The corporate climate accountability loop

The paper proposes a 'corporate climate accountability loop' to identify gaps in current corporate climate governance and suggests a transition from voluntary, conflicted systems toward mandatory, independent, and legally enforceable regulatory frameworks.

• The current corporate climate accountability system is flawed because the same voluntary actors and initiatives perform multiple functions without institutional independence, and it lacks a mechanism for ex-post verifications.
• To reduce conflicts of interest, standards, guidance, and decarbonisation benchmarks should be developed independently of direct corporate influence, and voluntary initiatives should implement grievance and whistleblowing mechanisms.
• Future improvements in corporate accountability require mandatory and enforceable regulations or international standards, which would allow for ex-ante validations and ex-post verifications by legally liable, accredited entities, thereby enhancing the impact of litigation and advocacy.

APA

NewClimate Institute (2023). The corporate climate accountability loop. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/the-corporate-climate-accountability-loop

Chicago

NewClimate Institute. The corporate climate accountability loop. 2023. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/the-corporate-climate-accountability-loop.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=NewClimate Institute |title=The corporate climate accountability loop |date=20 September 2023 |url=http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/the-corporate-climate-accountability-loop |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{newclimateinstitute2023corporate, author = {{NewClimate Institute}}, title = {{The corporate climate accountability loop}}, institution = {NewClimate Institute}, year = {2023}, month = sep, url = {http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/the-corporate-climate-accountability-loop}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }