Should Companies Write Their Own Climate Rules?

Join the Kleinman Center for this lecture. Lunch will be available following the talk.

Corporate climate pledges gained worldwide attention in the early 2020s as a wave of companies set net-zero targets that were aligned, at least on paper, with the long-term goals of the United Nations Paris Agreement. Even now, as many companies and countries pull back from ambitious climate action, the voluntary standard-setting regime keeps moving forward.

This talk looks at the history of corporate climate pledges and their associated voluntary standards, as well as a recent campaign to consolidate standard-setting processes with the goal of codifying low-ambition outcomes as consistent with global climate mitigation. Although scholarship identifies benefits and shortcomings of voluntary climate action, the governance of voluntary standards is fundamentally unbalanced and broken.

Processes that were initially conceived of as partnerships between companies and civil society have reverted to nearly full corporate control. Better governance and science-based accounting rules can help, but reform will not be simple. That said, dismissing corporate climate governance as a distraction from real climate action risks establishing problematic precedents that can and will be adopted into legally binding climate regimes around the world.