Scientist Rebellion and allied stakeholders are continuing a United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights grievance mechanism addressing RELX

●  RELX promotes that its key positive impact is informing evidence-based public policies, but remains unwilling to cease generating misinformation that can justify fossil fuel expansion.

▶ 2021:   Employees at its premium journals requested RELX address misalignment with its environmental and ethical pledges; RELX subsequently imposed communications restrictions and suppressed ethics complaints.

▶ 2022:  The editor-in-chief of The Lancet reported he was pressured to remove his name from an employee group report that included The Lancet's call for ending "the expansion of any new fossil fuel infrastructure and production."

▶ 2023:   Scientist organizations announced a UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights grievance mechanism; it was initially spearheaded by an organization founded by a former employee who was fired for his advocacy.

▶ 2024:   After RELX issued legal threats, the former employee filed a lawsuit that asserts RELX's "greenwashing practices are materially misleading to consumers, investors, and impose severe public harm."

▶ 2026:   With no pledge from RELX to end its promotion of fossil fuel expansion and misinformation, Scientist Rebellion and allied stakeholders are continuing this human rights grievance mechanism process with RELX.

“It is uncontested that the majority of carbon reserves listed on stock exchanges must remain underground if we are to avoid exceeding a 2C rise in global mean temperature and the catastrophic health impacts this would have…It is wrong to profit from an industry whose core business threatens human and planetary health.”
—Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet (2015)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Scientist Rebellion and allied stakeholders have opted to continue a UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights grievance mechanism addressing RELX’s climate-related human rights harms. This process evolved out of employee actions, was announced by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Scientists for Global Responsibility, and was initiated by the Climate Rights Coalition (CRC), a global group of science, climate, human rights, religious, and other organizations.

In 2021, a group of RELX employees—including editors at Elsevier's premier health and sustainability journals—reported to RELX that, by “promoting, informing, and profiting from new fossil fuel production,” RELX is practicing “climate denial” and appears “unfazed by the prospect of the world pushing well beyond the 1.5°C target.” These and other employee reports, as disclosed in recent legal filings, document RELX’s insufficient regard for international human rights standards. They also describe how the science reveals RELX's misalignment with its own pledges and statements, and cover perception management techniques that are being used to mask this reality. These communication strategies have resulted in RELX misleading the public both about the business and about the dangers of hydrocarbon expansion in this global health and climate crisis.

RELX’s greenwashing efforts include re-branding its library of journals as aligned with a net zero future in scope and mission, despite it generating content that informs global fossil fuel expansion. RELX has promoted the fossil fuel industry’s false solutions, framing technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and A.I. as tools being used by the industry for its "transition." Such tools are in truth being used to perpetuate reliance on carbon-intensive energy. RELX has praised its fossil fuel industry customers as credibly transitioning, creating the false impression that there’s room in the carbon budget for their hydrocarbon expansion efforts. RELX further denies scientific consensus with messaging that pushes for investments in new fossil fuel projects and power plants, and that frames fossil fuel expansion as being consistent with decarbonization efforts.

A 2025 United Nations report has emphasized that human rights law should be "interpreted in the light of the best available science." The science it references includes the need for an immediate decline in emissions and fossil fuel supplies, as well as no new fossil fuel projects or infrastructure. Company actions supporting the “worldwide rush to explore for and produce as much oil and natural gas as possible” downplay the urgency of these science-based requirements. In response to criticism, management has asserted that “there isn’t scientific consensus that new fossil fuel exploration and development projects are objectionable.” Employees, scientists, and advocacy groups have thus far failed to sway RELX to acknowledge or act on the fact that this perspective contradicts the research published in its own journals: the fossil fuel expansion RELX serves inhibits realistic pathways to global net zero and warming targets. It also generates RELX’s increasing complicity in climate-related human rights harms.

RELX has further undermined climate advocacy with messaging that mocks climate advocates and criticized the influence of "the climate agenda." It's asserted there aren’t alternatives to oil and gas and pointed to the supposed dangers of moving away from fossil fuels. The Company has repeatedly promoted the “helpful” idea that the industry push back on “the ‘no more fossil fuels’ movement” by using fear-based tactics inspired by U.S. President Trump—a candidate who's received the financial backing of RELX’s Political Action Committee. It's been alleged that such fear-based strategies have also been adopted by RELX. It's claimed it has targeted employee advocates with intimidation tactics; suppressed ethics complaints; demonstrated an unwillingness to define what its sustainability and ethics pledges prohibit; and placed communications restrictions on editors at prominent journals who collectively raised retaliation concerns about revealing RELX’s misrepresentations.

A 2024 lawsuit filed in U.S. Federal court alleged RELX violations of the Securities Exchange Act and the Fair Employment Practices Act. It states the company has made “numerous business decisions that contradict their climate pledges in materials filed to the SEC and disclosed to investors, marketing materials, and commitments to international organizations.” The lawsuit has observed that RELX’s “greenwashing practices are materially misleading to consumers, investors, and impose severe public harm.” In response, RELX submitted a legal filing that obfuscates science-based requirements for global net zero pathways. RELX continued its practice of conflating societal dependence on fossil fuel use with the false idea that fossil fuel expansion is safe and necessary. RELX also argued that its actions are fully consistent with longstanding commitments it considers to be "aspirational" and what it defines as "sustainability"—perspectives described in one filing as “morally and legally troubling.”

With the Company having rejected persistent pleas from stakeholders for it to discontinue claims that deceive the public, financial products weighted heavily with RELX stock are being marketed by investment firms as “Paris-aligned” and as adhering to the UN Global Compact environmental and human rights Principles. Despite the reputational risk brought to leadership's attention in 2021, RELX has been defining its commitments to sustainability and human rights as allowing for what one internal report suggested is complicity in "ecocide."

RELX’s response to the initial communication for this human rights grievance mechanism was delivered in May 2024. This document serves as the reply to that message, one which contains demonstrably false claims and that critically does not address RELX’s failure to act on credible human rights due diligence processes. RELX's reply also fails to indicate any intention to cease activities risking broad human rights harms. This document covers 1) RELX’s insufficient regard for human rights risks and impacts, 2) the Company’s past and ongoing promotion of fossil fuel expansion, and 3) its use of dishonest perception management techniques. Responses are provided to RELX's claims and additional questions are posed to the RELX Board, as well as to other stakeholders. Finally, we make urgent demands of the RELX Board, including that it takes immediate steps to make policymakers aware of the fossil fuel industry misinformation found in some of its messaging and research journals.

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Contact: scientistrebellion-relx@protonmail.com