Risk Management

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Under international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Guidelines, companies are expected to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence to identify, assess, mitigate and remediate any adverse human rights or environmental impacts that they cause, contribute to or are otherwise linked to.  A failure to do so can expose a…

Sustainability has undergone a profound transformation over the past two decades.  What began as a moral movement—rooted in reputation management and risk mitigation—has increasingly become a strategic business imperative.  The latest annual report published by the UN Global Compact and Accenture[1] underlines how the business case for sustainability leadership to be at the core of…

Governance

According to the Grantham Institute’s 2024 Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation Policy Report (the “Report“) – which was published on 27 June 2024 – climate-related litigation against private sector actors continues to be on the rise. The Report highlights that over 230 climate-related lawsuits have been initiated against corporations and trade associations since 2015, with over two thirds of those lawsuits filed since 2020. The Report also highlights that the growth rate of climate-related cases is showing signs of stabilisation, at over 200 new climate-related cases per year. The risk of private sector actors facing climate-related lawsuits is not, therefore, showing any signs of diminishing.Continue Reading CLIMATE LITIGATION – THE GRANTHAM RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT PUBLISHES ITS 2024 GLOBAL TRENDS IN CLIMATE LITIGATION REPORT

Governance

The First Civil Senate of the German Federal Court of Justice, which is in charge of competition law, has ruled that advertising with an ambiguous environmental term (here: “climate neutral”) is generally only lawful if the specific meaning of the relevant term is explained in the advertising itself.

Judgment of June 27, 2024 – I ZR 98/23Continue Reading German Federal Court of Justice on advertising with an ambiguous environmental term

Risk Management

Multinational companies are facing increased pressure to ensure that they have adequate ESG-related policies in place and (more importantly) that they are implementing those policies in practice within both their business and associated supply chains via appropriate systems and controls. Companies that are found not to have implemented or adhered to those policies face increased…

MOSS and glass globes

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA“) has announced that three fashion retailers have signed voluntary undertakings to ensure that consumers have a clearer idea of how green their clothes really are. At the end of March 2024, ASOS, Boohoo and George at Asda committed to only make green claims about their products…

China - Beijing

On 19 March 2024, GRESB – an investor-led organisation that provides standardised and validated data to assess the sustainability-related performance of real estate assets and portfolios – announced the upcoming launch of “REAL Solutions“. REAL Solutions is a new suite of tools designed to provide real asset managers and investors with more granular ESG data, which they are demanding in order to take advantage of opportunities in the sustainable investment market and to comply with increasingly burdensome ESG-related regulations.Continue Reading GRESB announces launch of its new suite of ESG-evaluation tools, REAL Solutions