question was, "What keeps you awake at night?" And without pausing for breath he said, "The singularity." Now like me, you need to look that up on Wikipedia. The definition is, "A hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization." I'm not sure how hypothetical it is actually at this point. And if it's keeping the father of the world by web awake at night, it's keeping me awake at night as well.

John Morrison: When the machines build the machines and we're no longer a controlling factor. Salil.

Salil Tripathi: Yeah, I mean I completely agree with the Tim Berners-Lee scenario because the problem about machines running machines is not the fact that it'll be more efficient and ruthless, but it'll be valueless. And I think what Tim Berners-Lee is also at the heart of it seeking is what kind of values are embedded in it? Are those the values driven by international standards of human rights or ethics or environmental standards, or are those the values that Elon Musk believes in? And Elon Musk changes his mind every 15 minutes. So what do you do with a situation like that? That's a scenario. And I think what the companies must do, the companies in around the world are enormous beneficiaries of the architecture of global commerce through the ITU, through the CIT, through the UN, through the World Bank, through the IFC, through the IMF.

They've all benefited through the WTO. They benefited from the rules-based mechanism, which tell them what they can do and what they cannot. They have to be at the forefront of championing it and aligning themselves with the international civil society and sensible governments which do not want to tear up the architecture simply because they believe in this old idea that creative restriction is a good thing in capitalism. Yes, in certain kind of capitalism and textbooks. I studied all that, but it doesn't play out that way. And whenever that happened, there are many, many, many victims. And our role, whether it's institute or the global civil society, is always to look at those victims, strengthen them, empower them, give them the voice so that they can hold those with power accountable.

John Morrison: Yes, I always remember the business testimonies at the Nuremberg trials, the American Nuremberg trials against I.C. Farben and those other huge German companies who ended up producing the gas that exterminated many of the Jews during the Holocaust. And other minorities of the creeping complicity in the boardroom over the years of being the frog in the water and staying in the water and not jumping out and not feeling that they were evil people or that they were even necessarily doing evil. But gradually becoming accustomed to a context which now with fresh eyes looking back at, we ask, how the hell could they possibly have allowed those things to happen? Are we frogs in water, I wonder, or is that an unfair comparison?

Salil Tripathi: We have been shouting that the temperature is rising. That's all I would say. Yeah.

John Morrison: Yeah, Haley, how hot does it feel to you in the moment in the water?

Haley St. Dennis: I mean, again, I'll be that I'm the climate person, so it's hot figuratively, literally, and otherwise it's shrouded in ash and smoke and nearly every single one of our planetary boundaries breached. But we have drawn one back and I think it's important to remember that, right? Diode Don has been restored, and that was through international solidarity, it was through scientific progress and everything else. So it can be done. And I suppose for me, if it's possible to look through the lens of '25 and get to 2026, I think it's the art of the possible beginning to emerge. And I spoke at the beginning about we're kind of coming to the beginning of the end on the first phase of climate action.

And that's largely at that kind of high-level commitment phase and somewhat theoretical grand sounding strategies and plans. I think we're going to now really start to see implementation possibly more quietly of course, to avoid backlash from changing political winds. But we are really starting to see closures happening now. The tsunami of transition mining beginning to really roll out around the world. The uptake of course of wind and solar and other renewables installations at huge pace and scale and heavy industry being converted. So it's all about how, how, how. And it will be make or break, certainly COP30, whether I think confidence in the international fora can be restored on any level or whether it really does come down to the individualistic approach after that.

John Morrison: Great. Well, thank you colleagues. I'll make one prediction that the Institute for Human Rights and Business will still be here in a year's time to have this discussion and look back. You'll have a new CEO by then, which will also be interesting. But do tune in folks over the year ahead as we'll be doing many more podcasts on our top 10 issues to sort of dive into how things are progressing. And then of course, I think we'll be back in a year's time to review. But thank you for listening and thanks to Haley, Francesca and Salil for being with me today. Take care.

Salil Tripathi: Thank you.

Deborah Sagoe: What a truly fascinating discussion there on IHRB's top 10 business human rights issues for 2025. The full list is available to read and download on IHRB's website. Many thanks to my colleagues, Haley St. Dennis, Francesca Fairbairn, Salil Tripathi, and John Morrison. And thank you for listening to this episode of Voices, which is brought to you from the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Until next time, be sure to share and follow this podcast, that way you will never miss an episode. And if you'd like to find out more about the work that we do at IHRB, then head to IHRB.org.