CRC/C/GC/26 industrial air and water pollution and unsustainable agriculture and fishing practices. Businesses contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, which adversely affect children’s rights, and to short- and long-term infringements of their rights linked to the consequences of climate change. The impacts of business activities and operations may undermine the ability of children and their families to adapt to the impacts of climate change, for example, where land has been degraded, thereby exacerbating climate stress. States should strengthen the realization of children’s rights by sharing and making accessible existing technologies and exerting influence on business operations and value chains to prevent, mitigate and adapt to climate change. 80. States have obligations to provide a framework to ensure that businesses respect children’s rights through effective, child-sensitive legislation, regulation, enforcement and policies and remedial, monitoring, coordination, collaboration and awareness-raising measures. States should require businesses to undertake child rights due diligence procedures to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for their impact on the environment and children’s rights. Such due diligence is a risk-based process that involves focusing efforts where the risks from environmental damage are severe and likely to materialize, paying special attention to the risk exposure of certain groups of children, such as working children. Immediate steps should be taken in the event that children are identified as victims to prevent further harm to their health and development and to adequately and effectively repair the damage done in a timely and effective manner. 81. The Committee recommends the development by businesses, in partnership with stakeholders, including children, of due diligence procedures that integrate children’s rights impact assessments into their operations. Marketing standards should ensure that businesses do not mislead consumers, in particular children, through practices of green-washing or green-sheening, by which businesses falsely portray efforts to prevent or mitigate environmental harm. D. Access to justice and remedies 82. Effective remedies should be available to redress violations and promote social justice.22 Despite children having been at the vanguard of several environmental and climate change cases and their recognition under the Convention as rights holders, children, due to their status, encounter barriers to attaining legal standing in many States, thereby limiting their means of asserting their rights in the environmental context. 83. States should provide access to justice pathways for children, including complaint mechanisms that are child-friendly, gender-responsive and disability-inclusive, to ensure their engagement with effective judicial, quasi-judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, including child-centred national human rights institutions, for violations of their rights relating to environmental harm. This includes removing barriers for children to initiate proceedings themselves, adjusting the rules of standing and empowering national human rights institutions with mandates to receive complaints from children. 84. Mechanisms should be available for claims of imminent or foreseeable harms and past or current violations of children’s rights. States should ensure that these mechanisms are readily available to all children under their jurisdiction, without discrimination, including children outside their territory affected by transboundary harm resulting from States’ acts or omissions occurring within their territories. 85. States should provide for collective complaints, such as class action suits and public interest litigation,23 and extend the limitation periods regarding violations of children’s rights due to environmental harm. 86. The complexity of cases involving environmental harm due to transboundary effects, causation and cumulative impacts necessitates effective legal representation. Litigation is 22 23 14 General comment No. 5 (2003) on general measures of implementation of the Convention, para. 24; and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 2 (3). General comment No. 16 (2013), para. 68; and general comment No. 25 (2021), para. 44. GE.23-11144