Doing business responsibly

The world is pre­par­ing for COP26, and as it does so we see in­sti­tu­tion after in­sti­tu­tion mak­ing stronger com­mit­ments to what is now broadly seen in most coun­tries as a com­mon goal: to re­duce glob­al car­bon di­ox­ide emis­sions. In­ter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial law­yers have a cru­cial role to play in the de­bate. Not only in terms of how we con­duct our own op­er­a­tions but also by be­ing guard­i­ans of the rule of law and fa­cil­it­at­ors of busi­ness and trade. We are at the centre of dis­cus­sions on what our cli­ents are re­quired to do, and also on what they should do in light of wider so­ci­et­al and repu­ta­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions. It is in our cli­ents’ in­terests that we guide them to­ward out­comes in line with wider so­ci­et­al am­bi­tions. To do oth­er­wise would, among oth­er things, risk pla­cing them at a com­pet­it­ive dis­ad­vant­age as the world pivots to­ward a clear­er cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion agenda.Cli­mate Risk is a broad term and cov­ers a mul­ti­tude of con­cepts. This re­port fo­cuses in on three dis­crete risks. First, of fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tions hold­ing cor­por­ates to ac­count over per­ceived cli­mate risks. Second, the risk to cor­por­ates on what they do and say about the im­pact on their busi­ness from (or from their busi­ness on) cli­mate change. Fi­nally, risk of lit­ig­a­tion against cor­por­ates re­lat­ing to cli­mate change.As law­yers, what we see is broadly a great de­sire among our cli­ents to be part of the solu­tion on cli­mate change. Al­most all ma­jor cor­por­ate cli­ents that we speak to wish to take pos­it­ive steps that are in line with the de­sire for cli­mate ac­tion, and also to cap­it­al­ise on the op­por­tun­it­ies presen­ted as we trans­ition to a net zero eco­nomy. We find that, among the in­vest­ment com­munity, vast cap­it­al is ready and avail­able to be de­ployed on in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er pro­jects that will push the agenda for­ward. The ques­tion is wheth­er there is suf­fi­cient clar­ity on the agenda, the rules and the risks in­volved.As this re­port shows, a key driver of Cli­mate Risk for cor­por­ates re­volves around in­form­a­tion. Both quan­ti­fi­able in­form­a­tion about the po­ten­tial dir­ect im­pacts of cli­mate change on par­tic­u­lar sec­tors and busi­nesses. And also con­sist­ent, com­par­able and re­li­able in­form­a­tion about the com­pan­ies them­selves. Com­pan­ies are pro­du­cing re­ports that are de­lu­ging in­vestors on how they are meas­ur­ing and man­aging their im­pact on and from cli­mate change. However, there is some dis­tance to go be­fore in­vestors can com­pare the in­form­a­tion across the eco­nomy to make in­formed de­cisions.Or­gan­isa­tions such as Baringa, who have kindly con­trib­uted to this re­port, sup­port the same cli­ents from a par­al­lel per­spect­ive. They help in­vestors and cor­por­ates to as­sess cli­mate risk ex­pos­ure by us­ing Baringa’s Cli­mate Change Scen­ario Mod­el­ling. Tools such as these are in­valu­able for mak­ing the best de­cisions from the in­form­a­tion avail­able on risks to com­pan­ies and the cred­ib­il­ity of their ad­apt­a­tion and trans­ition plans.On cli­mate lit­ig­a­tion, this is a dir­ect and grow­ing risk to cor­por­ates who fall un­der the spot­light of a vari­ety of po­ten­tial claims against an in­creas­ing num­ber of po­ten­tial claimants. It is prudent to act­ively man­age this risk through dis­pute avoid­ance strategies, hav­ing plans in place to deal quickly and ef­fect­ively with the situ­ation where a claim is brought, and un­der­stand­ing the key fea­tures that are typ­ic­ally at play in such lit­ig­a­tion.Cor­por­ates are well aware that cli­mate risks are an in­teg­ral fea­ture of their busi­ness plan­ning. What some oc­ca­sion­ally cri­ti­cise is the lack of long term cer­tainty. Mak­ing knee jerk de­cisions based on woolly polit­ic­al sen­ti­ments that could change to­mor­row rarely makes good busi­ness sense. Clear­er long term policy state­ments from gov­ern­ments and inter-gov­ern­ment­al in­sti­tu­tions can help on this, as well as clear­er policies on how gov­ern­ments see the shape of the fu­ture zero car­bon eco­nomy, and the path­ways to it. All eyes will be on COP26 over the com­ing weeks to see wheth­er the gov­ern­ments of the world com­mit to de­liv­er that clar­ity. Not­with­stand­ing the out­come of COP26, we an­ti­cip­ate that the is­sue of Cli­mate Risk will con­tin­ue to rise and rise up board­room agen­das.

A video series on the de­ploy­ment of 5G across the world